Managing a Team of 10 New Hires to Deliver a Large Project

Lucas Abdala

Project Manager
Google Sheets
Slack
Zoom

Context

The client had a complex (never done before) project that they wanted done on a short notice. I had about 10 people who had just joined the company available to work on this project.

Solution

I spent a lot of my time upfront breaking down this huge project into smaller, more manageable chunks. Then, I created a Google Sheet, created several tabs and included some formulas to pull data from one another. In one of the tabs, I assigned the chunks to each of the 11 people (including me) and shared the sheet with the juniors. I also estimated a time of completion, shared the worksheet and communicated with the internal stakeholders. We had a couple of checkpoints scheduled to review the progress and clear any doubts the new hires might have, but most communication was done asynchronously through Slack.
We had to extend the deadline a bit, due to some parts of the project having dependencies (things that could only be done sequentially). Unlike some project managers would like you to believe, you can't really achieve anything just by splitting the work between a lot of people. Sometimes it's like asking if 9 women can deliver a baby in 1 month. What is important in those cases is giving the stakeholders visibility and honest feedback.
In the end, the client decided to cancel the project due to software limitations, but my employer was really impressed with how I managed the people and delivered the project with just a little delay.
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