A day in the life of Nour, our Project Manager

How long have you worked at The Distance?

I've been at The Distance for three years now.

How would you describe your role in one sentence?

Overseeing the planning, execution, and delivery of projects, ensuring they meet deadlines, budgets, and stakeholder expectations while working across cross-functional teams.

What’s a typical day like for you as a Project Manager?

• 8:30am - Log on and check Basecamp/emails, Slack for any outstanding tasks and respond to messages from clients and the internal team.
• 9:30am - Scrum - Following the goals of the day for each team member.
• 10am -1pm - Attending meetings, doing project admin, updating forecast and JIRA, following up with clients and following up with outstanding tasks from the team.
• 1 - 5pm - Similar to the above, responding to the needs of each project based on the deadlines and outstanding tasks left to complete. Client calls, internal calls, speaking to the Head of Ops for steer and guidance where needed, and on a Friday we do the Friday forecast to plan the resource for the week ahead and ensure everyone has a clear idea of their goals for the week. It is a constant juggling act and ensuring that you are flexible as things will rarely go to plan.

Seeing a project milestone through to completion. After lots of planning and work from the team, it is always really nice to see the deliverables that we can present to the client, and they are always really pleased with the end result. It's great to be a part of a cooperative team that is striving to do their best in all aspects of the work.

I always wanted to work for a company that had a motivated, driven team that works collaboratively. I also wanted to work in a different industry that meant something to me and was relatable. Knowing Gemma from a previous role, her feedback was really positive about working at The Distance, and that really encouraged me to apply, as it sounded like a great place to work.

I make the best use of the tools that Slack and Basecamp provide, as well as using a project log where I keep track of all the projects' outstanding tasks. No one can keep so many different details in their head, so it's super important to make sure I write things down to make sure they aren't forgotten and to always document everything that is decided.

I find the tools on Slack very useful to keep track of questions or tasks I need to complete, as well as reminders on Slack to look at something at a later date, so they never get forgotten.

There are so many variables and many different things that can happen that don't go to plan. It’s a constant flow of being flexible and creative with resource and trying to ensure we don't compromise on cost but it can be a challenge when unforeseen issues crop up!

How do you handle tight deadlines while maintaining quality?

There is a lot of consultation that goes on between PMs, and working with the Head of Ops is always helpful in understanding what are the ways in which we can still deliver quality even if timelines are looking really tight. It goes back to what I mentioned above around being flexible and creative, and also offering people different opportunities to work on different aspects of the project, e.g. a developer to wireframe, which has been a recent experience here to deliver on a project that is particularly tight with timeframes.

Organisation and communication are key, as ultimately the client wants to make sure they are getting their projects delivered but they also appreciate being told ahead of time where things start to look unrealistic and changing the plan or adjusting the scope to accommodate that too.

There is a lot of consultation that goes on between PMs, and working with the Head of Ops is always helpful in understanding what are the ways in which we can still deliver quality even if timelines are looking really tight. It goes back to what I mentioned above around being flexible and creative, and also offering people different opportunities to work on different aspects of the project, e.g. a developer to wireframe, which has been a recent experience here to deliver on a project that is particularly tight with timeframes.

Organisation and communication are key, as ultimately the client wants to make sure they are getting their projects delivered but they also appreciate being told ahead of time where things start to look unrealistic and changing the plan or adjusting the scope to accommodate that too.

I think clear communication and transparency is key in keeping clients and developers happy. Ensuring they are in the loop of the various changes that can happen throughout the project lifecycle is key, as a lot of the time, they will have input that allows the project to flourish, where perhaps I might lack some technical information or context.

With clients, our weekly calls are really helpful in maintaining the momentum and ensuring that the project deliverables are clearly communicated and that we all bring back some of the human element to our communication through a call vs. just written communication.

A memorable project I worked on was Goodshape Phase 3, as this was a project I inherited when I first started my role here at The Distance. The reason it stood out for me was because it was my first time seeing the app build features from the workshop stage through to go live in the app stores.

It was such a learning experience for me to see how seemingly simple features and functionality in an app requires so much planning, analysis, documentation, design, development and testing work and how there are so many different dependencies that can also impact the work involved.

It was a particularly challenging project in that we had some delays with different client endpoints but in the end, by working together and creatively prioritising aspects of the app that could be worked on ahead of time, juggling the phases of end-to-end testing we were able to do, we managed to deliver the project on time and meet the client's expectations!

So many different variables occurred in that project, and for me it was a helpful experience as I benchmark a lot of the learning I had in that project to this day.

I like working with a team of experts in their fields and building and strengthening relationships with the client. I also love to see the design of an app come to life after it has been a concept or idea in a workshop.

Communication, positivity, creativity, flexibility, organisation, willingness to learn, asking questions, piecing puzzles together, analysing patterns, an ability to draw insights from different perspectives, joining up different pieces of information together, the ability to make sense of something that doesnt make sense (when technical), time management, budget management, consistency, following up and documenting.

Easy, chocolate chip!

If you weren’t in this role, what would you be doing?

I would be full-time mothering two children under the age of 3 which would likely drive me to insanity! As much as I love my kids, this jobs allows me the balance of being able to use my skills and brain into something I enjoy, and allows me to disconnect from another world to develop my career further that I have worked very hard for. It then also makes me a better mother at the same time!

From keeping projects on schedule to balancing deadlines, expectations and shifting priorities, Nour is a brilliant example of what great project management looks like at The Distance - collaborative, considered, and relentlessly focused on delivering the best possible outcome.

A huge thank you to Nour for giving us a peek behind the scenes and for all the heart she brings to the work every day.

Want more behind-the-scenes insight from the humans making it all happen? Keep an eye out for the next chapter in our Day in the Life series.