Christmas week was when I was a project manager. I was excited at first because the client was a brand I admired for a long time. When the reality of the project came in, I started to see past the rose-tinted glasses. The most surprising part was how hands-off the role was. For the past projects I was always working on something; whether it was making visualizations, dashboarding, or contributing to the presentation deck. So more focus on being a leader and less on being a technical contributor. This was such a strange feeling for me; it took a while for me to adjust.

   The kick-off meeting went smoothly with the client stating their needs. The struggle started with the project itself. There was a lack of team members from the as well as only one manager with us all week. I’m a person who takes accountability and challenges headfirst; so I had to accommodate the issues. The data cleaning process, at first, was very straightforward. Although, we later came to find that we need to add another data source to the already existing one. Defining roles was another challenge as no one really knew what to do; until the middle of day two. Once everyone had something to work on, I felt more calm.

   One of my biggest critiques was being too nice; instead of being the leader. Trust me, that never works. One advice I was given was to feel out how the team feels about a certain situation; then make a decision on what I think is best. To be stern, yet fair is a tricky thing to do. Another lesson I’ve learned is that your vision as the leader has to be in tandem with your team. You cannot think five steps ahead; while your team is on step three. There was a problem with date calculation that the team had to deal with. Although I wanted to help, I didn’t know how to tackle a complicated problem. If I don’t know something, I find people who do. That’s when I pointed to the managers who were more than willing to help. The issue of scope creep can be about when the team didn't want to put many KPIs on the dashboard. The reason being that the dashboard would look overbloated. Having a conversation with the client really puts things in perspective. They needed those KPI’s on the dashboard not to make it look cluttered, but showing how important it is to their overall story.

   In conclusion, the project manager role is not something I would want to do again. I understand how difficult the role can be. Having that lack of knowledge on the technical aspects of a project is very irksome for me. Although, I think it’s beneficial to be put in uncomfortable situations. This experience has shown me how to effectively lead my coworkers.