I thought hiring a full-time project manager was a waste of money

For the first two years, I ran my 5-person agency and handled all the client schedules myself. I was sure a PM was just overhead. Then last quarter, we missed a deadline for a big client in Austin and almost lost the account. My lead dev finally said, 'Ben, you're the bottleneck.' I hired a PM three months ago and our on-time delivery rate jumped from 65% to 95%. Has anyone else been this wrong about a hire?

3 comments

3 Comments

skylerr2322d ago

Turns out the "waste of money" was the money we kept losing on late projects.

felix_nelson891mo ago

Oh man, that hits close to home. I was the same way with a bookkeeper (you know, thinking I could just do it myself on weekends). Turns out my version of "bookkeeping" was a shoebox full of receipts and a lot of hopeful guessing. Letting go of that control was painful but wow, what a difference it makes when someone who actually knows what they're doing takes over.

lee3521mo ago

See, @felix_nelson89, I get the relief of handing it off, but I still do my own books. It's not about the shoebox, it's about knowing every dollar. I use a simple spreadsheet, update it every Friday with my bank app open. When you see the numbers yourself, you spot problems way faster, like a regular fuel charge that suddenly doubled last month.