Author: Andrew Solovey

I`m a Project Manager with 10+ years of experience delivering complex digital products for startups, digital agencies, and enterprise clients. I have led distributed, multicultural teams of up to 70 specialists and managed project portfolios with annual budgets of up to $5M. My core focus is team building, servant leadership, risk management, and stakeholder communication.  On this blog, I share practical, experience-based insights from real projects: what actually works in project delivery, where things usually break, and how to manage complexity without unnecessary bureaucracy.
Uncategorized

The Differences Between IT Projects And Other Types of Projects (And How Project Managers Should Deal With Them)

Several decades ago, when someone mentioned the word “project”, the first thing that came into people’s mind was probably a construction of some physical object like an airport, a road or a shopping mall. But everything has changed since that time. Due to the Internet penetration to every sphere of our life the share of IT projects has been increasing every year.… [ Read the rest...]
Lessons Learned

4 Daily Life Habits I Have Learned From Project Management

As a project manager I plan, control and organize the work both of mine and other people. Surprisingly, all these skills are really helpful not only in the professional, but in the daily life as well. At one point I realized that my professional duties have changed the way I approach my daily routine. So, check below the 4 useful lessons for daily life that I have learned from project management.… [ Read the rest...]
Lessons Learned

The 5 Lessons I Learned In 2018 As A Project Manager

I believe that each year brings you new experience and new lessons learned, whatever position you hold and however much practice you have got  in your professional field. This rule works in project management better than most. So, every year any project manager meets unique people and faces new challenges. The year 2018  was very eventful for me from a professional point of view, therefore, I have learned a lot of new lessons and want to share the most important ones with you.… [ Read the rest...]
Teambuilding

How to Organize a Secret Santa Gift Exchange in a Remote Team

The end of the year and upcoming Christmas holidays are good opportunities to summarize the year for your team and to have some fun team building activities. A teambuilding activity that is quite relevant for this time is a Secret Santa game. The rules are pretty simple –  you gather your colleagues and they draw random names of their teammates, so that everyone becomes a Secret Santa for another team member that he should keep in a secret.… [ Read the rest...]
PM Stories

PM Stories: The Mysterious Disappearence of Back End Developer

Once I was launching a new software development project. The project seemed to be a quite interesting one – its functionality was very extended, its user interface (at least, according to mock ups) was very sophisticated and the technology stack was a `cutting edge`. Actually, a lot of effort was done before the start of this project – a series of user interviews were conducted and a fancy UI prototype was designed.… [ Read the rest...]
Meetings, Teambuilding

5 questions to ask your teammates at your first one-on-one meeting

One of the first things you should do taking over a new project is definitely getting acquainted with your team. As usual a new project manager is introduced to a new team officially by his predecessor or manager, but I’m talking about something different here. I mean that it makes perfect sense to meet with each team member in person. Such one-on-one meetings are the most useful project manager’s instruments.… [ Read the rest...]
Soft Skills, Teambuilding

Servant Leadership: How to Lead Teams in the 21st Century

In a traditional management model a manager plays the central role and behaves as an assertive leader. In the contrast, his subordinates are treated as the ones who serve the manager. Such a boss-centered approach very often devalues regular employees. But today it turns out that this approach doesn’t work anymore, especially in such a dynamic and complicated industry as information technology.… [ Read the rest...]
Checklists, Meetings, Scrum, Soft Skills

10 arguments why daily scrum meeting is important (infographic)

It happens that engineers call into question the importance of daily scrum meeting, especially those ones who have a lack of experience of working in a team. Their most common argument against this meeting is that it distracts them from the actual work, and it is just a waste of time. If you as a project manager faces this issue, you should find the right words and arguments to explain your team mates the usefulness of a daily scrum meeting and to persuade them not only to attend it but also to be an active participant at it.… [ Read the rest...]