Driving Toward Clarity

Now we’ll cover how the various tools in our technical toolset enhance our ability to manage projects and programs. We’ve discussed each of the key management areas in this course through various lenses and have touched on the challenges we face in the technical space. We also talked about the technical toolset, which consists of code expectations, system design, and architectural landscape design. Now, we’ll cover each of the intersections of the technical toolset and the key management areas and, lastly, explore how the toolset will also help us be a better leader in our organization.

We’ll explore how to enhance management with the technical toolset in the following ways:

• Driving toward clarity

• Resolving conflicts

• Delivering through leadership

Let’s dive in!

Overview

A TPM is an extension of a program manager and, as such, the role shares the trait of driving toward clarity. However, our technical toolset allows us to use specialized tools to tackle technical problems that would leave a non-technical PM struggling to process them. We speak the same language—quite literally—as the people who are delivering the project and can bridge the gap between technical and business jargon. We’ve talked about driving clarity in various stages of a project and have discussed the technical tools TPMs use. Now, let’s see how these two concepts help each other. We’ll review each key management area, from planning and risk management to stakeholders and communications.

Planning

During the planning stage, all three technical skills we’ve discussed are used. We’ll go through each of these technical skills across three steps in the planning process: requirements analysis, project plan creation, and feature design. The figure below shows the overlap between the planning process and the technical toolset: