In this chapter I describe a typical day in the life of an IT project manager.

7.45 a.m. I arrive at my desk. I don’t have to be in so early, but I enjoy getting ahead for the day and having time before the rest of the team arrives to plan what needs to get done today. Plus, I avoid the rush hour crush on the train and I get to leave a little earlier normally. One of the great things about project management work is that it is so flexible. As long as your employer is happy that they are seeing the results, you can do the job from broadly anywhere.

The downside is that I have to get up incredibly early to be here at this time, so I browse my emails while I have some breakfast and then clean my teeth and put my make up on in the toilets. The glamour! Luckily there’s virtually no one around this early so no one knows this is my normal morning routine.

8.45 a.m. I have a project board meeting at 9.00 a.m., so I make sure I have all the papers that I need. I check I have the conference call organiser pin code so I can dial in the people who aren’t in the office. I also need a copy of my project board report and the agenda, which I use to check off who has turned up and annotate the actions from last time.

Many of my colleagues work electronically, taking minutes as they go on a laptop, but I have never got into the habit of doing that, preferring to take notes on paper and then type them up, making clarity from the chaos in my notebook. Also, I know we are meeting in my project sponsor’s office and the set up in there isn’t great for projecting a presentation or taking notes on a laptop.

9.00 a.m. The project board meeting begins. We’re quite early on in formulating this project and the first discussion is around the project scope. There are some queries around how I have documented it, and whether each individual item is in the correct workstream. We also need to get clarity on the workstream owners. My project sponsor chairs the meeting while I take notes and chip in as required.

We move on to discuss the project board report I put together in advance of the meeting. I try to circulate papers for the meeting at least three days in advance so that people have time to read them, and by default we only talk about things that aren’t in the report so we don’t have the creeping death of going round the room and everyone giving an update.

Today, though, because it’s one of the first project board meetings we’ve had, we do spend a lot of time discussing progress so that everyone is on the same page. I get some clarity around when people are going to do things, which will help me build out a high level Gantt chart for the next meeting. We don’t talk about project cost because we run out of time, and we skip over risks and issues – this is a standing agenda item but because we’ve amended the scope and moved on with the progress, many of the risks on the report need updating before it’s worth talking about them.

I quietly send an email to the person I’m supposed to be meeting at 10 a.m., saying that I’m going to be late.

We wrap up with a quick review of the actions from the last meeting, and find that we’ve covered most of them already. That’s why it’s handy to do actions at the end of the agenda.

Finally, I confirm the next meeting date with everyone. I have meeting times provisionally booked in my sponsor’s diary until the end of the year as she is incredibly busy, and I need to send those same slots out to everyone else so they can also keep the times free.

10.30 a.m. I am late to my next meeting as the project board overran. I am managing two projects at the moment, and this next meeting is with my other project sponsor. He’s fine about it, and I’m glad I was able to warn him.

It’s quite hard switching from one project to another, but this project has been going for a while and I know it really well. We talk about a major issue with a database that has happened this week and conclude we need some input from the legal team.

We are at a technical junction in the project. We have approval to continue down one technical path, but having further fleshed out the requirements and the solution for that, we’ve uncovered huge issues that would make it impractical to continue. The project team had a workshop about what to do a fortnight ago, and I’ve written up the output from that into an options paper. I’ve given my sponsor three options and put forward a recommendation.

We discuss the rationale behind the thinking and he agrees with my recommendation for the technical solution, with the caveat that he wants more investigation into a certain point. I’m not convinced we can get any closer to what he really wants as there are process, regulatory and technical issues all involved. But I say that I’ll talk to the team again.

In most cases, I don’t like saying that we can’t do something. In IT, with enough money and time we can do pretty much anything. But this is a system change with huge operational implications so as well as the technical stuff I’m also considering the impact of the business change, and that’s where the pressure is. In the end, it’s his decision and I can only advise what is most likely to be acceptable to end users, practical and cost-effective to build.

At 11.00 a.m. he has to go to another meeting, so I pass by my manager’s desk just to check in and say ‘hi’.

Back at my desk I catch up on emails from the morning, and send a few myself regarding information I’ve been asked for in the course of the morning. Then I spend some time working through the major issue so I really understand what is going on – I’ve got four spreadsheets open and the data visualisation software. I’m not a data analyst by any stretch but needs must. I often find myself doing a task that wouldn’t normally be the project manager’s role, but in the absence of anyone else with time to do it, it’s important to be able to pitch in to keep things moving. Fortunately, right now that seems to be happening less and less.

12.15 p.m. Time for a bit of lunch. I try to get out of the office just to get some fresh air, so I walk to the sandwich shop to buy something to eat.

I still end up eating it at my desk though.

1.00 p.m. I have a pressurised afternoon as I’m going on holiday tomorrow, so I need to be sure that I’m focusing my efforts on what’s important for today. I quickly review my To Do list and realise that I haven’t prepared the agenda and project dashboard for a meeting next week. I get that ready to send, but I’m interrupted by a colleague asking me about an application program interface (API) issue on a project that was flagged in 2015.

I go through my email archive to see what the conversations were at the time and manage to find something that will help her.

Then the technical lead on one of my projects stops by my desk. He’s been on holiday for two weeks, so I catch him up, particularly around the database issue as it’s his team who is responsible for this – at least for now. Longer term it will be handed over to a different area, and it’s becoming pressing that we get them involved sooner rather than later so they can help out now. He goes away to pick this up.

I take some calls – one from the legal team, others from my project team members. They are all quick, and they all keep the project moving, but together they do take up some time.

I don’t manage to get the meeting agenda and other papers out before my next meeting, or update my issue log with the latest on that database problem.

3.00 p.m. I’m in an internal meeting, chaired by the Project Office, with a number of senior leaders and project and programme managers. The purpose is to look over the strategic projects and ensure we understand current dependencies. A lot of the technical work has overlaps in other areas, or on similar customer groups, so it’s important that the whole thing is looked at in the round. I do speak to my fellow project and programme managers, but this forum is a good one for making sure everything is transparent.

We share our project timelines and the areas that are impacted, with a view to highlighting where the pinch points will be for our teams. There are a couple of areas where I now know my projects will be impacting, so I can update everyone on those.

This meeting finishes early, so I’m able to get my meeting papers out before my holiday.

4.45 p.m. I leave for the train. At the station I return a phone call from an unhappy project stakeholder. I’ve sent out some information which I can stand by, but he feels should be showing a different picture. It’s not actually his area so neither he nor I can particularly influence the data. We agree to bring this up at the project steering group next week.

On the train I review the emails I didn’t get a chance to respond to. There’s nothing that can’t wait until I’m back from my short break. I try to keep my inbox to under 100 messages and today I’m on around 70 so I’m happy.

I will check my emails later that evening too, and put on my out of office message so people know where I am and when I will be back.

It has been a varied, but average day. A lot of the time has been taken up with stakeholder meetings and talking to my team members, clarifying complex problems for people and making a multitude of small decisions that help keep my projects on track. I haven’t looked at my project schedules once, but I have been managing my projects all day.