First off, a disclaimer. I’m still in school. I’ve only held one position where we used project management software, and it was a small company. I’m probably not qualified to speak on the subject, but maybe this will be helpful for someone to see through a novice’s eyes.
In my software development class, we learned a lot of stuff. We learned how to test our programs, how to set up source control, how to check financing of a project__; managing bugs, code, and money, basically. The thing we didn’t learn, though, was how to manage the most important resource of all; people.
Why the heck didn’t we learn this? It’s the most important part of any project, and really it’s why the group for Soul Collector turned out like it did. The members of the group each had their own ideas, and their own goals; often, one would come up and start asking a question. I’d go, “Huh? Wait wait, can you elaborate on that a bit?” He’d continue, and it would become apparent that he did not understand what we were trying to achieve. After a little while, I came to realize that this was through no fault of theirs; we just didn’t have the right infrastructure in place. We eventually figured everything out, but it definitely was not a streamlined process.
After receiving some tutelage through Steve Saporta, my boss over the last summer, I definitely understand project management better than I did before. Here’s the main things that I found very helpful.
Delegate tasks to people; make sure they have something to do. Steve was forever asking me, “You have enough to do?” Sure, it was a bit annoying at times, but completely necessary. If I had nothing to do, I’d often slack off or work on something related but not conducive to the current goals.
Split your tasks up into small, manageable chunks. My main problem with side projects is that I get to a place where I can take a break, and then I just stop. Why is this? I believe, now, that it’s simply because everything seems so daunting. I start to think about what I’m going to do next, and then just lose motivation; yeah, I feel great now after completing that task, but I’m going to feel terrible when I start to work on this next thing and fail. Making small steps not only makes things seem manageable, it also motivates you to work on the next thing; you’ve already finished part of that feature, why not finish it completely?
Make everything completely clear. The main reason I wasn’t that successful in my first internship was that nothing was clear. My boss handed me some papers and a very loose task; “Simulate some particles like this!” So I did. But then, I’d run into some problem or other, and I’d ask him, and it would turn out that we had completely different ideas, just as my project partners in software engineering did.
Find someone to bounce ideas off of. Often, working on personal projects, I get very hard on myself because I can’t solve a problem. At work, though, I had coworkers to ask for help, and I can’t emphasize just how helpful that was. Obviously, working on a side project, you might not have someone to do that with in person, but it still bears keeping in mind that it can be very helpful to have someone to talk to.
I’m going to attempt to apply these principles to my next side project, along with the group projects I’m going to be working on this next school semester. JIRA was invaluable for these, but it’s a commercial product, and really made for a team; I think managing myself is going to be more challenging than managing other people, sadly enough. I’m going to try to keep my tasks and priorities straight in Devtodo. Hopefully it works out, but I will post back with my experiences at some point.