Interim PM Secrets for Software Teams - Workshop Notes

Earlier this year we needed an intermediate PM.

We found one who was available: Ramtin Azimi. We hired him to fix a project and also teach some non-obvious principles to the PMs of my team.

This post is a summary of workshop notes.

I will also hightlight several things, which will help if

• You start with a new software project
• You are not sure if your project will get finished
• Clients always want more and more.

Basic goal of the PM

Drive a team to a single goal, together.

Set the goal, and create a plan to get there. Along the way, the PM creates documentation and learns the business domain.

A great PM understands the customer as well as the technical constraints and architecture of the system.

Be the smooth, wide bridge

Communication gets harder as teams grow: Metcalfe's law.

(n-1) * n / 2

Every line of code contains a probability of a bug. Too many people writing too much code too early --> Lots of bugs + too much structure.

detailed plans of what needs to happen

The PM needs to cut that down and be a center point people can ask.

Anticipate what the team will need and work 1-2 weeks ahead to prevent blocking.

• Roadmaps
• Timeline
• Dependencies

Ideally: at least one person needs to have done the job already. ONE person needs conviction.

PM needs to be very close to the developer

In Ramtin's case: work closely with the dev, have a double-leadership.

For my agency: The PM is also a developer

Tickets need Acceptance criteria

If they don't: the customer needs to work better (specify more)

Benefits:

• Refunds from customers will be less if they accepted the features
• No extra rounds like "can you add this thing"
• Developers can write tests easier.

One release every Friday

The approach we want to try out: always release from main, like in github flow.

The project we talked about needs a lot of refactoring, so we are not ready to always deploy from main.

Anticipating and planning ahead. A project manager should always think about goals:

• 1 month
• 3 months
• 1 year ahead and break those down into executable steps.

And if you’re interested in diving deeper into Interim PM Secrets, check out my full video.