5 minutes with… Aidan Roberts
Aidan is a people and technology enthusiast with thirteen years experience in Project, Producer and Product management roles. He loves to build teams that enjoy working together. He is based in London.
This article was originally posted on LinkedIn in June 2023 and Aidan has kindly given permission for the content to be added here.
Why did you choose a career in delivery or project management?
At the beginning of my career I worked as a graduate Structural Engineer, as founder of a cleaning company, an assistant to an educational Psychologist and then a generalist for a marketing and management consultant.
Through these roles I realised I was excited about the power of tech for business, and that I loved building effective teams. I started to specialise when a friend suggested I apply for a job in Project Management for a digital consultancy.
What advice would you give someone starting out in the industry?
Lead with your common sense. When you are starting out you will probably feel overwhelmed by the fast paced world of tech, with its own language, changing priorities, evolving ways of working, endless notifications etc.
But you will have got team projects done before, and the basic questions you will have will be the pertinent ones. What are our objectives and why? What needs to be done and how long will it take? And then go from there.
I’d also add, be curious. Make the most of all the amazing free sources of information available to learn about that term that keeps coming up and then ask for five minutes with someone to check whether you’ve understood the key concepts.
Often even the senior team members are having to research and figure new methods out before using them.
And don’t be afraid to ask questions in meetings where it seems like you’re the only one not on the same page. The room hearing a couple of people state answers in their own terms can often lead to a greater shared clarity.
Have you ever worked on a particularly difficult project? Why was it rubbish/tough/hard?
I certainly have!
When you’re attempting something that's outside the core skills of the team, that’s really tough. Especially when there’s a fixed deadline. Making the decision to upskill team members or get specialists in needs to be carefully thought through and focussed on until as PM you’re confident in the plan and everyone is bought in.
If a deadline really is fixed then the difficult conversations about whether the objectives are feasible or if perhaps areas can be de-scoped need to be had early and re-visited often.
What do you think are the most important skills for a delivery or project manager to have?
Openness to learn. In delivery you have the privilege of interacting with many different people during the day, and I truly believe that you can learn something each time. Asking questions that allow people to elaborate and share their knowledge will help you to better manage the work and also strengthen your relationship with that person.
Attention to detail. I think that this skill is becoming more and more valuable in a world where focus is a fought for commodity. Even at work there are tens of useful SaaS tools that have their place but can easily distract. The little details - comments in meetings, terms used in user stories, decimals on spreadsheets - if not quite right can cause delays and impact quality, so do sweat the small stuff!
Communication. I think if you have 1 and 2 above then you are in a good place for communication. As PM you’re as close to a real-time dashboard on the project status there is. You get to watch that dashboard throughout the day but others only have what was last communicated by you. So proactively design a working pattern where the right people can receive updates at the right time. It may not feel like it, but communication is just as much ‘real work’ as writing code!
What do you think are the biggest challenges facing delivery and project managers today?
The hybrid model and increasingly working with people from all over the world does make communication more of a challenge. We use cloud tools to enable this and every update by one team member is a potential distraction for another. Knowing what to share, when and to who is something to regularly think about and I would recommend visiting this in retrospective meetings.
What projects would you have loved to have been involved in?
I love tools that support and encourage people to make positive change in their lives. So being part of the initial creative and development for some of my favourite apps such as Strava and Blinkist would have been exciting and rewarding.
This post is part of a services called ‘5 minutes with’ series of articles from people in the delivery management and project management space.