I am a Project Manager

I am a Project Manager and I love my job… I am a project Manager and I love doing my work!

I am nothing more but a Project Manager amongst many others. I got married to my work (not job) after a great love story which started from early childhood (coming soon).

I started my career as a Software Developer in the late 90s, then held many positions in the field of Software Development, some were promotions and some were kind of additional assignments due to my performance. Among the positions I held are Developer, Team Leader, Project Manager, Project Leader, Senior Project Manager, Senior Project Leader, Program Manager, Business Analyst… though I was dreaming about becoming an Architect! But seriously the job I loved the most is Project Management.

The things I hated the most in my early years were politics and economics/finance, which both became the core of my daily work for some years now!

94% of my experience was built by working in Software Houses as a vendor/provider and the other 6% were built upon working in the IT department of a telecommunications firm. These percentages are based on the duration I spent in each side and not on the weight of the experience I gained.

P.S. I am not Project Management certified, ~~I don’t tweet and I don’t have a Facebook account~~!

Comments

Unknown said…

please tell us your twitter account

April 11, 2011 at 12:06 PM

Mena M. Eissa said…

Sure, but just read the blog again!

April 11, 2011 at 12:55 PM

Ahmed Fikry said…

You should write a book :))

September 4, 2014 at 4:18 PM

Mena M. Eissa said…

Thanks, I hope I can do it soon en sha2a Allah :)

September 7, 2014 at 2:04 PM

The Triangle of Tactics

Sometimes referred to as the Triangle of Horror… where the PM tries his best to maintain his balance while walking on the very thin project rope between this triangle and the Project Constraints Triangle (time, cost & scope). The triangle sides represent: The Team, The Client and The Management Every side of this triangle is obsessed by the sole idea that the other two sides want him dead, i.e. the team thinks that the client and the top management want him dead and vice versa. Usually a good PM gets lost while trying to maintain this triangle in good shape to keep all parties satisfied and happy while making them think they are his first and only priority to get out what is needed from them for the sake of the project. From my perspective, this is a much harder balance to keep rather than maintaining and managing the Project Constraints Triangle… It highly depends on people, their culture, maturity level, and on the PM’s ability to understand this and deal with it in a ...

RPM Technique

I once used a very weird technique with my team to get things done in a short duration in a project that was very far away from being on schedule… For a while I’ve been asking my team for their progress, following up heavily and on daily basis, staying late with them in the office and sometimes staying till the next morning (online from home), trying to dig deeper by developing and testing with them…. And still we were very late in achieving any of our internal milestones… By time, I was empathizing them and I was trying my best to reduce the effect of the pressure under which they were put for a long time. We started a weekly game competition with some funny yet work-related rules, amongst which was “ each member in a sub-team should finish his work before the day of the competition ”… it went fine for about 3 weeks, then the situation became worse… and we all stopped participating in the competition… I then tried another technique… I started buying them either lunch or dinner in ...

The Bus Driver

They took some time to plan for the trip… They drew the road map, bought some food and beverages… and got equipped with the necessary tools… They were going to travel through the woods to draw the magnificent scenes which were observed by their neighbors early this year… This wasn’t their first trip together as a team, though they were all excited… The bus driver was in charge for making the big decision in the trip while taking care of the travellers’ team while of course driving the bus and communicating daily with his supervisor in the station. The map was clear, the weather was very well studied, though the bus driver expected to pass by some pitfalls in the road as there were some reparation in the way. He reported this to his supervisor and requested to take some more supplies just in case they have to camp one or two days more, but the supervisor refused “ the trip has to be completed on time and the painting should be ready for sale by the end of the week ” Anyways, ...

A Project Manager's Diary

Search This Blog