It’s always hard to know precisely what to put in a first blog post, so I’ll take the easy route and go with “hello”, my position in my new team, what I’ll be doing and how I work.
Web team PM
I have joined Jisc as a Project Manager in the Web team – “a relatively straightforward brief” I thought – but I have since learned… The challenges will be varied, exciting and rewarding, as the nature of the project portfolio is diverse.
The projects
To kick off, I have a few projects to get stuck into:
R&D section of jisc.ac.uk: Nathalie wrote about this in her 18th September blog post, and it is one which lots of people within Jisc are aware of. This new part of the website will house the information about the great projects, which Jisc helps to germinate and fund, that drive web technology development in the Higher Education and Further Education sectors. There has been lots of best practice deployed in this project which will certainly feature as the basis for another blog post.
Moving maintenance of Jisc’s website in-house: Jisc provides excellent web services to a huge number of institutions, but at the moment isn’t using this expertise to manage its own web presence. This project will change that, making the Jisc website a fantastic advert for what Jisc’s web services can do.
The big one… I will also be involved in the Unified Web Presence (UWP) project, in which we are looking to bring a common look, feel, navigation and editorial voice to all of Jisc’s vast web presence – it almost sounds easy when you put it that way…
My approach
I have used both Prince II and Agile project management techniques and like to, where possible, combine the best bits of both. To me, this means using the up-front control and general structure provided by Prince II, and the dynamism and quick results generated by Agile. Whatever the methodology, I believe it’s crucial to capture and share lessons learned from any project – and I am sure there will be plenty of Lessons Learned posts to come.
So that’s a quick romp through who I am, what I’m doing and how I work. I’m always keen to collaborate and learn new things so don’t hesitate to get in touch!
3 replies on “New web project manager – the ‘hello’ post”
I have used both Prince II and Agile project management techniques and like to, where possible, combine the best bits of both. To me, this means using the up-front control and general structure provided by Prince II, and the dynamism and quick results generated by Agile. Whatever the methodology, I believe it’s crucial to capture and share lessons learned from any project – and I am sure there will be plenty of Lessons Learned posts to come.
Nathalie wrote about this in her 18th September blog post, and it is one which lots of people within Jisc are aware of.
This new part of the website will house the information about the great projects, which Jisc helps to germinate and fund, that drive web technology development in the Higher Education and Further Education sectors.
There has been lots of best practice deployed in this project which will certainly feature as the basis for another blog post.
Moving maintenance of Jisc’s website in-house:
Jisc provides excellent web services to a huge number of institutions, but at the moment isn’t using this expertise to manage its own web presence. This project will change that, making the Jisc website a fantastic advert for what Jisc’s web services can do.
Heritage Gems and Jewels
There are a whole range of skills you need to be a successful project manager, and they’re not necessarily all technical. They may be skills you already use in your day to day life as well as being job-specific abilities developed through education and training.
We call these soft skills and hard skills, which can range from leadership, being able to motivate and encourage others, have good communication and decision making abilities, to managing risk, budgeting and project planning.
Project management skills are transferable from one industry to another. The tools and techniques of project management are universal and a good project manager should be able to add value in any environment.
It is important to have the right balance and combination of the various skills needed to be a successful project manager, as explored within this blog.
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