Challenges with an external project manager

Question: What is the solution, if you have peaks in your business and not enough resources to handle these peaks?

Answer: External help, of course.

Freelancers in the frontend design area, or external usability experts and also working with backend developers form resource agencies are common sense in the daily business of web companies.

But an external project manager is something completely different, because of his responsible role, was my first thought – but, it worked, and it worked very well 😉

The challenge to handle an external project manager was more in the company itself, than on the side of the project manager.

One have to handle a lot of maintenance issues.

1. a project manager needs to see all (!) information of a project – otherwise he can’t do his job
2. he needs access to internal web based applications, f.e. the time booking tool, intranet, company wiki
3. he also needs access to ticket based issue tracking software
4. he needs a key card for the building
5. he needs a laptop
6. he needs …

… a lot of low level administration things, but without a fast set up of this working environment you won’t have fun with you external project manager.

If you have once installed this workbench, then you will get real project support!

I decided to write a short personal check list for all these admin tasks to speed up the next start of an external project manager, which will sure be an event in 2016 😉