Mood's In Control
As for this 3rd assignment given to us, still we need to interview an analyst/project manager. But last time during our interview to Mr. James Bautista for assignment two, we didn’t miss the opportunity to ask him questions in relation to this problem about the role of a systems analyst as project manager.
Project manager as he may say manages the entire team and the entire project. When you say manages the entire project, most of the time, the project manager will be talking to the client, talking to the team. He/she will be doing the design model, etc. He/she will be talking to the developers. Aside from talking, the other role of the project manager is that he will get the overall specification of the project. When you say overall specification, you are talking about the overall scope. Then Sir James started asking us if we already have developed a system even in a simplest way and we answered “Yes”. He then asked if who our clients were and begins talking about the client. He said that the client should be the one who are not using the system but the one who needed the system. An example was given to us. There is a mother in the grocery store. The mother is holding a baby. The mother is buying diapers for the baby. Now, who is the client for this situation? Some of us answered the mother and some of us answered the baby for the reason that the baby needs the diaper. But when Sir James give the answer, some of us got confused. The client is the mother, he said. He added that the clients are the people who have money. Now I got his point. Though the baby is in need of the diaper, still, the baby cannot have the diapers if the mother won’t buy it. Just like if a client wants to have a system because he needs it. He can have it if he has the money to pay to the company of his choice for the service of making his system. But why is Sir James talking about that? As a project manager, you really have to know and really have to identify the people involved in the project. There will be the client and there will be the end-users. Sometimes a client and an end-user can be different. Back to what he said about the project manager will get the specifications, he added that the project specifications are not really the details but the idea. Example, a client wants to have a website that will generate another website. So inside the website, the client can make another website from the website ID – something like that. Then the client will give an overview and will talk to the project manager about the details of the website. The project manager will get the specifications. But before the project manager will return to the client, the project manager should see the team first, talk to the developers and will talk about the modeling process, etc., get the details like how many days can the project be done, how many hours, the problems involved, what to need, and what to require. Just the time the project manager gets the information from the team, the project manager will talk to the client again then send out any communication as discussing the overall specifications, presenting the things to do, sorting of the tasks broken down and the timeline. The project manager will delegate tasks to the team .In making a timeline, there is what they call padding. A week before the deadline or earlier, the tasks should be done. The purpose of this timeline is for flexibility allowance in case something might go wrong. Remember the Murphy’s Law, “If anything can go wrong, it will.”
Project management is not that hard given the strong confidence of your team when you know the skills of every one in your team. But the hard part here according to Sir James is the communication with the client. “As a project manager, you have this role knowing that one of the clients will ask updates. You should always be the one to give the update first and not to wait for the client to ask for it.”, Sir James said. He also told us about the two kinds of client: the Pinoy client, and the U.S. client. In project management, there is a big difference when it comes to the project in the Philippines and the project in the U.S. in his point of view, it is so easy to deal with the Pinoy client for the reasons that they don’t set deadlines or if they do, you can ask and have an extension, don’t ask updates from time to time, and majority will not give you a hard time. Pinoy client actually doesn’t care about how the project will be made as long as they get what they want when they put it into operation and will not ask you in the middle but just ask on the 30th day at the end of the project. In U.S. clients, everyday is update day. So they have a common rule that at the beginning of the day, they will tell the client about the updates of the project, informing them about what they did on that day. On the following day, they will put things that they worked on like showing the things they completed for the day. After this, they will point out that after all the work, they will be working on the next phase of the project like another set of list. Consequently, there are three lists all in all: things you have done, things you will do for today, and the things you will do for tomorrow. That’s the kind of update they want and you have to give that update twice a day, at the beginning of the day, and the end of the day. That’s how it is. Very tasky but it works. In U.S. clients, when they say deadline it is always deadline. This client is expecting something to be done at the due date or before. If you cannot make it on the deadline, tell your client maybe a week before, the earlier the better so that they will not expect, stop the client from expecting anything on the completion date. Lastly, the last but not the least, is the most important role of the project manager, is to make the client “Happy”. Happy client equals Money.
Project manager as he may say manages the entire team and the entire project. When you say manages the entire project, most of the time, the project manager will be talking to the client, talking to the team. He/she will be doing the design model, etc. He/she will be talking to the developers. Aside from talking, the other role of the project manager is that he will get the overall specification of the project. When you say overall specification, you are talking about the overall scope. Then Sir James started asking us if we already have developed a system even in a simplest way and we answered “Yes”. He then asked if who our clients were and begins talking about the client. He said that the client should be the one who are not using the system but the one who needed the system. An example was given to us. There is a mother in the grocery store. The mother is holding a baby. The mother is buying diapers for the baby. Now, who is the client for this situation? Some of us answered the mother and some of us answered the baby for the reason that the baby needs the diaper. But when Sir James give the answer, some of us got confused. The client is the mother, he said. He added that the clients are the people who have money. Now I got his point. Though the baby is in need of the diaper, still, the baby cannot have the diapers if the mother won’t buy it. Just like if a client wants to have a system because he needs it. He can have it if he has the money to pay to the company of his choice for the service of making his system. But why is Sir James talking about that? As a project manager, you really have to know and really have to identify the people involved in the project. There will be the client and there will be the end-users. Sometimes a client and an end-user can be different. Back to what he said about the project manager will get the specifications, he added that the project specifications are not really the details but the idea. Example, a client wants to have a website that will generate another website. So inside the website, the client can make another website from the website ID – something like that. Then the client will give an overview and will talk to the project manager about the details of the website. The project manager will get the specifications. But before the project manager will return to the client, the project manager should see the team first, talk to the developers and will talk about the modeling process, etc., get the details like how many days can the project be done, how many hours, the problems involved, what to need, and what to require. Just the time the project manager gets the information from the team, the project manager will talk to the client again then send out any communication as discussing the overall specifications, presenting the things to do, sorting of the tasks broken down and the timeline. The project manager will delegate tasks to the team .In making a timeline, there is what they call padding. A week before the deadline or earlier, the tasks should be done. The purpose of this timeline is for flexibility allowance in case something might go wrong. Remember the Murphy’s Law, “If anything can go wrong, it will.”
Project management is not that hard given the strong confidence of your team when you know the skills of every one in your team. But the hard part here according to Sir James is the communication with the client. “As a project manager, you have this role knowing that one of the clients will ask updates. You should always be the one to give the update first and not to wait for the client to ask for it.”, Sir James said. He also told us about the two kinds of client: the Pinoy client, and the U.S. client. In project management, there is a big difference when it comes to the project in the Philippines and the project in the U.S. in his point of view, it is so easy to deal with the Pinoy client for the reasons that they don’t set deadlines or if they do, you can ask and have an extension, don’t ask updates from time to time, and majority will not give you a hard time. Pinoy client actually doesn’t care about how the project will be made as long as they get what they want when they put it into operation and will not ask you in the middle but just ask on the 30th day at the end of the project. In U.S. clients, everyday is update day. So they have a common rule that at the beginning of the day, they will tell the client about the updates of the project, informing them about what they did on that day. On the following day, they will put things that they worked on like showing the things they completed for the day. After this, they will point out that after all the work, they will be working on the next phase of the project like another set of list. Consequently, there are three lists all in all: things you have done, things you will do for today, and the things you will do for tomorrow. That’s the kind of update they want and you have to give that update twice a day, at the beginning of the day, and the end of the day. That’s how it is. Very tasky but it works. In U.S. clients, when they say deadline it is always deadline. This client is expecting something to be done at the due date or before. If you cannot make it on the deadline, tell your client maybe a week before, the earlier the better so that they will not expect, stop the client from expecting anything on the completion date. Lastly, the last but not the least, is the most important role of the project manager, is to make the client “Happy”. Happy client equals Money.
