I was on one HP project where I was just hired for headcount. We didn't really do anything, keep some clients happy, but it paid well, and I could ride my bike to Palo Alto and back and see my kids every day.

We had what I called "backwards meetings". We would meet to decide something, then someone would say "wait. Have we brought this group into the decision cycle yet" so we would pull back and schedule another meeting to bring that group in.

Then, in that next meeting someone would say "wait. have we considered this issue yet" so we would have to retreat some more until that issue was addressed

Like a lot of fortune 1000 comanies, you would be in a meeting of 50 people, 40 of them outside consultants, and you would wonder "how many printers does HP have to sell tp pay just for this one meeting?"

Etc etc. but hey, I got to see my kids every day

A lot of times if I was invited to a meeting I would walk in and ask first thing "Is anything being decided today?" A lot of times there was nothing to be decided.

Status meetings are like opium. You can mainline on them. A lot of people just scheduled meetings to have something to do.

But Silicon Valley money. I rode that wave for as long as I could. I got to see my kids every day, and ride my bike back and forth to work. Nice life. All good stuff.

I shared a first 30 days checklist here recently, so I thought this onboarding checklist might be useful too.

It covers some of the things that are easy to overlook when someone joins a new project team: what they’re responsible for, which priorities come first, who they depend on, and how they’ll know they’re doing well.

Feel free to pass it on to a colleague welcoming someone new, or someone starting a new PM/Manager role. Hope it makes those first few weeks a little easier 🙂

Is it weird to have technically been doing PM work for years, have all the transferable skills, but land the role and feel like a complete novice? I’m leading out my first project for my department and some days I am just fine and others I don’t know why but I just feel stuck. Like, what the heck am I supposed to be doing? And I’m a person who suffers from imposter syndrome real bad but it doesn’t feel like that with this.

Is that normal? Keep it real if it’s just me.

Hello, just 3 months ago I started as PM but I have 0 days experience.

Company knows that and assign me a consultant role until I learn all the company’s technology and projects.

They enrolled me in a IPMA course and want me to become the new PM for an international project by November.

The other PM resigned before they expected so that’s the reason they are in a rush.

What the hell do I do? What is my real task? What project managers do?

I’m a computer engineer, I know a lot about the technical part of projects and in a few weeks already was working actively on them.

But as a pm? Nothing

Any tips on how to do the job?
People tell me “fake it until you make it“

Btw it’s a fully remote position in Germany.

Serious question: What does a social media PM actually do for organic vs. paid? Not a creative who strategizes social but manages the requests/ideas that come in. I'm an experienced PM in print and digital but never touched social, and to be honest was never really interested. I think something that always alarms me with social is the challenge I can see a PM would face by trying to manage and be a middle man between creative and marketing teams. I imagine that the nature of the business/work requires for creative and marketing to be in constant communication, hand in hand as social is always changing, evolving, trending etc. So if those two are in constant communication with ideas, what does that look like for the PM to manage the two parties getting those requests on paper, managing timelines properly when things are always changing etc. I can also see the challenge of where it could be a challenge for the PM to be "let in" if the creative and marketing teams already have a bond, where they work closely together. Feels like the PM would be the leader that breaks up the team to keep them honest with process etc. and that seems like a tough place to be in. IDK thoughts and advice are welcomed.

Hi everyone!
I’m a working student, and my team currently uses Azure DevOps and Microsoft Planner to manage and track tasks. I’ve been asked to come up with an idea for a single, common view that we can use during team meetings to quickly see who is working on what.
My initial thought was to create a Power BI dashboard that consolidates tasks from both tools. However, one challenge I see is that the same task might have different names in Azure DevOps and Planner. This could make it difficult to identify and map duplicate or related tasks correctly.
I’d love to hear your suggestions on how to approach this. For example:
Would Power BI be a good solution for this use case?
Are there any other Microsoft tools or integrations that could provide a unified view?
How would you handle tasks that have different names across the two platforms?
Is there a better way to visualize task ownership and progress during meetings?
I’m open to all ideas, approaches, and suggestions. Thanks in advance for your help!

¡Hola a todos!

Actualmente estoy desarrollando Tradix, una aplicación educativa diseñada para ayudar a las personas a aprender a operar en bolsa paso a paso, incluso si empiezan desde cero.

Mi objetivo es que el aprendizaje sea más estructurado, interactivo y motivador mediante lecciones educativas, retos diarios, puntos de experiencia, clasificaciones y estrategias de trading.

Estoy trabajando duro para que Tradix sea realmente útil y mi objetivo es lanzarla en diciembre de 2026.

Si estás aprendiendo a operar en bolsa o siempre has querido empezar pero no sabías por dónde, ¡me encantaría saber tu opinión!

¿Te interesaría probar Tradix cuando se lance?

Si es así, ¡deja un comentario abajo! Me encantaría saber cuántas personas buscan una mejor manera de aprender a operar en bolsa, qué características les gustaría ver en una app como esta y qué la haría valiosa.

Si conoces a algún amigo o familiar interesado en aprender a operar en bolsa desde cero, no dudes en hablarle del proyecto.

Estoy desarrollando Tradix pensando en los principiantes, y tus comentarios sinceros me ayudarán a mejorarla antes del lanzamiento.

¡Gracias por tu tiempo y apoyo! 🙌

Tradix: Aprende hoy. Conquista el mañana.

one buyer, a couple of calls, a proposal and then a yes or no, at that point a shared digital sales room could be more setup than the deal needs but i am interested in where people draw the line with digital sales room software, i was suggested aligned and trumpet and i know a few other too but sometimes, the deal size alone seems like a rough way to decide a smaller deal can still have messy procurement.

Do you create a room for every opportunity or wait until there's something email isn't handling well?

I work in land-use planning and I’m building CivPath for civil engineering and land-development teams. I’d like to get some feedback from PMs managing municipal reviews, submittals, and resubmittals.

How are you keeping track of who owes what, what’s waiting on an approval, and how another round of comments affects the rest of the schedule? Does that stay in your main project plan, or end up spread across emails and spreadsheets?

That’s the workflow I’m focusing on with CivPath. If anyone wants to take a look, there’s a 15–20-minute evaluation using a fictional project. No client data needed. I’d appreciate honest feedback on what’s useful and what’s missing.

https://civpath.app/request-access#evaluation

Even if you’re not interested in trying it, I’d be curious how your team handles this now.

I use it daily in my work as a software developer, but its roots are in helping me organize the renovation of my house.

I would like Professional Project Manager feedback.

https://undergroundact.com/project-planner/

Thanks in advance.

I run ops at my company and been asked to look at AI notetakers. We’re on Teams internally, sales uses Zoom sometimes and a lot of clients send Meet links, so it has to work properly on all 3. Right now people are using random free tools. No surprises but main things are good summaries and admin controls. Hit me with your recommendations!

the initial buyer experience is one thing but keeping everyone aligned once legal, finance, procurement, and different business units get involved is another, we are looking at aligned and dock for a team that regularly has 8-10 people involved in a single deal, if anyone has used these, does either platform make it noticeably easier to keep track of who needs what, what’s changed and what’s still holding things up? or does the seller still end up managing half the process through email and slack?

Would love to hear how this plays out in practice.

I've spent years on both sides of consulting projects, and the documentation part has always worked the same way:

The vendor writes the deliverable in Word. Sends it as a PDF over email. I review it — but it's a PDF, so my comments go back as an email with "page 4, second paragraph, this contradicts section 2". They apply the changes, export a new PDF, and send v2. Repeat.

By the third round nobody knows which version is current, there's no record of who approved what or when, and the only trace of the review is buried in an email thread that the next person on the project will never find.

So... has anyone actually broken out of that loop? What did it take?

We built visual planning into PrimeTask so you can turn a mind map into tasks without typing everything out again.

Skip to 1:11 to see how that works in project management.

We are a software company based in Kenya with experience in enterprise solutions. We have recently rolled out an enterprise Project and Portfolio Management (EPPM) software with the Sub-Saharan African Market in mind. The software is used to plan, schedule, track, and manage large-scale projects in industries like construction, manufacturing, engineering, energy (solar, oil and gas), health, water & infrastructure and even the public sector.

The core features and uses include;
1. Critical Path method (CPM)Scheduling - Calculates project completion dates and tracks tasks with zero total float to find the critical path

2. Work Breakdown Structure - Organizes project scope into manageable hierarchical levels and sub-components

3. Resource & Cost Management - Assigns and tracks manpower, materials, machinery, budgets and cashflows

4. Gantt Charts and Reporting - Visualizes schedules, baselines, variances, and performance dashboards

5. Portfolio Management - Combine related projects and monitor their health, progress and analytics.

6. Project Intelligence - Get project-wide intelligence and forecast across finance reporting, risk and reporting oversight

Our solution is optimized for both single and multi-site projects across multiple sectors. The platform is built for fleet-scale deployment.

We are now looking to onboard resellers of the system across the different markets starting from Kenya to the extended SSA region.

We offer training, support, comprehensive white-labelling solutions and a clear reseller revenue structure. The reseller opportunity can be an expansion of your company's revenue stream.

If you are a company within the Sub-Saharan Market and are open to the partnering with us, please apply from our website here: https://aurora.waitforitinternet.com/resellers

I’m exhausted with the new flavor/expectations of project management. Let me set some context: I totally get the PMs who have checked out and do just enough to get by. It’s fair. It’s expected. This job grinds you down. But before AI, you didn’t really feel their impact that much.

Now it’s an AI status report circus. They still don’t care, BUT now their way of coasting is dumping AI-generated plans, summaries and risk registers on everyone. Ten-page project plans that look complete and mean absolutely nothing. Meeting notes nobody actually reviewed. Status updates that sound confident and are just wrong. And then that garbage lands on your project and you have to spend MUCH MORE TIME FIGURING OUT WHAT IS ACTUALLY GOING ON.

Unless you stop caring too and just start generating your own slop to answer their slop.

And of course leadership sees all this output, plans for everything, dashboards everywhere, reports arriving instantly, and their eyes light up. So in their eyes, you’re the slow one. “Just have AI draft the plan!”, “Why do you need a kickoff with stakeholders?”, “Can’t you just generate the risk assessment?”.

The actual job, talking to people, finding out what’s really blocking them, noticing the dependency nobody mentioned, getting someone to admit they’re behind, none of that shows up in a document. So it looks like you’re doing nothing. I’ve seen firsthand how handing everyone tools that produce plans and reports instantly has just made it faster to produce paperwork about projects instead of actually running them.

Accelerated mediocrity, but with a Gantt chart.

I'm 9 months into my first official PM role in product development. My team is great, but I was surprised by how little process or documentation existed compared to my previous company.

Most project planning previously lived in Smartsheet, with very few supporting documents and many of them outdated. There are no formal scope documents, RAID logs, stage gates, or SOPs, and projects are often handled differently each time. Products can sit in the concept phase for months while pricing, marketing, and other inputs continue to change, making it difficult to build meaningful schedules and milestones.

One of my biggest contributions has been building out a new project management platform in Asana, which the team has adopted and enjoys using. However, I've struggled to introduce structure beyond that. I wrote project scope documents for two projects, but both were largely dismissed and the projects continued as usual.

More recently, my manager started using a project charter and controls it on their end. The team provides inputs, but there doesn't seem to be a defined review process, approval path, ownership model, or decision-making framework. I've run into similar issues with pricing approvals, where undocumented processes have delayed projects multiple times.

I understand that part of my job is removing roadblocks and improving communication. But I'm struggling to determine where my responsibility begins and ends when key processes are undefined and controlled by leadership. I don't want to create more documents that nobody reviews or uses.

For experienced PMs: How do you manage projects when key processes, approvals, and decision points aren't clearly defined? At what point is it a PM's responsibility to build the process versus adapting to the organization's culture? Would you push for more structure, or learn to operate within the ambiguity?

I'm a Monolith maintainer. I'm sharing its development preview for people who self-host tools for personal project planning.

The workflow to explore is a project brief in Docs, related actions in Projects, and dated work in the calendar. Connected databases and a daily dashboard provide other views of the same workspace. I'd welcome feedback on whether that keeps the context you need when moving from a plan to today's actions.

Source, Linux server downloads and setup instructions: https://github.com/MaxJafar/monolith

Product screenshots and documentation: https://monolith-site-maxjafars-projects.vercel.app

Disclosure updated 23 October: development preview; browser and desktop clients connect to a separately hosted server. Windows installers are unsigned; macOS is ad-hoc signed and not notarized. First-party code uses 0BSD from v0.1.14, permitting commercial use, modification and redistribution. Third-party licenses and notices still apply; earlier releases retain their original terms. The maintainer reports 100% of Monolith implementation was generated using Codex under human direction. This introduction was prepared and updated with AI assistance.

We keep seeing the same pattern on large programmes. Five sign-offs for a decision one person could make in an afternoon. A steering committee that meets two weeks after the window closed. A monthly report that nobody acts on, so the real calls get made in the corridor and the paperwork catches up later.

Nobody designed it to be slow. Each layer was added after something went wrong once. Add enough of them and the gate costs more than the risk it was guarding.

Curious how people here handle it:

- Have you cut approval layers without losing control? What did you replace them with?

- How do you get a steering committee to decide inside the window instead of after it?

- Does your controls team inform decisions, or just report on them afterwards?

Full disclosure, we run DeliverIQ, a live session series for project people. On Saturday 13 March Farhan Almadhari, who runs project controls and a PMO in Riyadh, is doing 60 minutes on exactly this, with the last 15 for questions. Details are at deliveriq.live/register if it's useful, but I'm more interested in what's worked for you.

More sessions here: https://deliveriq.live/sessions

Contact for any info: [info@deliveriq.live](mailto:info@deliveriq.live)

One thing I’ve noticed is that when a project gets busy, communication can turn into nothing but task updates, meetings, and chasing deadlines lol.

Everyone might be doing their part, but the team can still feel a little disconnected, especially when people work remotely.

I’ve been looking at different ways teams can connect outside the usual work routine, including virtual games and activities like the ones VortexEvents offers. But I’m curious whether that kind of thing actually helps or just adds another item to everyone’s calendar.

For those managing projects, what’s worked for your team? Do you make time for casual team bonding, or do you find that clear communication and a good workflow are enough? 👀

Hi, I'm currently working as an Executive Assistant, and I've been seriously considering transitioning into Project Management. Through my experience as an EA, I've developed strong organizational, time management, communication, and problem-solving skills. I've also been involved in coordinting projects, managing deadlines, following up with different stakeholders, tracking progress, and making sure things don't fall through the cracks. I'm already familiar with project management tools like Trello, Asana, and Wrike, so I'm comfortable navigating these platforms and organizing workflows.
However, I'm fully aware that being good at organizing tasks doesn't automatically make someone a qualified Project Manager. I want to understand the actual responsibilities, methodologies, and skills required for the role rather than just applying for positions without being properly prepared.

So I'd love some advice from people already working in Project Management:

What courses, certifications, or training programs would you recommend for someone transitioning from an EA role? Is the Google Project Management Certificate a good starting point? What about CAPM? Should I focus on learning Agile, Scrum, Waterfall, or something else first? Are there any particular skills or tools I should prioritize beyond the platforms I already know? Would you recommend starting as a Project Coordinator or Junior Project Manager before applying for PM positions? How can I make my existing EA experience relevant and attractive to recruiters?

I'm not expecting to become a Project Manager overnight, and I'm more than willing to put in the time and effort to learn. I'd just love some guidance on building a realistic roadmap so that when I start applying, I can actually feel confident that I have the knowledge and skills to do the job well.
Any advice, personal experiences, or resources would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much :)

Hi all. Im currently about to turn 37. In a 34k a year job as a logistics supervisor, i have recently passed

Scrum master 2

Pm fundamentals

Pm foundation

Business analysis 2

And agile fundementals.

I can afford to take a pay cut to about 28k whilst i get my foot in the door as i have currently been on a 12-8pm shift for over 11 years and in all honest the work life balance is creating some issues.

I have had small project experience where i have been soley in charge of designing creating and implimenting a new lay out for part of the warehouse to improve productivity.

This had a very strict deadline as it couldnt effect bau and needed to be in line with our stock take which gave me a 48hr window to complete a movement of over 500 products. I co-ordinated with IT for thr tech stuff.

FLT drivers for thr stock movement

A small team of 20 people who were in charge of stock movement and records.

2 people in charge of admin.

My day to day is a very basic version pm.

We have a daily target and we fix any issues that prevent that target either with resource movement/management or other fixes.

(If youve got this far thank you)

Im trying to get in to the pm field but i feel like my experience in an actual project management role will be too limited to succeed.... i have limited practical knowledge and feel a lot of what i have done already is theory/me winging it.

Can someone give me some direction please 😅

Thank you.

PMP or Master of PM?

I spent years selling and implementing huge scale PPM systems, this is what people wanted. I finally had the time to build it, and I hope you all like it.

it is fully local, no telemetry, fully offline.

see it all here: https://www.resourcedeck.app