Sweating small stuff / Milestones & Estimates / We need to change how we interview TPMs
Welcome to 📮Monday TPM Field Dispatch 006 - Shortform thoughts on tech program management + curated content for further exploration, delivered every Monday to your inbox to kickstart your week.
1️⃣ Sweating the Small Stuff
I love talking to other Technical Program Managers. They are full of wisdom, lived experiences, and stories that you don’t find on any guide or methodology article.
I had a chat with Susan Osinski recently and she said something that really resonated with me:
TPMs look at both the forest and the trees. We see the forest, trees, soil, think about where the roots are and what the trees and forest support and need. Context, tactical and strategic in an intentional way. All connected.
Although we operate at the Program level, TPMs are constantly oscillating between the 10,000ft view and 100ft view.
A Great TPM will know that the small details are just as important as the big ticket items.
The unknown risks hide not in the big details but from the overall buildup of many minor details that can result in a significant obstacle.
Next time you put a plan together, think about the small stuff that often is overlooked:
Do we understand what the hand off point really means when infra team says they will be dev ready?
When will have UX flows versus UI specs?
What happens if bugs don’t converge at the desired rate at this point in the program?
Do we have the instructions and tools for filing bugs?
Will the changes be in the dev or staging env?
2️⃣ Milestones and Estimates
I am a believer of no-estimates. I should clarify.
Adding up estimates to build forward project plan is not the right way. Estimates have a useful but even our best guesses are often not right.
So, how do we building program plans and schedules?
Use milestones and build the schedule backwards from the time of ship/desired launch date. Use milestones as conduits, heartbeats and progress checks to guide the development. Then, use estimates as risk markers to see if a task needs to be broken up further so it is better to understand. Then your goal is to fit the tasks within the milestones buckets based on dependencies, requirements and other critical information.
I have discussed this before, my experience has been that engineering teams are far better at “estimating” if they have a target to aim for rather than determining a target to shoot for.
It’s a small flip in terms of thinking but it makes hellva difference in your planning.
Further Reading: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/efficient-software-project-management-at-its-roots/
3️⃣ We need to change how we interview TPMs
How do we assess someone’s capacity who is not responsible for delivering code yet must build structures and frameworks for the environment in which the code is delivered?
Engineers do coding questions and coder pads.
Product Managers do case studies.
Designers show portfolios.
Yet, for TPMs we are still leveraging age mix of behavioral, vague system design, odd scrum/methodology, and “tell me about a time…” questions.
There has to be a better way to bring out how a TPM thinks, approaches a difficult program, something more tailored to the role than a generic criteria.
Can we learn something from our Product Manager friends with case study interviews for TPMs? What would that even look like?
4️⃣ Interesting Event Alert 🚨
Slack Community HQ is holding an AMA event with members of their Program Management team. Do check out it:
Join Amy McAuliffe and Stephanie Yung from Slack's program management team as they share how the Slack executes and manages high-impact programs, ranging from operational projects, employee experience, go-to-market campaigns, strategic events and more.
If you are a program or project manager (or an aspiring PM!) and you're interested in learning how the Slack program management team works, this AMA is for you.
When → Thursday, Jun 15 - 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM (PDT)
Where → Virtual
Register here → Slack AMA: Slack's Program Management team
Registration ends → Jun 15, 2023.
How was this week’s newsletter?
P.S.
The Next Session of My TPM Course is Open for Enrollment
The inaugural cohort for my course - Become A Great Technical Program Manager - was a wonderful experience.
The people, the special guest speaker, and the engagement was beyond my expectation. However, the best part was the course feedback which was filled with such immensely valuable opportunities already incorporated into my next cohort which is now OPEN for enrollment.
More real world examples
More cast studies
More discussions
More deep dive into topics like Systems Philosophy, Influence, Shape of Power and much more.
Now 2 Days long (Cohort is scheduled for July 29-30. )
🚨 Spots are limited, don’t miss this chance → 🚀 Click here to enroll today
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