project & task management
In every company, someone will ask you to build something - maybe it’s fully spec’d out with wireframes and a Loom walkthrough, or maybe it’s just a one-liner in Slack. Either way, your job is to make sense of it and deliver value. The more senior you are, the better you must be at navigating ambiguity and asking the right questions.
Start by uncovering the why - not just what you’re building, but who it serves and what business outcome it drives. From there, translate fuzzy intent into clear execution: define requirements, success criteria, and confirm alignment with whoever requested the work. Think of this as getting their “signature.”
Then break the work into digestible tasks - ideally 1–2 days each - grouped under a clearly named epic. Add time estimates. They don’t need to be perfect - rough estimates are better than no estimates. Update them as you learn more. Clarity beats precision early on.
Milestones should be user-facing, not internal. No one cares if the database layer is done — they care if users can edit their profiles. Assign realistic due dates to upcoming milestones, factoring in PTO, bug-fixing, on-call, or code review time. Don’t plan the whole quarter - focus on the near-term, and iterate.
Every task needs a DRI (Directly Responsible Individual). Even if multiple engineers collaborate, there must be a clear owner accountable for quality and timeline.
Use tools that work for you and scale with your complexity - Jira, ClickUp, Asana, Notion. It’s not just about managing work; it’s about communicating progress. A good board is a status report, a roadmap, and a planning tool in one. If your manager keeps asking for updates, your board isn’t doing its job.
Standups should surface blockers, not burn time. Adjust priorities if assumptions have changed. Plans should adapt — they’re a starting point, not a prison.
Prioritize bugs with purpose. Without triage, bug backlogs become black holes. Define prioritization rules: is critical functionality broken? Is a key customer affected? Is there a workaround? Set SLAs for bug handling and track violations. Bugs should not rot silently.
Build in autonomy but guide with alignment. Tell the team what to solve - not how to build it. Sync often enough to avoid course-correcting too late.
Clarify what “done” really means. Deployment? QA passed? Docs written? Postmortem completed? Avoid premature “done” by embedding checklists into your epics. For big launches, hold a go/no-go meeting. Revisit the original requirements, validate them in production, and be ready to roll back fast if needed.
And don’t forget the retrospective. Projects that span weeks or months deserve time for reflection. What worked? What didn’t? What should we do differently next time?
Project management isn’t about micromanaging tasks. It’s about creating clarity, alignment, and momentum - from chaos to cadence. Make it easy to build, easy to track, and hard to fail.