Hello, I'm Nicole, one of the project managers at Fluid. I spend my days managing our digital projects, running the day-to-day work of the Websites & Systems team, and looking after some of our retained clients.
Monday
Mondays are for working from home. Armed with my second (okay, third) cup of tea of the day at 9am, I always begin my week by checking Tempo. No, I’m not referring to the speed of music, Tempo is our time tracking tool which shows a week-by-week overview of our developers and UX designers’ tasks. This allows me to ensure that no tasks from the previous week have been missed and gives me an overview of what everyone in our team has to complete this week.
We have a team meeting every day at 9:20am (it’s this specific time to allow our non-early birds to grab an extra coffee) so we can chat about our weekends, evenings and, the main priority, our dogs. Then, we take it in turns to discuss our workload for the day.
Looking at what I’ve written so far, I feel like that’s a lot of words and I’ve only got to about 9:40am so I’ll keep the rest of Monday short and snappy. The rest of the day looked very meeting heavy which I usually love but wasn’t quite feeling.
However, after three productive client meetings and a 1-2-1 with the ace Georgia Vicars, I was in the full swing of things. Where there are client meetings, there are tasks to tee-up and schedule for the team, so I spent the rest of the day spinning my project manager plates.
Tuesday
Apart from the traffic and getting stuck behind people doing 40mph in a 60mph zone, I do love driving into work – it’s twenty minutes of singing and dancing that always puts me in a great mood for the day! Also, I got one of the prestige parking spaces so that’s a few wins before 9am.
Anyway, today the project management team had one of our twice-weekly meetings. We go through each of the client boards on Jira (our project management system) to check the progress of tasks, schedule in new work and monitor the team’s workload and progression. We also flag any issues, a project slipping, under-resourcing and so on. Not to sound cheesy but it’s such a productive meeting, I really value that time each week to get a handle on what’s going on in the team, to support the PMs and feel supported myself.
As part of a new Fluid initiative to make a difference in our local community, a small group of us went out litter picking around Darley Park. It was raining, it was weirdly cold for spring but when you’re doing something good with nice people and even Ozzy the Collie is taking part (picking up sticks and making you throw them for him), it makes for an afternoon well spent!
Wednesday
I love a work Wednesday – it’s when the studio is at its busiest, all the best dogs are in and it just feels extra nice. A few of our developers are remote workers so I like to message them at least once a week to ask how they are doing. Sometimes, work can feel like, just that really, work work work. For me, it’s really important to check in on everyone’s wellbeing and how they are in and out of work, so on Wednesdays I make a conscious effort to do just that.
Thursday
Today, like an absolute hero, I’m supporting one of our back-end developers, Andy, with adding content onto one of our client sites. In the world of web, nothing is as simple as that sentence makes it sound, so I had a fair few calls with Andy to talk through some things that just did not make sense (even to him, I would like to add).
Towards the end of the day, I was feeling very accomplished having ticked all the content population off of my list…only to be told a couple of things needed redoing. A chocolate muffin and thirty minutes later, everything was done (for good this time) and I was in my car on the way home.
Things move at such a fast pace in the Websites & Systems team, and we’re often working to tight deadlines. As a project manager, I need to be able to balance my workload with the need to support the team – this may be through content population, testing, proofing work, and the occasional (but, in reality, very frequent) chocolate run.
Fri-YAY
Before I leave the house this morning, I select a playlist titled ‘Party Hits of the 00s’ because it’s Friday and I’m driving to Liniar for a meeting with their lovely team. As wonderful as Fluid HQ is, a change of scenery is always exciting and the drive to Linair is traffic-free – win win. Our development team has been busy building the new Liniar website, and as sections are created, it enables Liniar to start to populate them. Georgia and I are visiting Liniar to conduct a training session to teach them how to populate the site.
I head back to the office in the afternoon for back-to-back client meetings - my earlier playlist choice was a good one as it has ensured I’m energised enough for a whole day of talking. After a client meeting, a server transfer run-through, a projects catch-up and an SEO chat, it’s 5:30pm and I am ready to swap my mug of tea for a glass of bubbly.