Serving as a Project Lead: 5 Essential Takeaways

I want to share several learnings from my experience over the past three months of serving as a project lead for the first time. It was both an exciting and, at times, a stressful period, but overall a wonderful opportunity to deliver software not just from an engineer’s perspective but also as a project manager.

Understand your role

Know exactly what is being asked of you. I remember when I was told that I was going to serve as project anchor I said to myself, “Oh this will be fun,” except I didn’t take a moment to clarify what exactly that meant. I spent the beginning of the project operating under my own assumptions. Assumptions are a space where miscommunication can thrive. Even if your task is ambiguous, always try to ascertain what people are expecting of you. Take the time to talk to your manager, the product owner, or whoever is involved and ask them what they think your role is. Once you have an understanding of what people think you should be doing, you can then come up with a clear vision of what your role actually is and set expectations accordingly.