My First Week

  I created this blog with the intention to track my progress as a PM. So recently I decided to switch careers, after almost 20 years working as a DB/Web Developer I decided to transition into a more business role.
  There are many reasons about my decision, but maybe if you are reading this, you might find yourself agreeing with this idea, as I was getting older it seems like the world around me was going faster than I was and I couldn't keep up with it and by this I mean that my ability to learn new platforms and products didn't seem as sharp as it used to.

Why was it important for me to make this transition?

  Well, here it comes the part that I want to write to be memorialized forever on the internet. I have been a systems oriented guy since I was in high school, I was good at programming and better at resolving logical problems but I had an instinct about business that not a lot people have (at least that is what I have been told by many peers) and also I can connect multiple dots at the same time and I'm able to see how those dots affect a business now and how they will affect them in the future. If you think this is you, maybe this blog might help you out as you join me in my new journey / experience.

...Now what

  This week I started at Vaxcare as a Platform Product Manager and I can't be more excited, this place seems to be a perfect opportunity to start a new career and the position it is a good fit for a 'new' PM with lots of programming technical skills and I want to believe that is the reason why they hired me, we shall see 6 months from now, maybe in 6 months I will be reading this and saying to myself: "What was I thinking!?" or maybe not.

  So for starters, before I took the offer I researched as much as I could about the position and I couldn't find anything specific about what is the role of a PM, some said it was a lot like a Business Analyst and others said that it felt like a Sales position, just from my first week I feel like is neither and maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but that is how I feel about it.
  After searching for many videos, this is the one video that summarized it in the best way possible, at least for me: LINK.

What it takes to be a PM?

  I have gathered enough information in this past week to understand my role and how much importance has this position for the company that I worked for that they are willing to pay a FT salary for it.
  A PM is the one that holds all the pieces together for any specific project, software solution or even an idea. When I say: "hold all the pieces together" it means exactly that. A PM is responsible to create, analyze, review and review and review, plan and bring the development of a task to the point of accomplishment. In order to place it into perspective, you are the one responsible for making sure all things get accomplished and you are responsible to bring as many tools, answers and questions to the table in order for a task to be performed by any given team.
  So, if you are looking to be a PM in the future, you need to have a good personality, some sort of sixth-sense that you are able to recognize upcoming bumps, you will also need to be organized and able to communicate your thoughts and ideas (in my case it takes a lot of IT knowledge) and at least some sort of understanding on how Project Management solutions work (you will need to do some research on this matter because it varies for every company), in my case I have enough knowledge in SQL Server, Jira, TFS and VisualStudio/C#/JSON/JQuery that I'm able to understand when our developers talk about a specific task.
  Now, all of these (I know it is a lot) does not represent every PM job, but at least it gives you an idea of what is to come.

  I think I have written enough but just one final thought and this is to myself: "Remember to put every single piece information together, chew it all and then present each piece with enough clarity that a 10 year old will be able to understand it" -- A. Calle


  Hopefully, I will still have my job by next Friday. See you then! :-)







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