It’s a Tough Job but Someone’s Gotta Do It, Pt. III. How Jama Helps Project Managers
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An unfair truth: Project Managers are expected to be janitors.
When there’s a mess, the PM must finagle and finesse the problematic actions, unexpected errors and sidetracked key players back into one clean and streamlined product-building machine. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: No other team member has as much of an across-the-board influence on a project’s outcome.
Maintaining orderly processes through each iteration, spec and requirements change is often a messy process of sprint, slow down, stall and re-start. And that’s a frustrating diversion of resources when your work entails the following:
Tall tasks:
- Negotiating and setting (and re-setting) expectations among stakeholders and team members, regulating processes, tracking decisions and enforcing accountability as projects evolve.
Pressure points:
- Gathering status information from team members.
- Summarizing information for team and program leaders, VPs of Product, VPs of Sales.
- Identifying schedule, scope and functionality problems before they become critical.
- Feeling confident that teams will deliver to expectations.
- Spending too much time resolving conflict and performance issues.
Burning desires:
- To know, to the minute, how the project and the people involved are tracking to the plan. To see potential snags in scope or time so that you can resolve them, or send up flares right away. To answer the questions, “What’s everyone doing now?” and “What should they be doing next?”
With Jama, Project Managers can turn agonizing “$64,000 Question” episodes into undaunted “Six Million Dollar Man” epics.
How so? You’re able to:
- Capture and view all information related to projects in one location.
- Monitor changes to requirements, track changes across different teams and notify everyone who is impacted.
- Understand who is working on what and when it’s due to be completed.
- Communicate easily with all involved teams to solicit clarification, approvals, feedback and decisions, regardless of location or time zone.
- Communicate easily with the entire project team to get clarification and decisions made, regardless of location.
Read Remove Barriers, Decide Faster & Increase ROI and learn how Jama helps you keep collaborators, stakeholders, resources, time, scope and expectations all in alignment, and always in check.
Check out other ways Jama helps business and engineering teams get and stay aligned:
How Jama Helps Systems Engineers
How Jama Helps Business Analysts
How Jama Helps Product Managers
Marc Oppy writes about requirements management, requirements traceability, developing safety-critical system and software requirements, systems engineering, and tips on how to write better requirements.
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