Solution Minded GovTech Project Manager

The biggest meltdown of all.. if you have a toddler you know what I mean.. 😁

May, the ever-optimistic Project Manager, began her Monday like every other, armed with a color-coded Gantt chart, three cups of coffee, and a motivational playlist titled “We Got The power” hoping to motivate her project team to start this extremely simple 2 week project.

What’s the project? Super simple project?

The project? A simple “two-week” system upgrade. Easy, simple right? Wrong. So wrong.

Day 1:
The developer team lead “Mr.Aravind” said, “We’re waiting on the test server.”

The IT guy replied, Mr.Aravind’s best friend – Joe looked and Aravind questing his ability  “What test server?”

Turns out the server was decommissioned last year…hmmm and now housed someone’s cat memes archive lol.

Day 3:
May’s carefully planned timeline met its first fatal blow when the designer’s laptop “accidentally” upgraded itself to Windows 11 mid-presentation. “Don’t worry,” the designer said, “I saved everything.” Spoiler: she hadn’t as expected.

Day 5:
The stakeholder meeting was going great until someone asked, “So what’s the ROI?” and half the team collectively froze like deer in PowerPoint headlights.

Wendy thought they talking about Mr.Roy, the new contractor.

Day 7:
May tried to boost morale with donuts. But she accidentally bought gluten-free, sugar-free, taste-free, life sucking ones.

Even the printer refused to eat them when she tried bribing it to stop jamming.

Day 10:
The test environment crashed five minutes before the final demo. The developer team went silent. The intern offered to “try turning it off and on again.” It actually worked but now the database was in Spanish.

May thought she should call Bau to translate but he was off.

Day 14:
Finally, the big moment: project delivery. The slides loaded perfectly. The system actually ran. The client smiled. Everything was beautiful… until someone asked, “Can we just make one small change?”

May smiled her project manager smile…. the one that says I love my job but also might scream into my coffee later… and replied, “Of course! I’ll just open a new change request.”

And thus began Phase 2: The Sequel Nobody Asked For. ☕📊