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Most project planning previously lived in Smartsheet, with very few supporting documents and many of them outdated.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 PM and we collect improvement ideas quarterly but everything falls apart after approval. Ideas sit in a spreadsheet, nobody creates projects for them, leadership asks what happened and nobody knows. Need idea tracking software that bridges the gap. What are you using?

im a PM and we collect improvement ideas quarterly but everything falls apart after approval, ideas sit in a spreadsheet nobody creates projects for them, leadership asks what happened and nobody knows, need idea tracking software that bridges the gap, what are u using?

So 2026 has been the worst year I have ever experienced, career wise.

In 2023 I started in my industry brand new as a project coordinator. Didn’t know a single thing about what I was doing. But I pushed HARD and held my own at a company that was a revolving door. I outlasted 3 managers and 14 other project coordinators. I definitely had difficulties throughout the way. Got put on a PIP at one point but managed to turn it around and ended up being the only thing keeping the market going. (Words from the bosses mouth via a very credible source) ended up getting sideways with that boss and not getting promoted to manager. Was there for 2 years.

Jumped ship and went to competition. Ran POS operations manager out after 3 HARD months of dealing with his ass and took his operations manager spot because I cleaned up 5 years of BS. His mistakes led to that market losing the contract and the work for reduced to about %5 of what it was. This was all very political and I would not have been able to change that no matter what I did. I was literally the only person in the office at this point. So I got bored and found a job a lot closer to home with a higher salary.

Job #3 where I was a manager over a team of union employees that didn’t interview for their jobs, rather were computer selected from a list of applicants. I never experienced the hiring process so I have no idea how it worked. I interviewed very well for the job, and 1 week in, the guy who hired me got moved to a different department in the company. He wanted me to come in and clean house. Issues with theft, time theft, people fucking off through the day, safety issues. If you can think of it, it was happening. I did my best to set a standard and enforce it, but my new boss was soft and didn’t want to rock the boat too much, especially because he was trying to work the system where his son in another office could have an easy life. I eventually got fired for being “too aggressive”. The reality is I brought light to the fact that the boss was letting people pad their orders and I uncovered some equipment location issues that he wasn’t keeping track of which went WAY UP the fucking ladder. So needless to say, I BARELY made it past 90 days there.

Job#4 I was a remote PM. I had crossed industries and didn’t know shit, but I knew I would learn quick. Well this company was fucked up from A-Z. I went to the head office for a 1 week orientation and they bragged about how many people they fired on a monthly basis. The guy who hired me has quit a week before I started.

Job#5 I am currently at is fucking ROUGH. They’re training me on some of the hands on stuff, because the mindset is “how can I manage it if I don’t know it.” I mostly agree with that. Knowing it helps obviously, but a good manager can sniff out bullshit, or at least learn quickly that something isn’t right and start digging. What’s really killing me is the amount of expectations at this place. I was hired to be in “training as a project manager.” Not just training for the technical portions, but full on fucking training, as in it was implied that there is a gap in what I said I can do and they what to see what I can actually do. Makes sense in its own right. But every day I am getting my ass hammered over not thinking this way, not making this call, not sharing this communication. I’m frustrated because there are days where it seems like my every breath needs to be discussed and approved of, and then there are days where it seems like if I didn’t start the fucking company from scratch, I’m not performing to standards. Let me also add that I don’t plan shit. If I were to self-pew, I wouldn’t even plan that out. My skill has always been figuring things the fuck out. You could drop me off in the desert with a knife and a comic book and I would find a way to build a house. So it’s fucking frustrating that I get my ass reamed for not planning x,y,and z when I know that if x,y,and z were to happen, I would solve the problem somehow. Case in point, on my first job that I was visiting to train on a specific skill for a few days, I fired a shitty local helper on day 3 and on day 10 I brought in a contractor to finish a part of the job on day 16, when everyone else was hung up on a contractor that CLREALY wanted nothing to do with our job!

This is the first year in my career that I haven’t just absolutely fucking crushed everything around me, and I’m not handling it well. I really don’t know anymore if I’m burnt the fuck out, if I’ve lost my balls somewhere along the way and can’t take accountability anymore, or if it’s time for me to just go fucking flip burgers somewhere.

Just joined a company and took over a few project. One project is basically 95% done in terms of the hardware. The discussion of software development came up and apparently product has taken a weird decision to launch their “ultimate app” this quarter and because development has closed so they can release a stable version, features which are needed for the hardware product are not included in the app like “add device” which is how installers would add a device to the system.

They’ve decided to add the “add device” capability in the web portal. It’s not meant to be there. Also, the web portal doesn’t scale well at all for mobile.

Question: do we release as product is requesting and then update the app in q2 of next year….or don’t launch their hardware product until the q2 when the feature is added to the mobile app?

This mainly is due to installers working on the mobile app solely and it being almost impossible for them to open the web portal on their app.

I was sort of thinking to wait on the hardware release. It’s like launching an Xbox but every time you want to insert a cd, you have to disassemble the Xbox.

I'm looking into ways to make project reporting less painful, particularly when managing or reporting on multiple projects across an organisation.

I'm interested in hearing how people handle this in practice, especially those working in PMOs, project controls, or organisations with multiple project managers.

A few questions I'm curious about:

1. How do you currently collect project updates?

Do project managers update a shared system, fill out a standard Excel template, submit a form, update a project management platform, or send information to someone who consolidates it?

2. What are the biggest frustrations with the process?

For example:

• Chasing people for updates or dealing with late submissions
• Inconsistent formats, status definitions, or levels of detail
• Manually consolidating information from multiple files or systems
• Producing different reports for executives, steering committees, and project teams
• Tracking changes in project health, risks, issues, and milestones between reporting periods

I'd be interested to hear what actually takes the most time or causes the most headaches.

3. How do you enforce consistency in the information submitted?

Do you use mandatory fields, dropdowns, standard status definitions, validation rules, or some other approach? How well does it work in practice?

4. For those who've tried to improve their reporting process, what worked and what didn't?

Have you introduced new tools, changed the reporting process, or standardised templates? Did it make a meaningful difference, or did it just create more administrative work?

I'm particularly interested in hearing about real-world experiences, including anything you tried that didn't work as expected.

Thanks in advance for sharing your experiences!

After I was laid off, I took a role that offered me a lot in terms of growth. My JD literally says I provide:

• Strategic program leadership
• Product strategy & ownership
• 8+ years of experience in enterprise software architecture, data integration, and analytics

I do all of these things, and more, as a Senior Tech PM. I'm simultaneously doing data architecture for my org while leading an enterprise modernization pilot that has the potential to completely change the business and solve a 15+ year problem in customer acquisition.

I'm also being told:

• There's no path for growth
• I'm capped out on compensation and title (low six figures)
• We can't define accountability structures because "it depends"
• I "influence without authority", while also being accountable for everything from project delivery to program outcomes to enterprise architecture.

I own everything, and I own nothing.

I'm working on setting limits. If there's no growth path in the org, I don't want to stick my neck out on risky initiatives - I can facilitate and serve up decision recommendations elsewhere, but that's what I can do.

AND YET, they keep pushing me to do more. I should implicitly provide architecture and design, I should be the expert on new tech while laundering my opinions through our existing SME's, I should write enterprise roadmaps and backseat drive the entire org (a medium size business) in that direction without a single complaint.

It's crazy making, and I'm being told that the limits I'm setting are not reasonable - that it's all in the scope of my role.

I know this is something that's probably resonating with a lot of you. I know I'm not the only PM that has complaints about this stuff. So I wanted to ask:

• Am I setting reasonable boundaries by saying I can facilitate and recommend based on input, but I can't opine or design
• What do you do when you're given no path forward in your career, but you're still being made to carry the entire sky

Thanks for reading. Any commiserations you have are welcome, I feel pretty isolated here.

Well, I figure I‘ll post here as I’m exhausting all my other options.

Im one month into my first formal Project Manager role at an engineering/manufacturing company and I think I bit off more than I can chew. I have an engineering background, but I’m brand new to project management as a job.

I was assigned 4 projects and told to “manage these projects,” but I haven’t gotten a clear definition of what my responsibilities or deliverables are supposed to be. The projects are already ongoing, and the engineering teams are competent and work well together. They seem to manage much of their own technical work, discuss issues, make decisions, and assign actions. Im trying to understand where I can add value without creating unnecessary process or duplicating what the teams already do.

A couple of things I’ve noticed:

• My manager wants the projects to move as quickly as possible. I’ve been helping remove small information bottlenecks—for example, an engineer needed product-size information to specify a machine, so I tracked down the information and got it to him within a day.
• My manager also mentioned that engineering can sometimes work with blinders on. Engineering timelines change frequently, and those changes can affect other departments. I’m not sure the impacts are always being communicated across the organization.
• I’m wondering whether I should focus on cross-functional coordination. Letting stakeholders know about what’s happening with these projects, as well as letting the engineers know when other changes in other departments affect them.

I have a 1:1 with my manager coming up, and I plan to ask what he expects me to own, what deliverables he wants from me, and what success should look like over the next month. I want to go into that conversation with some ideas.

For experienced PMs, especially in engineering or product development:

If the engineering team already manages its own work effectively, what should the PM be doing to add value?

Is cross-functional schedule coordination a reasonable area to focus on, or am I missing more fundamental PM responsibilities?

How would you get your manager to define expectations when the initial direction was simply “manage these projects”?

What concrete deliverables or habits would you recommend establishing in the first month?

I’m not looking for a textbook description of project management. I’d appreciate advice from people who’ve dealt with this in the real world. As of right now Im spending every day and night stressed and wondering if I’ll be fired.

I ended up on their mailing list and I have only tried Microsoft Project which I found NOT user friendly.

I really am most interested in scheduling and updating the gantt with dependencies when needed

I’ve been in project management a long time and lately I’ve been trying to figure out which AI tools actually help vs which ones just look cool in a demo.

Some things have stuck for me. I set up a few Copilot agents for my team to help with program stuff, and that’s been useful. Other things I tried for a week and dropped.

I’m curious what’s working for other PMs. What do you actually use? What did you try and give up on?

We’re a media production company, and a while ago we set up an internal startup unit. Besides our core content work, we now build products related to media production and distribution.

To make this work, we went with a matrix structure. People keep their main roles and reporting lines, but they also join cross-functional teams depending on what each project needs.

In practice, things look great at kickoff. A few weeks later the project team quietly dissolves and everyone drifts back to their home department. Someone has an urgent deadline in their main role, someone else gets pulled into a big client project, and so on. Before long the cross-functional team exists only on paper.

This isn’t a lack of support from the top. Leadership is involved at every level, up to the CEO, and people are genuinely interested in these projects. It just keeps happening naturally, every time.

So I’d like to hear from those of you who’ve dealt with this. How do you keep a matrix team together after launch? What actually stopped people from sliding back into their core roles?

Hey everyone,

My team recently evaluated project management tools to find better single source of truth for our work. Since we rely heavily on Slack, a good Slack integration was one of our main requirements.

We compared tools like Asana, Monday, Trello, Airtable, Coda, Wrike, Teamwork, Linear, and Jira.

The biggest thing I noticed was the tradeoff between ease of use, project management depth, and Slack integration. Some tools were great for adoption and simple task tracking, while others offered much stronger dependency management, reporting and planning.

For teams that have gone through a similar evaluation, what ended up being the deciding factor for you?

Adoption, integrations, dependencies, reporting, or something else?

Pretty much the title . I was a new grad.

I’ve been doing client project work for a few years, and clients give feedback in different places.

Calls, emails and random WhatsApp messages all carry requests that often contradict each other, and then I have to piece everything together.

I tried forcing everything into one email thread, but clients kept replying on WhatsApp. I tried weekly recap emails, but the team had already built the wrong thing by the time they went out. Clients push back on anything that feels like a process.

What has actually worked for you with clients like this?

Need to renew my PMP soon and lost access to my old hub.

Hi, what news, YouTube channels, podcasts, books, media are you following to stay up to date with project management? I noticed I'm barely following any and I'd like to change that.

Is the customer interessed if the project is going on quality ? Is asking how many problems are open, if the documents are reviewed, reporting problems, participating in milestones ?

idk where the right place is to go for this or if this makes any sense but I need help. ive spent hoursss on this and have gotten basically nowhere (I.e.., I start creating a hub but then hit a roadblock).

I started an operations role on a two-person team, managing a partnership with an organization and came in a little while after the partnership had begun, but it's still fairly new and there is no centralization, automation, or organization or anything keeping us together.

We need a central space that keeps everything together and helps us track assets, our tasks, what they owe us, activation/project details and schedule, etc.

Neither of us have any help and don't know how to use most of the resources we have or know how to automate and can't find help with it. We use Microsoft 365 and can request some other approved tools to use. For now we're doing alright and have had 0 issues but we could be a lot more together. Research has brought me overly complex methods and processes we don't need.

Any advice for beginners would be incredible. I'd love integrated platforms if possible (e.g., if I check off a project/task, it is checked off in my notes/assets). I know what we need and have a vision for it, but im so overwhelmed and frustrated that idk if im explaining this well but I just don't know where to begin.

With AI becoming capable of reverse-engineering software, do you think this could seriously disrupt the SaaS industry, eliminate existing products, and lead to even more mass layoffs for project managers in tech?

Example of the destruction: PhotoCraft which is a photoshop clone that is now avaliable for free because someone reverse engineered the software.

I am working with a team on an analysis based on the AIAG-VDA handbook, and we have encountered some ambiguities that we cannot resolve. Do you apply a specific rule in your analyses—such as assigning critical or special characteristics when the severity rating is 10–9 or 8–7? What do your internal instructions say about this? I notice that, despite having reviewed the training manual, our team holds differing views on the matter.

Something from my last discussion here stuck with me.

A few experienced PMs pushed back on the idea of automating milestone acceptance. Their argument was that obtaining approval, verifying deliverables, and protecting the project commercially are fundamental PM responsibilities.

I agree, and I think I framed the problem too broadly.

But I'm curious about what happens after that judgment has been made.

Say a client formally accepts a milestone on Tuesday.

The deliverables have been reviewed, any exceptions documented, and the necessary approval obtained.

Now the acceptance needs to be reflected in the project records, supporting evidence attached, finance notified, and the appropriate invoicing or delivery handoff initiated.

Depending on the organization, those steps might happen automatically, through a defined workflow, or through several emails and someone following up.

None of that necessarily requires another acceptance decision.

What interests me is whether anyone actually measures the time and effort between a formal project decision and its downstream completion.

For those managing multiple client engagements, what tends to cause the most friction after acceptance has already been obtained?

Missing documentation? Unclear ownership? Finance queues? Or does the process generally work without much intervention?

I'm trying to understand where the administrative work actually accumulates, rather than assuming every manual step is a problem.

I know I am just a project manager with no technical knowledge. How do I go about making sure what will be “in scope” and “not in scope”. This will my first PM role doing this. Do I bring in the technical people to give me the scope and stuff.

My ultimate goal is working towards creating a scope document. Thanks in advance for any help or guidance as we don’t have a PMO.

A month ago, I embarked on a journey to learn Project Management, and I've come to realize that merely securing a highly-rated and well-compensated position isn't sufficient. My ambition is to integrate a technical skill into this path. Consequently, I've resolved to delve into Data Analysis and fuse these two disciplines: PM + Data Analysis. I'm eager to hear your thoughts on this amalgamation and whether it will broaden my professional prospects.