TALES FROM THE TRENCHES

AVIVA CARMEN TOLWIN

San Jose, CA, and Southfield, MI

Senior Consultant, Microsoft

Graduated From: University of Michigan, BA; MBA; certifications: PMP, MCTS, MCP

Years in Field: 42

My Typical Day at Work

I’ve been working for Microsoft since 2014, supporting the company’s Project Server and Project Online software and also consulting in PMO setups and in program and project management. I work remotely from home. Pre-Covid, I used to travel to clients around the US.

A project manager manages projects, which can be defined as discrete bodies of work that each have a goal, deliver a product or service, and have a beginning and an end. This is distinct from operations, which are ongoing and have no end date. Companies have both projects and operations as part of their business. For example, creating software to register people for an event is a project. Reading and answering daily email would be part of operations.

A project can be broken down into the following elements:

1) tasks

2) resources (people or tools or machines)

3) estimates of how long things should take

4) dependencies across tasks (I can’t paint the wall until I build the wall)

5) budget

6) risks and issues

The responsibilities of a project manager are to create and maintain schedules or timelines that take into account the first four elements, and also to stay on top of the given budget for the project. In addition, the project manager has to be aware of any risks to the timelines or budget and communicate them to the appropriate people while thinking of ways to prevent them. It’s also important to stay on top of the quality of the project deliverables.

On a typical day, I might do any of the following tasks:

1. meet with people involved in doing work for a certain project to get their requirements (goals) for the project, identify the four elements enumerated above that we will need to get the project moving, and receive updates on the status of tasks throughout the project
2. meet with executives to inform them of the project’s progress
3. create project reports on the status of the work
4. create or maintain the project schedule
5. identify and control risks
6. uncover issues and get them resolved
7. maintain records of money spent and money remaining.

I have seven children, and each one of them, at some point during their childhood, said, “I’ll never work in computers! You just stare at a computer all day!” But, really, being a project manager isn’t really about staring at your computer all day — if you are, you’re not doing your job.

Project management is all about communication and risk management; it is an art and a science. You learn the principles and software tools, but then you need to deal with real people, creating trust so that they feel comfortable bringing problems to your awareness. You need to build a team that works well together. It is a multifaceted job that uses lots of different creative talents, including both left and right brain activities. (And by the way, fast- forward, and today my youngest daughter works for Google… uh, yeah, in “computers.”)

How I Chose the Profession

My job chose me! A friend offered me a three-month contract to support his customer in Project Server. I learned the software on the job, and that led to more opportunities supporting that software, as well as learning about project management in general. I chose to study for the PMP certification, which gave me an understanding of the framework of project management. I’d recommend getting that certification for anyone aspiring to be a project manager.

How I Chose My Specialty

My specialty is running large, global, complex programs involving hundreds of people and often a multiyear timeline. Again, the specialty chose me, as I was lucky enough to get several consulting assignments in large programs that were in chaos and needed some herding of the cats. I love making order out of chaos!

I’ve been working in the information technology field for 42 years in several different capacities. Prior to my Microsoft experience, I was a software engineer, an IT manager, and held director-level positions at several high-tech start-ups in Silicon Valley. I have led major programs at Fortune 100 companies, including a $40 million website rewrite (15 million hits per day); a $1 billion data center build and move; and a $1 billion program to move 450,000 employees to Microsoft 365.

What I Love Most about the Field

I love that every day brings new challenges. The field keeps changing, and there is always something new to learn and try. Now with the new ways of using artificial intelligence in business, the sky’s the limit as far as helping people be more productive.

What I Find Most Challenging about the Field

Sometimes people don’t have experience with the tasks they’ll be expected to perform for the project and don’t accurately estimate how long things will take. Estimating is super important in determining timeline and budget. Sometimes people quit. Or procrastinate. (People are people.) They’ll say they’re 90 percent done and what they mean is, “Oh, that? I’ve almost started.” Or 90 percent done can mean “I think I can do it in a day instead of five days, so I’ll start next week.”

I’ll Never Forget When

In one project in which we were using Microsoft Project, a scheduling software for managing projects, I noticed that a project manager’s reports were consistently showing that their projects were 100 percent on time, over a several months’ period. Amazed by this statistic, I questioned her about it.

She insisted that it was true, explaining, “I compare the Actual Finish Date to the Planned Finish Date of each task and they’re always the same!”

I pointed out to her that the way the software works is that when a task is marked as complete, the software copies the Actual Finish Date into the Planned Finish Date — so yes, they will always be the same! The correct comparison would be comparing the Actual Finish Date to the original planned finish date, or Baseline Finish Date. Sure enough, changing the formula in her report showed that, no, not every task in the project had been completed on time.

For another client, I was charged with getting 30 project managers on the same page and following our published standards. It was becoming a challenge to get them to comply with updating project schedules, so I decided to get creative. Instead of writing the same, dry weekly reminder emails, I wrote a Dr. Seuss poem, a “Love Letter to a Project Manager” and other fun emails. The project managers all laughed — and complied.

Something I Wish People Knew about Project Managers

It’s more about people than about computers. It’s not just about staying on top of tasks and timelines, but about coaching and motivating; about creating a great team that works well together, shares knowledge, brings up issues and risks, and gets things done.

How I’ve Seen the Field Change over the Years

Project managers have seen a big shift to “agile project management,” an approach to project planning that breaks the project processes into smaller sections, enabling teams and customers to work more collaboratively and react more quickly to feedback. There is less overhead as far as large complex schedules with dependencies (tasks that rely on the completion of a different task), and more focus on a simple task list with no dependencies, getting bite-sized pieces of work done quickly, demonstrating value to the customer, redoing if needed, and moving on to the next piece.

The field will change rapidly now due to AI. For example, there will be many new ways to uncover risks in projects using an AI tool called Microsoft Co-Pilot.

My Advice for People Starting Out

It’s a big challenge to find that first job. Learn, learn, learn! Then do projects. Do your own personal projects and create a portfolio of what you’ve done and what you’ve learned. A good way to get experience is to volunteer to run projects for a chesed organization.

I once sat with the manager of a kollel’s Chinese auction in our community and explained the four elements. Learning how to run a project based on the concept of tasks, resources, estimates, and dependencies changed her and her team’s life and stress level during the project. It gave them a framework for their planning spreadsheet and a way to think about the project and set deadlines properly. This is something someone starting out in the field can do as well. Offer to help. Then network with people in industry.

SHOSHANA MALKA LAMM

Jerusalem, Israel

Program Administrator, Bread for Israel

Graduated From: Bellevue University, BS in Human Services

Years in Field: 8

My Typical Day at Work

Bread for Israel is a nonprofit organization that gives out bread across the country. We work with three large bakeries and distribute bread to 296 locations, giving out over 385,000 loaves per month. We team up with local tzedakah funds in many communities to ascertain that the bread is going where it’s needed most. My role is to make the orders, follow up with our volunteers, handle incoming requests to receive bread from the organization, and manage the team.

I have two staff members working under me; one does the bookkeeping and the other the donor communication. I review different aspects of their work and approve and help with whatever they are working on, like the monthly newsletter, the account balance sheets, etc. We’ve set up systems to keep track of all the moving parts, hiring consultants for some of the set-up process. We use Google Workspace — Sheets and Forms, primarily — Salesforce as our CRM (customer relationship management system), and MailChimp for communicating with our donor base.

How I Chose the Profession

I fell into this job by accident. I had experience volunteering for nonprofits in the past, but at the time I started working at Bread for Israel, I was doing medical billing and not looking for a job. Meanwhile, my friend started working as a project manager for the organization and found the role too overwhelming. The hours were not set, and a lot of the systems and processes were not yet in place. She asked me to help her find someone to replace her, so I started telling everyone about this job. The more I tried convincing other people to do it, the more the idea grew on me until I decided to give it a try myself!

I had the requisite experience from previous nonprofit work. I had coordinated the local yearly Melaveh Malkah event for women in Sanhedria Murchevet for two years prior to taking the job and was writing weekly articles for a shalom bayis nonprofit’s newsletter. I had also done volunteer office work for JEP Long Island before I moved to Israel.

In addition, my degree in human services gave me some training and familiarity with the field.

Everything that sounded daunting to others sounded fascinating and exciting to me. I loved the idea of setting systems up from scratch, of having a flexible albeit constantly on-call schedule, and having the opportunity to give on a large scale, even with the responsibility that entails.

My job is very much around the clock. I’m not working every minute, but I need to be available throughout the day. Since I’m in Israel and the donors are mostly based in the US, I’ll often get late-night calls and emails with questions. I also have a deadline for getting the orders in and depending on the week, I can sometimes be up late trying to wrap up the order, especially during weeks when there are a lot of changes, such as during bein hazmanim vacation times.

It helps that I’m more of a night owl and I can handle these hours!

I enjoy multitasking, and I can easily segue from one thing to the next. When I was younger, I was always the one to arrange class parties; I would have loved to be a party planner, but I don’t have a good eye for color. Distributing thousands of loaves of bread is essentially planning a party for families across Israel, day in and day out, with all the action and excitement of a party planner — but it’s all in brown, so no talent for color coordination required!

What I Love Most about the Field

I love to see the impact we are making. People in Israel treat bread as a staple food like macaroni or pizza might be for Americans. Many families eat bread for breakfast and dinner, and children are required to bring a sandwich to school. We get constant requests to open new locations and to add more bread to existing distribution sites. We also receive incredibly thoughtful and beautiful thank-you messages.

Two weeks ago, the bakery canceled a bunch of orders because a conveyor belt leading into the oven broke after they’d made only 4,000 loaves of bread. We had to scramble to reschedule over 20,500 loaves, trying to get the loaves out later that same week. Hearing the disappointment from the people who didn’t receive bread that day and seeing the number of calls each volunteer received wondering why their bread hadn’t come gave me a newfound appreciation for what a difference the bread makes and how much people rely on it.

What I Find Most Challenging about the Field

On a personal level, I’ve needed to learn to be firm and assertive, not just a sweet American. If I want to get something done, I have to be clear and strong. It’s not just myself I’m representing, but thousands of families, as well as the donors who have invested top dollar in keeping the organization going. When working with the bakeries and the volunteers, I try to keep that knowledge front and center.

I think for myself the hardest challenge is the times when we aren’t able to distribute to every location at once, such as the first week after Pesach, when the bakeries are overloaded from the countrywide demand and can only take so many orders. Having to pick and choose which places need it more is a horrible feeling. I hate having to decide who needs bread most and who will have to go without.

I’ll Never Forget When

A volunteer came over to deliver a check within hours of when I got home from the hospital with my newborn son. I immediately emailed to the office the amount of the check. Well, months later we discovered a discrepancy. Turns out, it wasn’t a donation of NIS 1,000, as I’d written, but of NIS 10,000 — a small missing zero that was pretty major. That’s what happens when a kimpeturin is trying to manage a project!

In my line of work, I’m always hearing heartwarming stories about how much we’ve helped others. For example, one of our distribution managers in the Kiryat Herzog neighborhood of Bnei Brak related that he once bumped into a man in his neighborhood whom he knew was on the community tzedakah lists and told him about our biweekly bread distribution that would be taking place that day. He said that this man literally had tears in his eyes when he heard about this.

He said he was on his way back from the makolet where he’d gone to buy bread for his family, and the store owner had regretfully informed he that he couldn’t extend him any more credit.

“Here I was trying to figure out how to tell my family that there was no bread… and then you came along!’

Something I Wish People Knew About Project Managers

That you need excellent interpersonal skills. I’m dealing with people all day long. Sometimes I’m trying to calm someone down, sometimes I’m trying to stand up for the organization’s rights, and sometimes I’m trying to be persuasive. Always, I try to be kind and warm. I have to put aside what’s going on in my personal life and be fully emotionally present with a clear head and a listening ear.

How I’ve Seen the Field Change over the Years

Over time, new online tools have emerged that make project management easier. We’ve started using Trello for managing our workflow. In addition, the countless crowdfunding platforms available today, including a plethora of options in the frum world, have made the technicalities of fundraising much, much easier. Since Covid, it’s become so much more accepted and comfortable for everyone to meet via Zoom or Google Meets, which saves a lot of time and traveling. Today it’s easy to jump on a meeting, share our screens and work through an issue.

My Advice for People Starting Out

There are a wide range of responsibilities associated with the job, and you shouldn’t be afraid to get assistance when needed. At first, I was doing everything myself, but over time, we hired more employees and I was able to offload some of the work. I used to spend too much time doing what I was not good at; now I feel that I am really using my skill set and doing what I’m passionate about while allowing others to do what they are great at as well. I wish I had asked to hire additional employees earlier on.

MOTTY REISZ

Monsey, NY

Director of Operations, Ptex Group

Graduated From: Path Center, Israel; LMHC in Clinical Psychology

Years in Field: 4

My Typical Day at Work

As director of operations for Ptex Group, a marketing and branding agency, my responsibility is to make sure all projects run smoothly. While our clients span the spectrum of product-based and service-based businesses, a large segment of our clients are now in the real estate, health care, and CPG (consumer packaged goods) categories. What they all have in common is that they are mainly invested in their company’s “next” — in moving their business to its next level of growth.

A typical project involves developing a client’s brand identity or marketing campaign. This usually begins with a kickoff call on which we do the bulk of the intake, and then a series of presentations in which we present our work in phases.

What does it mean for a project to run smoothly? A metric we often use to measure the success of our operations is “Happy team, happy clients, and happy bank.”

A happy team means that everyone knows what they are working on and has all they need to succeed in their projects. There is a very subtle difference between having a lot to do — which can feel exciting and fulfilling — or feeling overwhelmed, which is stressful. Often the difference is in the attitude and approach to the task at hand. The project leader can play a huge role in creating this attitude, so it’s important to stay positive and calm no matter how hectic things become.

Clients are typically happy when the work matches their expectations and when they feel the team is fully dedicated to their success.

The creative team is tasked with solving clients’ challenges through creative and effective work.

The project leader supports this process by

1. ensuring the team can focus on their task at hand
2. ensuring the client understands what is needed and what is being developed, and
3. keeping track of the project timelines.

A “happy bank” means that the company is financially healthy. Typically, this is a result of a happy team (that produces quality work in a timely manner) and happy clients (who keep coming back, and referring other clients).

However, in order to ensure financial health, the director of operations often advises the sales team on what projects to focus on, what to charge for each service, as well as projections for financial targets. We have multiple tools that help us track the financial components, but the operations manager needs to have a good grasp of these numbers at all times.

The main skills that are needed for a happy bank are understanding a financial model and how each part of the business contributes to it.

How I Chose the Profession

I’ve always been curious about how creativity is used to solve business challenges. While I didn’t have a creative background, I had a sense that I would be a good fit for this role because of my soft skills developed from my clinical psychology background — particularly with managing a team and client communication. Before joining the Ptex team, I coached adults in group settings and on a one-on-one basis, which taught me a lot about human behavior and how to overcome challenges.

The project management job attracted me for two main reasons: First, the nature of my position is that I work very closely with founders and CEOs of large companies. Getting to learn from them and see how they approach their day-to-day business practices and what made them get to where they are today gives me firsthand knowledge in business success that is second to none. Second, I was looking for a way to combine my psychology skills with business. Knowledge of human psychology is a big part of branding and marketing.

To lead the project side of this industry, experience is typically the best training. Thankfully Ptex Group had been running for almost 20 years at the time I started working for them, so I had the opportunity to learn from the best.

What I Love Most About the Field

Seeing a project progress from its inception until launch. There is something so fulfilling about seeing a team start with an objective and employ all their creative skills to solve it. But most importantly, it’s exhilarating to see the impact our work has on the client’s growth and profitability.

What I Find Most Challenging about the Field

With a full team working on so many projects, baruch Hashem, there are often many situations when timing is a challenge. Projects often come to your desk with very little time or resources to make them a success. Often there isn’t a perfect answer on how to approach these projects, but you do your best to help the client, while maintaining a happy team and your quality standard.

Something I Wish People Knew about Project Managers

Since the nature of our work is unpredictable, a project doesn’t always run smoothly even with complete dedication and the best intentions.

People typically assume that the more pressure they put on the project manager, the more they get what they want. While this may be true in general, when it comes to creativity, it’s a bit more nuanced. Certainly, when a client is appreciative and understanding, this enables the creative magic to happen, and project managers will typically go a few extra miles to assist these clients however they can.

How I’ve Seen the Field Change over the Years

Over the past few years, the ability to actually do creative work has become easier, and, as a result, the need to be creative often gets put lower on the priority list. Canva and AI (among others) are incredible tools when used correctly, and for many projects and clients, these tools are already having significant impacts on their bottom line.

In addition, as clients have developed a greater appreciation for the importance of strategic marketing, they are beginning to rely more on their creative partners to answer more complex questions, such as how much should they be spending on photography, video, and creative development costs. This is a huge opportunity, but also a huge responsibility. Knowing which challenges call for which solutions is very complex, and this often confounds creative teams and the process in which winning work is developed.

There is a saying, “When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” This means that when asked for a solution, creatives can very easily respond with the “solution” that involves their own area of expertise, whether or not it’s the best fit for the question at hand. A project manager needs to listen closely to each client’s request and ensure that they are being assisted by the people qualified to address those issues. Sometimes, this means referring them to an outside professional.

We at Ptex Group pride ourselves on remaining entirely objective-driven and employing our creativity solely to accomplish business objectives. Sometimes, this means recommending a $100,000 full marketing campaign with a video shoot, and sometimes, it means reusing an existing campaign with minor strategic adjustments. Getting this right begins even before the sales process, and must be kept front of mind while listening to the client’s objectives and challenges.

My Advice for People Starting Out

Well, I would have loved to read something like this article at the time, so you are already doing this better than I did :). The best thing I did was speak with people who held similar positions and ask them to explain their experience to me. Education is the key.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1026)