How This Professional Services Manager Turned a Peer’s Struggle into Success with a Simple Act of Ownership

Tell you about a situation in my current role as technical project manager at IHS Market. Uh, I've been in this role for 3 years, and I was hired, uh, at the same time of this peer that I'm gonna tell you about. This peer had a little trouble figuring out a, a tool called Planview, and it was a project management tool and also a bit of a portfolio management tool. And it was new to both myself and this individual. I caught on pretty quick with it and gave this person who at the time sat next to me, uh, extra coordination, extra time after work to go through different setups of different projects in plan view so that he could be more successful. Um, this, this was something I just would do for, for a teammate or a partner. This wasn't someone I considered a competitor, but rather someone who was coming on board and, and trying to get on board, uh, in a new organization and be successful. That person is very comfortable with the tool now of running projects successfully, uh, and, and interestingly, the, the tool Plan view has been retired and we simply have gone back to Microsoft Project, um, but looking out for a teammate like that is, is pretty common, common thing for me to do.

Well, thank you for that. Um, to get into a little bit more detail, um, the, the details of Planview are, are separate from, uh, what we might think of in typical project management or Microsoft's parlance. In Planview, you have to actually make two entries for every task. So, if one of the tasks, for example, was going to be, um, create a requirements document, There need to be two entries for that task, one for the actual tracking of reporting of the duration and the time at the p.m. level, but then a second one that was handled a slightly different way for reporting purposes and sent up through Power BI. It was the trickiness of handling almost two versions of the project that this particular guy needed some help with. And again, it was just a click, a click of the mind, enough practice on setting up a few practice projects that enabled him to eventually get it, so that his reports looked well and, and went, did well in Power BI. Um, but he also was able to keep local control and management of the project. Um. With that other side of it. Hope that helps.

It was, uh, a solicited, uh, request for help from this guy. Which I, I kind of feel good about because, you know, we hadn't known each other for too long, um, but this was a situation where we were both trying to fit in with the company and be successful. And so, he checked in with me and I said, sure, let's try it out. It wasn't a situation where um his performance or uh anything he couldn't understand or pick up was at, was at issue. It was, it was simply uh helping someone out.

The end result of that interaction was, uh, there were a few follow-ups, but now this individual, uh, learned the tool and is successfully using it for project management in the company for his assigned projects. As I did mention though, about 3 years, uh, I've I've been with the company 3 years, and, and for a short time, uh, this was the main tool, but it just has been retired. So, it's interesting that The tools come and go. Uh, but if that person needed my help again, uh, I would quickly, quickly provide it.