Project management is a difficult topic to learn in college. Sometimes it can take years for a developer to grow an acute instinct for project timelines. A project could take a year, a month, or a week. I think it’s difficult to get a good understanding of this at college because every project that we have to work on has the scope laid out beforehand. Let me explain, working on a project in an engineering course, you get the requirements list from the professor, and you have to slowly work your way through the requirements as the term progresses. This is different when the project scope is not defined, when you speak directly to stakeholders about what they envision the project to be, what functionalities they will need, and the timeline that they are working with.
It’s not until you spend time being a software engineer that gain a general understanding for how long it will take to move a project from the design stage to the production deployment. I learned to handle project scope and stakeholder input the hard way. Let me explain, I got a freelance job designing and deploying a simple landing page for a business back in my hometown. I met with the owner and we spoke about the functionality of his website, the UI design, and the timeline to come up with it. In general terms, he wanted to replace his Facebook page and instead have an official domain to showcase his shop.
I wrote almost everything he said that I could use to build his website. Having just Googled “10 stepsfor professional development project design” the night before meeting him. I was new to the space, and I think he knew it, but he was still generous enough to give me the chance. I wasn’t sure how long it was going to take; I think I told him three months because one of the “steps” in managing a big project like building a website from scratch said to give a longer timeline than anticipated so if you finish early it looks good. I did that and sure enough I finished a month in advance.
In college, courses where I am working on a term project feel like the most realistic scenario to what real-life project development is like. Spending time working with people is another aspect of project development that often gets overseen at college because students hate the dreaded group project. Perhaps colleges don’t do a good enough job telling students group projects are there because that is how most development projects get done in the real world.
These students are not alone, I often struggle with group projects in college and even at work. It’s difficult to manage timelines, people’s schedules, and scope creep if you add new features mid-development. Practice and patience are my best advice for those who struggle with this part of your professional development. Perhaps find a low-stake avenue where you can work on implementing a good project from start to finish to develop your own project management instinct.
