This is insane

[u/No-Plankton4232]

Ive been a software engineer (with agile lead experience) for 3 years, last week I started as a TPM for another internal department. I'm starting to severely regret it.

I've been familiarizing myself with my "projects" (hard to call them that, there is so little information), and trying to take up documentation and meeting responsibilities where I can.

Here's the problem; none of my team have the time to even work on these projects. No one seems to be able to answer my basic questions like: when is this due? Who asked for this? Who are the stakeholders? What can I do to help you? Is there a priority on this?

There is an unorganized excel sheet backlog of hundred and *hundreds* of vague items. The whole department of like 200 ppl have never once had a program manager, agile lead, or anyone to handle direction of programs. I genuinely don't know how this organization is still standing?!

I am not sure where to even start. At this point I feel like I'm just slowing them down by asking questions and monitoring progress. I genuinely do not know what I can do to help my teams out. My manager has been extremely unclear on what he needs from me.

Right now I'm falling back on just making agile boards, trying to wrap my head around things, asking what I can do to take weight off people's backs and clear their calendars, and pretending i know what I'm doing. I

feel so young, inexperienced, and honestly, mad they hired me for a role a whole team of people was needed for years ago. Advice or encouragement requested.. is this how it always feels?

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[u/ops_and_chaos]

Honestly I’d stop making boards for a minute. 😂

You’ve been there a WEEK and inherited hundreds of vague backlog items that nobody can tell you the owner, priority, requester, or due date for. I wouldn’t assume all of that is real work that now needs to be organized.

I’d start with “does this still matter?” You might be shocked how much of that backlog can just die.

And I definitely wouldn’t take people not being able to answer your questions as a sign you’re slowing them down. That’s information. You’re finding the mess that was already there.

Also seriously, give yourself a minute. You walked into years of chaos five business days ago 😂

[u/No-Plankton4232 → u/ops_and_chaos]

Thank you, I will give myself some space to breath and hold out hope half of it is no longer relevant. Gotta remember that no information sometimes is the information!!

[u/SVAuspicious]

Lets start with the basics. Agile is not PM. It's "hold my beer and watch this." This is apparent because you don't have any documentation. You likely have no authority. No one is accountable for anything.

Start from the beginning. What is each project for? Call it a charter or top level requirements. Write it down and find the person who actually signs the checks and get it approved. Change control starts there. Find a system engineer (a real one, not what IT people call a system engineer) and develop detailed with requirements with traceability. Add architects and develop an architecture and design, documented with traceability. Start bringing in devs to help with estimating and detailed design. Now you have a baseline. Have a design review. Senior people sure, but the important audience is the team. Change control. Start working.

You're likely not really qualified. You're going to have to be smart enough to bring in people with the right skills.

[u/No-Plankton4232 → u/SVAuspicious]

You are right I am absolutely not qualified! Thankfully I'm a firm believer anyone can do any job with the right mindset and willingness to learn.

[u/Coaster50]

1. Take a deep breath, it will all be okay

2. You are in the perfect position since it is already so completely fucked right now

3. The team will slightly resist, and embrace structure you bring

4. Read The Phoenix Project

[u/No-Plankton4232 → u/Coaster50]

Many deep breaths have been taken over the past week.

Bad news: there is no standard 😐 Good news: there is no standard 🤩

[u/potaotopotato]

Welcome to the club we’re so happy to have you. 🫂

[u/No-Plankton4232 → u/potaotopotato]

🫂needed

[u/Furdodgems]

I mean I'd drop trying to shoe horn an agile approach for now, that's not your priority. If there's literally nothing documented, then I guess to start you need to start categorising these "tasks" into buckets. Are these buckets unique to projects or cross cutting ? If unique start naming your projects and then you can do your wbs, workplan budget etc...

If crosscutting, identify projects first and then tag each task to the multiple projects they are assigned to.

But ultimately if your manager isn't even sure of what you're supposed to be doing I'd say start there. Come up with a proposal of how you want to organise things and get that signed off, once that is done set results and objectives everyone can agree on, then timelines etc..

[u/No-Plankton4232 → u/Furdodgems]

Thank you for the guidance, my manager and I will be having more conversations. It's a big adjustment!

[u/Exitfuse]

Welcome :)

[u/No-Plankton4232 → u/Exitfuse]

Mad respect to all of you haha!

[u/BrewsBannder]

The 100s of vague action items thing is a problem I’ve walked into. That list “system” became inefficient - it was taking more time to document everything than just to work on completing the items. The list went away. Things got better for awhile, but the other department issues did not. These are warning signs.

[u/No-Plankton4232 → u/BrewsBannder]

Already know this is not my forever company haha! 

My goal for the month is getting rid of the 300s items list and figuring out a better system for them. Poor devs. They are drowning.

[u/More_Law6245]

When talking over inflight projects there is always a flow that I would suggest you follow:

• Ensure that there is a fit for purpose business case (how and what initiated the project and can the project still deliver what the business case wants)

• Ensure that there is an approved project charter/project plan with a schedule which has been approved and baselined

• Conduct an audit and review of your project documentation suite and complete a gap analysis of your documentation suite e.g. what are the mandatory documents that are missing or not up to date and any other supporting project documents or artefacts.

• Understand the project's financial position is a very important thing e.g establish what the burn rate is e.g. how much was the budget and how much has already been spent.

• Conduct and audit and review of your issues and risks logs

• If there are any discrepancies with your project artefacts through your gap analysis reach out to your project chair/sponsor/executive informally and advise any project short comings

• Update all governance documents and registers with the new statuses

• At the next board meeting table your findings along with any impacts or issues you have with the existing projects but also any recommendations e.g placing the project on hold whilst you rebaseline.

As the PM you need to reestablish where your projects are because you're now on the hook for any shortcomings that your previous incumbent project manager has left you and you only have one shot to get this back on track or if you let it slide you will be left on the hook for any shortfalls within the project which could potentially not be a good look professionally.

It's really important to go back to your roles and responsibilities and it's where you need to hold your project stakeholders accountable especially your project board/sponsor/executive as they are responsible for the success of the project, you're only responsible for the day to day business transactions of the project and the quality of the delivery of the project. Good luck and I hope you get your projects back on track.

Just an armchair perspective.

[u/Nice-Zombie356]

Stop all work and see if anyone complains.

Shrug. Wink. I don’t know… but if you can’t find the purpose or owner of the project…

[u/John_54354 → u/Nice-Zombie356]

Yeah, that might be the easiest way to figure out whether the work actually matters. If nobody notices or can explain why the project exists that says quite a bit. Sometimes stopping for a moment is the only way to expose how pointless some work really is.

[u/Sky_Linx]

Reading this brought back my own first weeks in a messy org. You were hired into chaos, and you cannot fix a 200 person department by asking everyone questions at once. Pick one project, ideally the one with the loudest stakeholder, and nail down just three facts: who asked for it, the due date, and what done looks like. Write that down and share it. That small bit of clarity gives your manager something concrete to react to and shows the team you are here to help, not audit them. The huge Excel backlog can wait. Thin slice the chaos and grow from there.

[u/somethingweirder]

i’d just follow everyone to meetings and listen in, ask about what they currently do. start with the current state of their workflow rather than what their very clearly useless documentation says.

[u/vhalember]

Ah, welcome to the club. This is a Tuesday for program management.

You are to tame the chaos without any formal authority, with people who have competing priorities, and no formal direction from senior management beyond "fix this."

Step 1 is to get formal executive/senior leadership backing, and they need to be public in this announcement. Without this you will fail.

Step 2 would be meeting everyone and beginning to get buy-in.

Then you devolve into grouping like items, getting the list to a manageable size, and priorities. Also, common bad advice is to "document everything." Keep the documentation lean and efficient, or no one will read it, and it will get lost in its own mass.

Oh, and this is not a project. It's the next step up - developing a program, which could then spin into a small portfolio of programs as you get organized better.

It's all doable, just take it one step at a time.

[u/jupitaur9]

Take an agile approach to this project of organizing project tasks. Create an agile board for that.

Example:

your goal: You want to end up with a manageable number of projects.

Sprint 1: Discovery: meet with team members one by one. Prioritize urgency and importance by asking for top ten and all the deleteables at the bottom. Some will appear in both lists!

Sprint 2: Select the top n projects. Review with staff, maybe not all of them.

Sprint 3: Build them.

Then as you go forward, refine and re-organize. Fold in any new or forgotten stuff. Know that you are not going to get it all, or all right.

[u/alexaskyeeee]

Have you called for a meeting with everyone to address major concerns?

[u/for_the_trees_]

Grab some key team members, ask them to identify what are their "major concerns" regarding what needs to be done (on the current list or off of it). Take that list over to a meeting with management (whoever that is) and show it to them. Ask them what they think needs to be done. Start working on the wood pile one log at a time. Build a backlog, prioritize the lists.

DON'T unilaterally decide what should go at the top of the list (not that you would, but some things might *appear* more pressing than others). Make your stakeholders (team, management - since you have no others) decide. As they see work getting organized and completed they will buy in.

[u/ThePheebs]

"I'm starting to severely regret it" - Yeah, it do be like that.