This article was shared by @Li Wenqiang, a Worktile user, about the difficulties he has experienced in project management over the past decade.

This article was written at the request of the Worktile team. I have never liked to do things in a perfunctory way, so I have prepared for a long time and looked back over the years to write this article as a memorial to those years when project management was crossing the river by feeling the stones.

First of all, let me introduce myself:

I am a IT diaosi, known as “program ape”, and have been in this industry for about 6 years.

I used to be a literary young man, a modern poet, and I thought I was going to be a rising star in the literary world. Instead, I became a gorilla-author of Follow Me in C# Programming, Follow Me in ASP.NET, and translator of SharePoint 2013 Advanced Development Course (4th Edition).

Character with idealism and perfectionism plot, love programming (at present mainly amateur code), is committed to contribute to the open source community (open source projects are: https://github.com/magicodes/… . I have always had a lot of ideas. I am a person who pursues dreams and interests. I like thinking collision, technical exchange, and designing and planning software (including games) products.

Two times on the Liangshan (entrepreneurship 2 times, just out of the time a year), have been recruited, is the third time at present. I have worked as a guerrilla (taking private jobs), engaged in technical work, led a team, developed various software and websites as well as enterprise business system, played SharePoint, and worked on WeChat APP. Now I am learning Unity3D in my spare time. Currently working as Product Manager & Technical Director in the company.

In my many years as a code farmer, the IT industry needs, relies on and uses project management tools more than any other industry. I’ve been in tears all the way, but I’d like to share with you some of the things I’ve stumbled on in project management over the years.

Feel the stones across the river and fall on the feet of the day

The first two startups didn’t have the concept of a team (for a year), let alone project management. A person with a gun to provoke all, finish a copy of Taobao e-commerce website (called auto parts), and then continue to write the client management software (similar to the management of auto parts of the purchase, sales and storage), in short, a person from the design to coding to test all done. This is such a big project, plus the boss, just the two of us (there was an old programmer who left halfway). This has been insisted on for nearly a year, until tired of this kind of life. So I bid farewell to the first stage of entrepreneurship, and then hurriedly finished the second stage of entrepreneurship (IT training, lasting less than a month), and came to Shanghai, where I started a dark journey — from a spectator to a team Leader, from a developer to a project manager.

The first project here was to build XX franchise store system. A failed project, I was caught as a strong man. Have a few months every night 2, 3 o ‘clock to go home, the cost of a more than a month reported 2000. The rhythm for me is — overtime, catch up, overtime, catch up. Due to uncontrolled requirements, the project died when it was done — the company and the customer had a fight and ended it. My experience as a Coder is that project management = requirements analysis + requirements design + requirements control. Another benefit is that I pushed the team to use source code management.

Next, he began to lead the team to develop the project of XX Bank. He recruited several strong men and declared war directly. Many small companies have been like this until now — whoever has the skills will lead the team. There were many problems in this way, but the project was completed relatively perfectly. Although I was complained by the project manager of another department, the client was always always thinking of me and showed great care for me. There were several reasons for the success of this project: the project was not complicated, the business rationale was clear, the needs of the bank customers were thoroughly confirmed, and the customers had a strong sense of project management. At that time, weekly reports were sent out every week, which made me sick. Then I have to arrange task often, timely completion of all is OK, Delay to work overtime, there is a problem is discussed, no problem is you reading a novel (can’t, have to write a code layers of the remote server to write, not net, it’s okay, in addition to staring at the mobile phone will only go to bed (by customers stare at, however, is not a good sleep)), In short, I finished the work harmoniously.

After finishing this project, the leader appreciated it very much, so he began to lead the team to develop the third phase of XX mobile project, and then the darkest day came. First of all, the project is huge (7 or 8 sub-projects), with many people and no master of all trades. I am to do project management, and to serve as the core development, but also need to talk about requirements, identify requirements, scheduling, task, lead the development, test and supervise the deployment, deal with customer complaints (this is often to tremble and fear trembled at that time to deal with things, people seem to like it that way) of the state-owned enterprise and so on — a big tuo chores, think is drunk. The beginning is full of confidence, to the back has been tired of dealing with. Every time the leader to the scene is – I with you, I invite everyone to dinner, and then you continue to work overtime……

Because of many things and miscellaneous, I have thought of many ways — at first, I rely on the brain management, and then imitate the weekly report system of XX Bank above — did not stick to it; Also once relied on the notebook, the paper is torn one by one, and sometimes forget the table, another day when come, perhaps was taken to wipe the ass by the aunt. I have even tried Excel, and even used Project, but it never came to an end. In the end, the project was a disaster — I felt exhausted and tired of attending to my grandchildren, so I handed in my resignation (which I never did) — but I stayed, and the rest of the team left. This experience left me traumatized, and I reflected on it afterwards:

  • The main reason is that the company’s resources are limited: such as insufficient manpower, lack of backbone;
  • Secondary reason is that there are too many project management problems, such as not well development iterations, an insufficient test checks the Bug appeared again and again (often not test role), requirements are not under control (control to your side, the grandson called leadership, and then led the clappers), developers are not best use and so on.
  • Of course, as a techie myself, I felt there was another key point — the lack of a good project management tool. In my ideal, project managers arrange plans and tasks on the system, developers check their tasks on the system and update the status of tasks, testers test and submit bugs, and project managers continue to arrange tasks, and so on. Why do you think that? Because I’m sick of using Excel. It’s a waste of time and energy.

All in all, it was a time of crossing the river by feeling for stones, but I fell on my own feet in the end.

Is it really the project management tool? — Agile Development

Based on the third point, I began to rethink project management. The company had a project management exam at that time, although I only took one course, and with my excellent aptitude, I didn’t pass it (maybe I had to take two, haha). So at the end of this project, I began to consciously learn the project management experience of other teams, and then learned about agile development, and used the agile development template of TFS. The first thing I saw was — isn’t that the thing I’ve been looking for so long? ! You know, geeks are excitable. So I won the support of my leader, bought a server to deploy, and conducted an agile development training in the development department — I was a lecturer, although I was a half-pot at the time, but when you sway for so long, you get used to it.

Agile development is indeed a good and very advanced concept, it is based on the user needs evolution as the core, using iterative, step-by-step approach to software development. This is because software projects are basically going through changing requirements, and agile development ADAPTS to changing requirements. The TFS2012 Agile Development Template applies this to real development, adding requirements, tasks, bugs, risks, test cases, etc., and providing the corresponding flow, and the ability to configure unlimited iterations and work areas. In addition, there are many clients such as Integration VS, the ability to hook up with work items when checking in code, a test manager and feedback manager, the ability to record screens, take screenshots, and even generate automated test cases to submit TFS, a very powerful management tool for software projects.

But after that training, my heart cooled and I gave up trying to promote the tool in the company — it was only foreign, it was too complicated for small companies to use. Although Microsoft has a very detailed agile development process around development and testing, most small companies and small teams in China simply don’t work.

There are several reasons for this:

  • It’s likely that the team roles don’t fit together, and testing and art are often painful;
  • Testers don’t want to learn these tools and prefer to test by hand (this is not the main reason);
  • It adds a lot of work, and most project managers don’t have the quality (this is the root cause) and don’t want to use the tool with the team — this is what I get straight from the meeting (if I promote it, it’s a lot of project managers’ culprits). First of all, the requirements for project managers are very high, and the increase of workload is very large, especially in the early stage. Can be seen from the above screenshot, you can add requirements, tasks, bugs, etc., which is equivalent to the software development now, the project manager not only need the planning consciousness, also need to be used as long as the content of the email that will add to the above, and some still have many processes, such as the examination and approval, also need to assign each task a detailed developer, So basically the project manager will subconsciously exclude. Relative to the developer, the first is that the source control tool needs to use TFS, work items and other changes or views can be viewed and modified in the development tool. For testers, the first need to learn the test manager, as long as the simple screenshots, QQ exchanges or email exchanges, now to use such a high-end tool, naturally there will be some rejection
  • It only manages the lifecycle of the software project (but that’s the goal);
  • Not flexible enough. Because agile development templates are standardized, they can’t be changed, but Chinese leaders are mostly not standardized. They don’t push norms from the top down, and a lot of the time they just jump in and trip you up.

Because the template is too fine and standard, most people can not stick to it. Besides, I am both a project manager and a development backbone, so it is difficult for me to sort out the requirements, tasks and bugs in time. When I am busy with work, I ignore or simplify it. I feel that I have learned a lot from agile development (for example, I know that there is such an advanced concept for requirements change, and in fact, I have used this concept more or less in the subsequent project management), and it has been very useful.

The training did the development department a bit of a favor though — most project teams started using source code management tools. Now you know how backward some development teams are! I installed N virtual machines for the server I purchased before. In addition to TFS, SVN and SharePoint were also deployed.

As usual, I have had a rethink. I think agile development is too heavy, the project manager needs a lot of work, and the workload is too high. Is it possible to consider some lightweight tools?

Lightweight management tool – SharePoint?

In this confusion, I did some projects, and the client used management tools like Redmine, with simple functions, light weight and easy to use. Although the usage scenarios are limited, sometimes they are sufficient.

Later, I went to the Liangshan again, and this time I was not ready to give up, and no one wanted to welcome me! Ha ha.

This time I took the responsibility of product manager and technical director. As a start-up company, from zero to zero, it has experienced 9*9=81 difficulties in project (product) management.

Based on my previous experience and lessons, I started looking for the right project management tool at the beginning of the product. Naturally, I gave up on the agile development process of TFS. I decided that I needed a lightweight project management tool, so I decided to use SharePoint lists to carry the burden (I refused at first because I didn’t know about worktiles and couldn’t find the right tool). Of course, SharePoint can also be used, such as:

Many list templates to choose from:

Development task list (views can be defined (such as sorting and filtering)) :

Calendar:

The document library:

The Wiki page:

Before we used Worktile, we used it for product management, including some information that is still on it.

While using SharePoint to manage products and projects meets my needs, it still has a number of disadvantages:

  • The user experience is not good enough.
  • It is not a specialized project management tool, and lacks many norms and mechanisms, so it is difficult to make effective use of norms.
  • I need to customize the SharePoint workflow for push notifications.
  • Team members are difficult to master and need training.
  • Because I deployed the internal network environment, so it is not convenient to communicate and view when outside.
  • There is no mobile terminal, every time I need to go to urge.

Of course, by the end of this phase, I’ve realized — it’s not the tools that fail, it’s the people. Of course, good tools can give the best help.

Learn from the pain, change – from agile development to product (project) management

On December 20, 2013, I accidentally discovered Worktile. I tried it out and felt it was bright, but I did not apply it to project management.

By January this year, looking back on the past year, I felt it was time for a change – the drums and gongs were ringing out new bells, and I was ready for new red underwear. Looking back on last year, the product is under the attack of demand like a solitary sail under the storm, and we are that trapped for a long time the gaunt boatman. As a so-called product manager, it’s time for me to shoulder historical responsibility. After a long period of painful thinking, constant reflection, discussion and communication, I realized that agile development is not product management. I realized that I need to better comb and manage every link of the product to make it controllable and reasonable. Therefore, a simple plan + task model was not the solution, and I had to step away from being a developer and really get back to being a product manager. When you realize it, take action. I have always been a high performer. Therefore, I gave up all the programming impulse and devoted myself to product planning and sorting. At the same time, I used Worktile as a tool for this transformation.

Just do it, I began to template according to the product of a lot of management, such as RodeMap, plan, feedback, research and development, CRM, recruitment, project and so on, I turn to comb, from these aspects constantly, through effort of this a few months, I feel the product is finally back on track, also have a feeling that is in control of all — only this time, I think I’m a real product manager. Therefore, agile development is not product management, nor is it project management, and I was wrong from the beginning.

The following is my plan for the company’s product management:

RodeMap example:

Research and development template and process:

CRM:

Here are some of the scenarios. For example, check items:

Resembling a Wiki page:

Of course, there are many more, I will not list them here.

From what I’ve experienced during this time, I think the decision to move to Worktile was definitely the right one:

  1. From many of the above features, you can see SharePoint features updated, such as Wiki, Calendar, Task List, Web Office App, etc.
  2. The Worktile user experience is great and easy for team members to get started. And I started to get everyone I could to use it. Because of the superiority of its user experience, we do not reject, there will be no account forget the situation (all use of enterprise mailbox). Even now, sales and business I include the scope of users;
  3. Agile development is not product management, certainly not project management, but a part of project management, a small part of product management. Product management should include the following: product rodeMap, product planning (including marketing planning), requirements, bugs, development, CRM, etc. This is the most important reason for my decision to move. Because of the worktile-based list and task combination pattern, I can manage these flexibly. Light and flexible but functional, this is what I want;
  4. Mobile support. Now I require every member to turn on their mobile phone first at work every day. Whenever the status changes, they will be notified, which is convenient for timely communication and saves a lot of time for running and communication.
  5. Communication is easy. Most of the modules support discussion or comment functions;
  6. Free of charge. Startups save as much as they can;
  7. Lightweight and flexible without losing function, as mentioned in point 3;
  8. It’s easy to sort through things, tasks, and problems. You can discuss, you can publish wikis, you can use checklist displays, you can make a little flow with lists, and you can present and express them in many ways.
  9. I have been constantly iterating and making progress, and I have made a lot of suggestions and opinions in the process of using it.

Write in the last

Product management and project management is a long road, maybe you will have my experience, also like I have experienced all kinds of pain. Time is always an insurmountable wall, always proving us wrong in the past. Well, we just have to make sure we’re moving forward every single day. For example, in the meeting today, one of the team members said that the biggest change this year is that we have a product manager. I am pleased.

In the end, I hope Worktile gets better and better, and I hope you all find your own way, and I will keep going.

Worktile website: worktile.com