Questions tagged [project-management]
Project management is a professional field involving managing the scope, changes, schedule, and completion of a temporary endeavor that has a clear end. This is a professional field with it's own certifications and professional educational programs. If your question relates to the workplace, ask it here; otherwise, if the question is solely about project management, consider asking it on our sister site Project Management Stack Exchange instead.
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My manager always seems too busy to meet with me. How can I improve that?
He's a great guy, but it feels like he's always in meetings or going to conferences or on the phone on long calls. He has told me that he really enjoys those interactions. He and I work somewhat ...
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9
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How can I professionally and politely disagree with Management about my performance review?
It is my performance evaluation. In the evaluation the management is trying to put my rating and rate low by making me solely responsible for some of the the results which don't meet management ...
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13
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How to respond to, "How long will this take?" when in a new job position
I started a new job two weeks ago using technologies that are new to me. I was upfront from the start about what I did and did not know so there's no surprises.
I do a little of everything and so I ...
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2
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Should I know what work/tasks/projects are next?
I've recently started working at a software development company where the style seems quite different to my previous experiences. Mainly, the work comes infrequently and after I finish it, I don't ...
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14
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What to do when different project managers insisting that I must work on their requests immediately?
There are 5 project managers who keep coming to me and insisting that their requests are urgent and I find myself switching between 4 different projects, while I am supposed to work on only 1 project ...
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6
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How to backseat project manage when meetings are poorly/not facilitated?
Meetings without agendas which are poorly facilitated do NOT fall into the category of beneficial meetings.
Unfortunately, a lot of PMs or managers do not have the expertise or skill leading ...
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5
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Too aggressive project estimation, what are my alternatives? [closed]
Our IT Managers give me a project and says estimate it, how long will it take to get it done. I say well 2 days or more. He think it can be done in 2 hours. Now the project is basically about adding ...
- 1,591
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2
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How to make young software engineers improve the quality of their output?
During our last project, our team composed of young software engineers made a product which contains much more bugs than other teams. We have a senior engineer who was part of the team, but isn't much ...
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4
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Dealing with unrealistic deadlines [duplicate]
I'm seeking advice on how to deal with unrealistic deadlines at work. The issue is that the company I'm working for is making a huge pivot, however there is an expectation that the pivot will occur ...
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59
votes
5
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Boss wants my team to work weekends
I am currently managing an in house team of developers, late in a sprint my boss requested that the team gets some work done by Monday. He mentioned that if the work cannot be done on the Friday, that ...
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Is it my duty to seek work to do or should my manager find tasks for me? [closed]
I have been working for three months as a programmer for a state bank.
At first thought it would be like the other jobs in my field, that there would be a manager or coordinator who would pass on ...
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3
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How to start a discussion in a startup in order to start using a more useful workflow tool
My boss, for the entire company's workflow, uses Google Sheets as a sort of feature-tracker/TODO-list. The company employs 7 people, aside from the CEO (my boss), who all work remotely. There are 2 ...
- 1,529
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4
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How to prevent my boss from forcefully making my team work overtime [duplicate]
My boss thinks we are not producing enough work quick enough, the reality is that all of my reporting indicates that we are. My cumulative flow diagram has shown a massive amount of backlog work done....
- 12k
126
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16
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Constantly pulled onto different tasks/projects, becoming exhausted
I'm a data-analyst for my company and I also perform full-stack development work.
I have a web-development project I've been working on for the last 8 months, and the primary focus from my boss and ...
- 2,139
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13
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How can I argue against the idea of working overtime to fix bugs (constantly)?
My boss likes our engineers to work overtime to fix bugs. One of his favorite arguments is that being a responsible engineer, when you know it is exactly your codes that cause the bugs how can you ...
- 3,610
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7
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How can I deal with a difficult developer that is holding back the project?
Our entire project is being held up because of one piece which is being handled by a single developer. When we did finally got the latest version of his code and started reviewing it, we found the ...
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10
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How do I get a management position without management experience?
My career goal always has been to get into a position with responsibility, either in the field of project or team management. I finished a business engineering masters degree recently and already have ...
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8
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How do I politely ask about the "urgency" of a work request - i.e. what date should it be completed by?
I work in an IT Help Desk role, and I often get requests that have vague "due-dates". So maybe a Project Manager wants a large database pull, which will take at least a week of my time.
But they don'...
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22
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8
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What if a boss requires supervision?
I work in a programming firm where the Projects manager always overrides set goals and milestones.
He is keen to undermine issues as "doable" more than recognizing that we set out to complete a plan ...
- 567
14
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4
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How can I manage technical workers when I have no experience in their position?
I've been asked to manage a team working on a project with which I am only marginally familiar. Getting more familiar with the project (desired outcome, expected timeline, etc) won't be a problem, but ...
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6
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Been asked to work significantly "below" my level for a sustained period -- can I ask company for measures to mitigate it e.g. learning time?
Background info:
This is a follow-up (but not a duplicate) to this question: Recruited for a senior SME technical role but assigned in the medium term to a much more junior project
Basically I was ...
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3
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What can I do when the answer to every question is "call a meeting"?
Background - I'm the technical lead on a software project. I came up from software engineering and I am responsible for technical interaction with the customer, other vendors, the software product ...
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5
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How to deal with unrealistic deadlines as an intern in a startup?
I'm working as a software engineer / web developer intern in a start-up. After discussing with colleagues, I just realized that I am given unrealistic deadlines by my intern supervisor who is also the ...
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3
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How should I tell my boss that I cannot meet the deadline?
I recently started working for a software company in another country. They flew me over to make progress with the project. I did some tasks there and then came back to my homeland to continue working ...
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3
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How to deal with customers who periodically change requirements?
When we are working on any project, all requirements are clear and documented and approved by the clients as well. As per we completed tasks our clients will look into them.
But one client changes ...
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2
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3k
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My colleague always ask for help. Should I help him always?
So my colleague always or at least most of the times ask for my help like he expects me to explain everything from scratch for every project. He wants to learn but doesn't quite catch up everything ...
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2
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How do I effectively handle this situation of no workflow?
I am a software developer who makes games. I really am at my wit's end with the game because of the chaotic workflow. The workflow is getting in the way of me getting anything done properly.
...
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121
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12
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Just found I was supposed to be working on a completely different project since 8 months ago. How can I handle this?
Kinda shocked at the moment. I’m a dev who works on a team of about 20 developers.
Apparently I (along with another developer) was assigned to complete a specification about 8 months ago. I learned ...
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15
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How to deal with an underperforming subordinate?
I'm a Software Developer with experience of more than 1.5 years. After being happy with my performance, the CTO of my company made me a team lead of 3 new employees (2 of them graduated recently).
...
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8
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I made a possible mistake on a live project at work, how to handle this mess?
I am a software developer that just started out in this company. It's been almost three weeks.
On Friday when I was about to leave work, a co-worker stopped me and told me to make changes to already ...
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9
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How to ask software team for basic yet important tasks without lowering morale?
So here's the deal - I have a software engineering team I'm the lead of that is remote (different country and timezone - take strong note of this. Too many responses I think are from people ...
- 3,511
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10
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Restricting outside activities of 'key' people in a project in order to reduce risk
Is it reasonable to restrict the activities of key people in a project outside of work (e.g. non-essential personal travel) as we head towards crunch time. The intent behind this being the minimizing ...
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How to politely decline unproductive jobs assigned by my manager?
I'm working on contract basis with an IT giant. Since I have good experience on the project which I'm working now my manager asks me to train the new recruits whenever they join. Giving knowledge ...
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4
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How to politely decline a job responsibility?
I'm looking for some advice on how to say no to a recent temporary role I've been forced into taking.
Recently, I was asked to take the position of 'lead' on a project management position which I ...
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6
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How do I navigate after an uncomfortable hiccup at work?
I came back after maternity leave and requested a flexible working arrangement: work 2-3 days in the office and a few at home. As a software developer this is a very reasonable schedule. The only ...
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5
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How to handle unrealistic expectations from management
I'm a software developer. For the better part of a year, my team has been working on a Big Project. Until recently, I had no involvement in the project, and so I only had a vague understanding of what ...
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2
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How to estimate tasks scope of which keeps sliding as I keep working on them?
Background:
I am working on a legacy code base. It is huge. I did not write it. I have done a lot of work on it, but more work remains. There are still unknown parts in there for me.
Scenario ...
- 1,481
6
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2
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How do I tell my boss to not intervene too much with technical decisions?
I am working in a tech start up, boss is a non technical CEO, lately we are working on trying to make the product scalable, without performance being affected. I think that he is trying to help from ...
- 12k
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8
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Excluded from extra work activities
Currently I am working in a small team of six developers.
Colleagues are often having short talks and flashbacks related to extra work activity (work related decisions they made while not at work), ...
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8
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Newly promoted software architect wants to do code reviews of code in progress
I work as a software engineer with a team of 12 others. We recently had a Sr dev get promoted to architect. He recently got a talking to by the software director for being unprofessional, aggressive, ...
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4
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How to react when a colleagues steals ideas for his own self-promotion? [duplicate]
The situation I'm takling about at my workplace is as such: I do have a decent knowledge of a software base and have many times proposed improvements to my manager. He declined them for time reasons.
...
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7
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How can I deal with a difficult client?
Currently working in a digital agency as a project manager. We currently have a client who is extremely challenging to work with for the following reasons:
Error prone. Often sends us content for the ...
- 12k
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2
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2k
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Been requested that we work overtime in order to get the project delivered, would that let the team down? [closed]
I'm involved in a project that has a long running history of failure.
Recently we've been approaching a deadline and subsequently been requested that we work overtime in order to get the project ...
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4
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Is it appropriate to give feedback about my lead to my manager? Or should it be done directly?
I work as a software engineer on a team and we have a tech lead who has been on the team for several years. For the past year, we recently have changed our technical stack (frameworks, etc) for our ...
- 3,770
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votes
2
answers
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How involved with project development should a programmer be?
Given that there is no hierarchy in my poject team, i.e. customer liason, project manager, architecture consultant, developers are just different roles. Everyone listens to everybody, and we move ...
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3
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3
answers
861
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What to do as an employee when I find possible problems in areas which are not my responsibility?
I am a programmer who has worked in an IT company for 1.5 years. During these 1.5 years I have only worked on one government project, which is among the worst in the 20 year history of the company. ...
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3
answers
6k
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How can I tell my boss I have not been successful in completing an assignment?
I received an assignment almost 2 weeks ago that I have not been able to complete, due to lack of support, both from inside and outside my company, despite reaching out for assistance both in and ...
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1
answer
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How to help with technical planning for a project I am not familiar with?
For context, I am one engineer in a group of engineers and we have an engineering manager and a project manager.
My team works on a product and for a few months one of our team members has been ...
- 3,770
2
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2
answers
4k
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How should I deal with constantly changing directions/tasks/requirements from boss?
We have a small team (9 total, 3 of whom are admin assist types and 2 of whom are part time specialists), and I'm in charge of this small but strong crew. The team is great, very professional, ...
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1
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How can I break a verbal commitment without burning bridges with my current employer?
I have verbally agreed to a 6-month project through an outsourcing agency because I could not find any other work. Now that I have agreed, I suddenly have numerous opportunities from outside the ...
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