From Engineer to Project Manager

What Project Manager is not

It has been over 9 months since I assumed a Project Manager role at Kemer Habesha. Assuming such a role as an engineer who loves to code a lot doesn’t sound comfortable at first. I say I have learned a lot about the position itself, alongside the critical elements of being a good Project Manager. Here are things one needs to know when given such a promotion from an Individual Contributor or a Tech Lead role. Meanwhile, I will try to explain the criticalness of having a Technical Project Manager in our sector.

1. Being a Project Manager helps you manifest the impact you want to have on products or general operations.

If you are interested in having a say on approaches that help your teams and technical decisions, I don’t think there is a better way than considering leadership roles. One thing we always miss when trying to understand the role of Project Management is that we tend to think these people are people managers. This is off-putting for someone who doesn’t want to deal with corporate politics or conflicts that are far from technical realities in an organization. I am here to tip you to direct your focus on the projects or products that your teams are working on when acting like a Project Manager.

This may sound familiar to my colleagues, whom I adore the most, but I always try to communicate technical matters with an empathetic approach. “Let’s work on that, (teammate nickname)” is far better than “Please, work on this till Friday!” Because, almost always, your mere goal is achieving the best capacity of your teams in closing tickets as much as possible without creating a micro-managing environment.

2. Why so serious?

As a technical person, you would eventually understand most of the challenges your teammates encounter when trying to address a complicated feature request or even a bug fix. What works for me is trying to find solutions by relating topics to one another, putting analogies, or even sharing memes with all of them. You don’t want to be the clown of the company, but that doesn’t mean you have to be stricter than you should be. It is all about balancing humor with seriousness and discipline.

3. Know when you need upper management’s help! Decide with your colleagues!

Trying to battle every issue by yourself is counterproductive and doesn’t show great quality in your leadership skills. I challenge you to reach out to others for help when you need it. As much as one should be decisive in such roles, it is wiser to consider positive conflicts and heated conversations with everyone and be open-minded to up your Project Management game.