A Day in the life of an Agile Project Manager
A Day in the life of an Agile Project Manager
This is a sample Calendar of an Agile Project Manager
A Project manager has to be both disciplined and flexible. Disciplined to be able to stay organized and productive, Flexible to able to accommodate emergencies during your day. Your ability to change priorities and adapt to new situations will make you a successful PM. Below is an example of my day as a Project Manager
| Time | Category | Items Description | Required Action | Events | Actors/Action | Comments at the end of the day |
| 7:45-8 | Morning Routine | Check my Calendar to see all the meetings I have | Your morning routine is very important. Never start your day without checking your email and checking your project so that you can have an idea of what is going on. Apply 2 mins role on email. Only answer them in the morning when they can take 2 mins or less, if not plan to answer them later in the day. Chat is your best communication tool for quick answers. It could be on Microsoft team, Slack or Google Hangout | Emergency meeting with the server Team | Team A Developer and Server Team | Issue resolved |
| Check My emails and take note of any issues or questions I need to address during the Daily Scrum . If a response will take 2 mins or less I answer right the way, but if it takes more I plan to answer later in the day after gathering all the information | A new developer need a tableau Desktop License from the manager | Need to email Brian to provide the license | Need to follow up tomorrow | |||
| Reassess the health of each project | Check my Portfolio dashboard to see how my teams are progressing in the sprint, if they have any blockers or if there are any issues with the sprint burndown chart, take note of any concerns that might need to be address at the team daily stand-up | Team Champions has mutiple stories opened and we have only one day left for the sprint. Need to address this issue during daily stand up | Need clarification from Team A | Need to follow up tomorrow | ||
| 8-9 am | Join the daily stand up as a stakeholder if needed or interact via chat to get the clarification on some concern. if the 2 teams ae woring on my project I might attend both Stand-up. Ask question after the developer update in needed | The purpose of joining the daily Stand up is to get updates from the teams and take note of Blockers; Blockers come in a lot of forms. Work might stall if a key team member is out sick. An important tool can have an outage | It was reported by Team B, that they have a new fly-in work and that the priority has change on the project | Need to setup a meeting with the Team B and the Business champions | Issue pending | |
| 9-10 am | Reassess the health of each project by tracking my project daily | prepare status updates report for a weekly Leadership meeting. Interact on chat to clarify some data if needed, run some number or design pivot tables to track the progress of the project, the schedule and budget |
After checking in with my team to look at the details of their tasks in the daily stand-up, Now, I look at the big picture. Is progress being made on each project? |
The client want to add a new feature on the tableau dashboardapplication | Need to have a call with the business analyst and the PO of the PODS B and evaluate the implication | Issue Pending |
| 11-12 | Update clients and stakeholders | Join leadership/Stakeholder meetings and report updates on the project. Mention any risk in any. | Keeping your stakeholders in the loop is important, this should happen at least weekly. It’s harder for them to trust that you’re doing a great job when they don’t know what’s going on. | the mainframe client just got a new contract with his clients and need the Team A to deliver 50 Million rows of data of credit report | Need to attend the next day daily stand up to discuss the issue with the Mainfram team | Issue resolved |
| 12-1 | Break | |||||
| 1-2 | Ad hoc meetings: These take care of any unexpected developments or roadblocks | Be ready to call a meeting when needed to clarify something, resolve an issues of discuss about a priority change | There was a bug identified on the tableau dashboard during UAT | Need to call an emergency meeting to plan for communication to the client and the workaround. Need to get the lesson learned | Issue resolved | |
| 2-3 | One on one conversation: 4. Make time for people to connect | one-on-one discussions with key team lead or stakeholder to resolve issues, get update or follwo up on an issue | I make sure to have one-on-one conversations with my team members and key stakeholder to build relationship on a regular basis, because my job is to keep them working. Work with the tech lead if I have more than 2 teams | A team member in POD B is going through a nasty divorce. She needs some support | Need to check on her from time to time | Follow up Next week |
| 3-4 | Afternoon Routine | Answering emails and chats, tracking resources, progress | Issue resolved | |||
| A Project manager has to be both disciplined and flexible. It’s tough when you have your to-do list figured out in your head, and then you get to work and realize that none of that stuff is getting done today. Every day is different. That’s one of the best things and one of the hardest things about being a project manager. Keep a dancer mindset and enjoy the ride. |
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| End of the day | ||||||
