Well, it’s been more than 2 weeks I’ve been put on my new job as project manager. I can only stress how different this job is than what I am used to. If you just tuned in, 3 weeks ago I was still the lead system administrator of ilse media, a company that has some of the biggest websites in the Netherlands. Now I help creating them.
The prospect is awesome to say the least. Granted, no physical labour of mine will be directly viewable in the product, yet I will be largely responsible for new websites to take shape in a physical form by assessing needs of the site owner and translating them to work for the designers, developers and system engineers.
The last couple of weeks I have been working hard on getting a feel for the new job. Part of that job was similar to what I did before; I was assigned the task to take care of some left-over migration issues that need picking up. Doing this the same way I did this before in my previous function, I had no problems. If anything I had more time to communicate and steer for a faster resolution of the issues at hand, simply because I was not distracted by the million small things that I dealt with being a system engineer.
On the other hand, I am getting some really big and important projects. Truth be said I feel a little intimidated by the sheer vastness of it. Yes, I’ve had schooling along the lines of a projectworker and had some experience with leading a project but nothing of this scale. It feels like floating on an ocean in a little rubber boat, not knowing what the weather will be.
All of this is pretty much new to me. Not do I only have to do things I didn’t do before, like making a planning for an entire project, make accurate risk assesments and what not but I am also faced with the things I am no longer supposed to do, which is get technically involved and get stuff done myself.
This letting go of doing things yourself – effectively losing direct control – is possibly the scariest and hardest thing I have to deal with, because now I rely far more on others than I have ever done before; I am just very used to solve things myself, that – regardless of my confidence in the people who took my place – I find it hard not to tell them their jobs, rather than tell them what I need of them.
I guess there is a positive side to all of this; because I am so used to doing things myself I simply do the next best thing: stay on top of everything, which is what a project manager is supposed to do. I found out I am communicating a lot more than I did in my previous position. Communication, always being a point of attention on my competence sheet seems to have become less of an issue, although I should be mindful not to overdo it.
I know I will grow into it. I have no regrets of leaving system administration behind (it’s not like I have been banned from servers :P) and I still feel that this is what I want. I will deal with the challenges as the emerge before me, as I have always done. I wanted a new challenge and I got what I asked for. 😉
Oh and another side effect from my change; my desk at office is now constantly neatly picked up. There is still hope for my desk at home. 😉