Five useful tips for a digital project manager

What is Digital Project Management?

Digital project management is a streamlined process of managing online projects from concept to completion within budget and using a certain amount of resources.

It involves, tracking, delegating, attending (lots!) of meetings, liaising between clients and developers and I repeat, lots of meetings! The goal of every project is different, but the overarching objective is to grow business and see valuable ROI from the project.

I work for an IT agency based in Cape Town but all of our clients are based in Silicon Valley and range from startup companies to some of the world's largest high-tech corporations. Below are some tips that I find useful working in my industry:

1. It probably won't be alright

Never rely on hoping for the best. If you find yourself saying ‘I think we’ll probably be fine.’ – you’re probably, not being realistic. If you, like me, want to see the best in people and trust that they will do their jobs, you will very likely get screwed over. It has happened to me time and time again. Trust no one, rely on no one, make sure shit gets done.

2. Prepare to be unpopular

Remember when you were the cool kid in high school and college? Well, that's over now. Developers will probably dislike you as you're the person dishing out the work but so be it, if the work doesn't get done, you will be the person who will have to deal with it so in this case, it's cool to be uncool.

3. Share your success with your team

We all like to be praised for our work and if a client gave positive feedback, share it with the team members who helped you reach success. There's no better motivation than to hear from someone else that you did a great job and they appreciate your work.

4. Always be honest

If you messed up, you've gotta confess man. I know it's hard, we all know it's hard, but being in the IT industry, one small mistake can lead to a pretty big mess. Clients can be assholes and one small mistake could piss them off enough that they could leave your company and look for another company to handle their site especially if you have major companies as clients. There are lots and lots of IT agencies out there looking for more work so hold on to your clients being honest and transparent at all times.

5. Be prepared to spend a lot of time behind your laptop

As I'm writing this post, it's 20:30pm in South Africa and I still have two meetings ahead of me. My day starts at 09:00 am when I get to the office and usually it ends around 22:00 due to all the meetings I have to take from home after work. That is probably the only thing that sucks about living in South Africa and all my clients being in Silicon Valley. We are a full 8 hours behind America. But anyways, it pays the bills. Just be aware of the fact that the hours can get pretty hectic ;)

If you are a project manager and would like to share some tips or even if you have any questions for me, please drop them in the comments below! I would love to hear some stories from and get to know you better!

Tina xo