Main Responsibilities of a Project Manager at Vaelynn Studios

I guess I leaned a little bit on that in the previous question, but to go a little deeper into the day-to-day, I typically have my daily standups as one of the first meetings in the morning. So the current sprint team, which includes the developers and the product manager, and sometimes a few functional managers who need to be in the know, usually attend.

That's a 20-minute meeting where we discuss for every person attending: "What did you accomplish yesterday? What are you working on today?" We do this for every single task we manage in Azure DevOps. Similar tools would be something like Jira, which more people might be familiar with, but it's essentially a sprint board that we use and manage.

Depending on the outcomes of those meetings, like today, for example, there was a follow-up from one of the developers needing to get the data structure right for an import project we have going on. We are migrating from our current website to a newer website running a new tech stack.

In the daily standup, for example, it came out that a developer was working on thumbnails for new files for a resource directory. Because of my extensive Excel knowledge, I suggested considering X, Y, and Z. These were more technical things than I can cover here.

She then asked if I had five to ten minutes to go through it, and if I was willing to help. I said, "Sure, why not? I have nothing better to do." So, she and I sat together and figured out the logic to ensure these new thumbnails related properly to the corresponding files.

Once all the files are uploaded, we need to handle a mess of thousands of files. There's no practical way for a human to go into WordPress and individually associate an image with each resource. It would take forever. We need to make sure we automate this securely.

In this instance, I didn't do the funding conversion or any of the website work myself, like I might have done a few years ago. Instead, as a project manager and scrum master, my role is to enable the developer to do their job. So, I sat with the developer and we worked out a formula to name these thumbnails in a way that allows them to upload automatically.

I see myself as a consultant. It's about understanding where the developer, product owner, or stakeholder is struggling, bringing clarity, being a sounding board, working through problems, and, more importantly, figuring out a solution.

Depending on the day, there might be afternoon meetings like backlog grooming or planning sessions. Towards the end of the sprint, we review what we've accomplished and discuss what we want to get done in the next two weeks when a new sprint starts. Other than that, there are occasional special project meetings, like sitting down for half an hour every week about an initiative we hope to wrap up around June or July.

My individual contribution usually results in updating tickets, updating files, or providing input when needed. For example, sending an email to a stakeholder with an open question from the developer: "How should this work? Should it work like scenario A, scenario B, or something completely else?"

Mostly, 80 to 90% of my day-to-day responsibilities involve communication, clearing up ambiguities, and making sure we have a path forward.