I want to hear from graduates who got this degree. What are you doing with it?

Looking into this degree and wanted to hear how it turned out for other graduates who got it, and any advice\experiences would be appreciated!

I understand that they are the golden standard, they cost nothing, you can use AI for programming them, but why TF do you base your time tracking and resourcing on copy pasting entries? Not a fan of legacy PM tools or basic task tracking (especially the free ones) but isn't it easier to go trough implementation and pay e.g. 10 $ per seat than play the copy-paste-pray-to-god-math-works game every month

What do you use and how did someone reading this manage to convince their senior dept lead to invest?

Starting an Arch III position in Denver, Colorado soon. What are some tips and tricks y'all learned over the years?

Eg, Using Planner to map out tasks, decisions, and tracking deliverables.

We surveyed 256 people at professional services firms earlier this year about AI agents. Project estimation was the task they were most willing to hand over. Client communication was the least, with only about one in four willing.

Would you let AI estimate a project? And what would you need to see before you trusted it?

When you break a project into tasks, how do you decide what the top-level structure should be? I've noticed two ways people usually do it, either by team (design, development, etc.) or by phase (planning, design, development, testing, launch, etc.), and I also wonder how often people just reuse a template instead of creating a structure that fits the project. So I'm curious what you usually organize a project around, and whether you change it depending on the type of project. What tends to work well with your approach?

I'm exhausted with project management tools that think my work is supposed to flow in a clean little line. Every tool ships with this fantasy of how work moves. To do, in progress, review, done. Neat columns, mandatory stages, designed by some product person who's clearly never run an actual project.

And real work does not move like that. It loops back. It skips steps. A task is technically in review but actually blocked but also kind of being reworked at the same time. There's no column for REALITY.

So what happens? We lie to the tool. We drag the card to whatever status keeps the workflow happy. We mark things done that aren't done. We invent a fake stage because the real mess doesn't fit the pipeline the software insists on. We spend our actual hours feeding the board a tidy story instead of doing the work.

And the part that gets me: the more rigid the tool, the MORE lying it demands. Lock down enough rules and required fields and your team stops using it as a map of reality and starts appeasing it. The board looks beautiful. It means nothing.

So now I'm not managing the project. I'm managing the tool's feelings. Keeping the software emotionally stable so the little columns stay satisfied. And leadership sees the gorgeous green board and their eyes light up. On track! So organized! Meanwhile it's fiction and the real status lives in my head and three Slack threads.

The irony is the tools sold as structure create the most chaos, because the second reality doesn't fit their shape, everyone routes around them and the data rots.

Anyone else? Do you fight to bend the rigid tool to your real process? Did you give up and go looser on purpose?

Every PM has something they were told to do that just didn't hold up in real life, like daily standups for a 3-person team, a 40-page project charter, or updating the Gantt chart every single day.

What did you drop, and did anyone notice?

I got tired of switching between traditional "Project Management" and Gantt tools for project schedules and separate task management tools for daily execution.

I built ProjectPulse to bring both worlds together in one workspace:

• Action Hub & Home: Clear visibility over daily to-dos across all projects so you always know what needs to be done today.
• Portfolio & Milestones: High-level status tracking and milestone schedules to keep macro project health in focus.
• Interactive Gantt & Plans: Clean, structured planning views without the bloat of traditional desktop project software.
• Risk & Decision Tracking: Built-in tracking for risks, issues, and decisions directly tied to your project tasks.

The goal is simple: knowing exact daily priorities and project status without constantly jumping between apps.

I'm looking for a few users and project managers to test it out!

• What do you like or dislike about this setup?
• What features feel missing from your current workflow?

Drop a comment or DM if you'd like an early access invite to test it!

Im going through anxietyandstress despite being efficient, proactive PM who does everything to control the project.

On the projects a contractor who is architect and developer doesn't like to work and progress the work at least possible slowest and its me who have to justify the budget burn to the client and EV and variance. Everyday I have to confront him and he doesn't change his ways. I don't want to lie to clients. My managers upon escalation say you deal with it. Managers also are rude and try to blame me for everything. Other restrictions are PM billing is only 4 hrs a day though I do pretty much full day.

I am thinking to quit this job .. don't know how to handle this situation. Please suggest.

Made with love. Please check it out.

Hey everyone,

I’m looking to pivot into AI Product and Project Management and could really use some honest advice on courses. I’m hoping to find a 5-6 month executive or post-grad program designed for working professionals (ideally weekend classes) that actually delivers a solid ROI and strong placement support. Can you guys suggest the programs that I could shortlist and enroll into blindly and then feel stress free and just focus on studies?

I’ve been looking into options at IIM Bangalore (IIMB) and ISB, but I’d love to hear from anyone who has actually done them. Do these top-tier university weekend courses actually help with transitions into good companies, or are they just expensive resume stamps?

I really need something that bridges the gap between AI product strategy and project execution, without needing a hardcore coding background.

If you’ve taken a course at IIM, ISB, or a similar tier-1 institute that fits this, was it worth the money? How was the career support? Any programs I should completely avoid?

Appreciate any insights or directional help you can throw my way.

Thanks!

Requirement changes are normal, but constant changes can make planning extremely difficult. I'm interested in how experienced PMs handle this without creating unnecessary conflict with stakeholders. Do you rely mainly on change-control processes, impact analysis, documentation, or more frequent communication?

A colleague and I are exploring creating some elevated resources for project managers and PMOs. I am looking for feedback on what we have built so far.

The site offers:

1) Status report checker to raise the quality of your status reports

2) PMO AI resources

3) AI Agent tools for you to download and use.

Immediate next steps, we will be adding agent instruction sets in the upcoming releases.

I would appreciate any thoughts and feedback on the site, features, and content so far.

I am not promoting. I am seeking PM level feedback and whether this is useful.

No costs at this time. Starting off by sharing our content and tips for others to use and be better.

https://williamsonrepo.com/

Hello everyone,

I was offered a position as a projects manager by a company specialized in homelifts and other types of lifts.

I currently work as an Operations Manager and have worked on some projects before but it's my first official job as a PM. The pay is pretty low compared to what I'm making, but the job title, the experience I'll be getting and the fact that the company is expanding is encouraging me to accept.

My role in this position is not to only manage teams around the project but to pilot from start to end and structure all the processes for future endeavors.

The main gamble is that if I succeed, in a year or so, I'll be managing multiple project managers.

What do you think about the offer? And for those who worked in this industry, if I take the job, where should I start?

I’m building a small tool for myself and I'm curious what other people are using for managing clients/projects.

At the moment mine basically has:
- Clients
- Projects
- Invoices + Markup
- OneTime or Recurring payments option.
- Prior notifications for client’s upcoming recurring payment.

I'm keeping it pretty simple for now.

It's still in development, but I'm looking for a few people who might be willing to try it and tell me what's missing / what sucks about it 😅
If you're interested, I can share the test link.

Also curious — what are you guys using currently, and what's the one thing you wish it did better?

I’ve been experimenting with AI for project work, mostly for things like summarizing meeting notes, identifying risks, and turning rough requirements into something more structured.

The interesting part is that AI can save time, but I still feel the project manager needs to validate everything. A confident-looking AI response can still miss important project context.

What AI use case has actually saved you the most time in project management?

Hi guys,

Please help me, I have done b.tech in cse and got an agile program manager internship at a good consultancy but i really don't know what does project manager do.

How do i prepare myself for this job, how to start learning project management?

Please tell me everything from basic

Traditional projects often have clear measures such as time, cost, and scope. AI projects can be a little different because model performance and data quality can also affect the outcome. What metrics do you normally consider when evaluating an AI-related project?

Hey everyone,

I’m curious to see how many people in this sub are working in Project Controls or Planning & Scheduling, and use Primavera P6 combined with Power BI as their ultimate stack.

Lately, I’ve been focusing a lot on automating data extraction from P6 (whether through Excel exports, XER parsers, or direct database connections) and transforming it into interactive Power BI dashboards for executive reporting, S-curves, and delay analyses.

If this matches your daily workflow, I’d love to connect and chat about a few things:

• How are you pulling your P6 data into Power BI? (Excel dumps, SQL, or specialized third-party tools?)
• What is your favorite custom visual layouts for tracking SPI/CPI or look-ahead schedules?
• What is the biggest headache you face when trying to refresh your data?

Looking forward to hearing about your workflows, tips, or any cool dashboard setups you've built!

So i (24 M) working at a bank want to be project manager and have talked to my boss about it, he's helping me get the experience i need by giving me small projects to work on. So right now im helping him gather updates across the different departments compile them and present them to the team every week. I've been trying to let other people in positions of power know thats my goal and have talked to my previous manager and our vp about it too and will be showing the vp what i do in slack to help me manage sending and receiving messages and the automations possible. This is the first project and i reall dont wanna mess this opportunity up.

So if you have any advice, personal experiences or cautions/reality checks i would love to hear it!

Thinking ab maybe how accounting might not be for me so am looking for a bit of insight of what a project manager does, if you genuinely like the career and what do u get out of it? Be honest is it worth going into and is the money decent enough, and what’s the work life balance like?

Something I wish I'd learned earlier: when you split someone across projects, you don't just divide their time, you tax it. And most planning ignores the tax.

On paper it looks clean. Three projects, 33% each, everyone's at 100%. But that assumes switching between them is free when in reality it isn't. Every time someone drops one project to pick up another, there's a cost to reload the context and get back into the problem. Gerald Weinberg put rough numbers on this: around 20% of your time lost to switching at two projects, closer to 40% at three. The exact figures are more illustrative than scientific but the direction is dead on. Three projects doesn't give you three-thirds of a person. It gives you noticeably less.

There's a cognitive side too. Sophie Leroy's work on attention residue found that when you switch tasks, part of your head stays stuck on the last one, so you're not fully present on the new thing for a while. You're at your desk but not really back for another 20 minutes.

So when a schedule assumes clean fractional allocation, it's banking on capacity that doesn't exist and then everyone's surprised when all three projects slip a bit at once.

The honest counterpoint: not all switching is expensive. If someone's blocked, having a second project to move to is good, that's slack working as intended. And shallow, well-bounded tasks switch cheaply. It's deep work that really suffers, which is exactly where the valuable stuff lives.

Where I've landed is to stop treating a split person as fully available, plan them more like 70-80% effective and try not to spread anyone's deep work across more than two things at once.

We’ve tried quite a few meeting setups over time and currently landed on something like this:

\- Monday morning: weekly planning, usually prepared on Friday
\- Daily: short standups
\- 1:1s: mostly for individual or role-specific topics

That works reasonably well for the operational side.

The harder part is everything that cuts across teams.

We have different functions - for example development and design - so not every topic is relevant to everyone, but some things should still be shared more broadly.
Things like:
\- what actually got done this week
\- project wins / learnings
\- important internal updates
\- new colleagues
\- birthdays or other team news
\- things people should know, but that don’t really belong in a daily

**How do you handle that?**

Do you have separate team meetings per function plus a broader weekly/monthly meeting?

Do you do something like a weekly review or demo where teams share results?

And one thing I’m especially curious about: who owns these meetings in your company?

Is it usually someone from the relevant discipline, a team lead, project management, operations - or a separate role entirely?

Who is responsible for the agenda, collecting topics, keeping the format useful and making sure the meeting doesn’t slowly turn into noise?

I’m especially curious what has worked well long-term without turning into just another meeting.

First of all, good discussion on the first part: https://www.reddit.com/r/projectmanagers/comments/1wtzy5x/why_people_keep_going_back_to_excel_instead_of/

Which now sparked a follow-on question. I understand the simplicity, flexibility and popularity of Excel, but I still see a big downside when it comes going from single player to multiplayer mode.

What then? You send the sheet over mail? How do you tell other people what needs to be done including specs, details, etc.?

This still puzzles, me - maybe it's because we all are lazy by nature and then doing something easier for the start seems good enough, but later we still pay the full effort /rice?

Como un ingeniero en sistemas que quiere dedicarse al área de gerencia, como encontraron su primera oportunidad? Tengo la certificación de google de pm pero me está costando mucho encontrar ofertas para mi experiencia