Andy Oakley

16 countries, 7% of the world. 10 states, 19% of the US.So much more to see.Create your own visited country map.

16 countries, 7% of the world. 10 states, 19% of the US.So much more to see.Create your own visited country map.

One of the hardest questions I find myself having to answer outside of work is ‘what do you do?’. Chris Pratley takes a shot at it:

I’m not sure where this saying came from originally, but one way to describe PMs is that they not only "pick up and run with the ball, they go find the ball". That really defines the difference between "knowing what to do and doing it", and "not knowing what to do, but using your own wits to decide what to do, then doing it". That means as a PM you are constantly strategizing and rethinking what is going on to find out if there is something you are missing, or the team is missing. You’re also constantly deciding what is important to do, and whether action needs to be taken. The number of such decisions is staggering. I might make 50 a day, sometimes more than 100 or even 200. Most of the time there is not nearly enough hard data to say for certain what to do, and in any case almost all these decisions could never have hard data anyway - you need to apply concentration and clear thinking.

I don’t know how anyone could resist taking a job with that description. Despite, or because of, all the schedules, meetings, project plans and specs, this is where it’s at.

One of the hardest questions I find myself having to answer outside of work is ‘what do you do?’. Chris Pratley takes a shot at it:

I’m not sure where this saying came from originally, but one way to describe PMs is that they not only "pick up and run with the ball, they go find the ball". That really defines the difference between "knowing what to do and doing it", and "not knowing what to do, but using your own wits to decide what to do, then doing it". That means as a PM you are constantly strategizing and rethinking what is going on to find out if there is something you are missing, or the team is missing. You’re also constantly deciding what is important to do, and whether action needs to be taken. The number of such decisions is staggering. I might make 50 a day, sometimes more than 100 or even 200. Most of the time there is not nearly enough hard data to say for certain what to do, and in any case almost all these decisions could never have hard data anyway - you need to apply concentration and clear thinking.

I don’t know how anyone could resist taking a job with that description. Despite, or because of, all the schedules, meetings, project plans and specs, this is where it’s at.

Again hiding behind the ‘too busy but this is cool’ excuse, here’s a great zip code visualizer.

Again hiding behind the ‘too busy but this is cool’ excuse, here’s a great zip code visualizer.