It is inevitable, at some point in your project you will have that moment that it hits you. Whether you are the project sponsor, a team member, or a key stakeholder, at some point you will say to yourself, “Oh, shoot! This is really happening!” At that point, your adrenaline kicks in and your brain goes frenetic, thinking about all the things that need to get done – or that you, specifically, need to do – for the project to be successful.

This moment – the “Oh, shoot!” moment – does not hit everyone at the same time or with the same severity. However, it does hit.

How do you handle it? Optimally, you would write down everything that is preoccupying you and discuss with your Project Manager. Going it alone or building a better mousetrap normally does not address the issue in a way that is productive to the project or beneficial to your sanity. And consider this: Everyone will have this moment. Is it optimal for everyone to be addressing it on their own? Not really, because no one on the team really knows how their actions are impacting each other.

Solving That Moment

Your project manager is not immune to the “Oh, shoot!” moment. However, if they do what comes pretty naturally to them, they have enough information in place to address this moment for themselves, you, and your team members. They will help address that moment in a way that tamps down stress and helps resolve your concerns.

I worked with a Finance director who was also the project sponsor, who had their moment about a month before project deployment. She arrived with a flurry of new requirements, some of them critical, others not so much. With this stakeholder, I was able to restructure the project from a Waterfall approach to a hybrid-Agile approach so the team could address her new key requirements and implement as expected. Turns out that this was a normal occurrence for her, no matter who was the project manager or what development approach was implemented. My experience with this stakeholder benefited a project manager that later worked on one of her projects.

Who knows when your moment will hit? Depending on the project, your level of involvement, and its impact on you and your team, it could vary. In any event, you have an asset at your disposal whose role is to help you mitigate issues and get things done. That would be your project manager.

To learn more about how to best address your “Oh, shoot!” moments, contact us at [email protected].