The One Profession Where Being a Jack of All Trades Is the Key to Success

Project management is easy, but it’s not for everyone…

Whatever my title has been over the past 15 years, my work has always been a blend of different roles, all with one goal in mind: successfully delivering the projects assigned to me. Over time, I’ve learned that

The key to success in project delivery is being a jack-of-all-trades.

You need to manage the project, of course, but to successfully complete and deliver the project to production - most of the times you should also take ownership of the product you’re building. Additionally, you will act as a project analyst, an architect, conduct behavioral analytics, and dive deep into data to understand what to expect and what to improve with each new iteration.

You will act as a psychologist to your teammates; play dumb when the situation calls for it, and, at other times, think beyond your assigned role and responsibilities.

You will stick your nose into design, content, and user flows. You’ll play a role of a content manager and fix some stuff yourself if its needed. And surely, you will take on a sense of responsibility for the result, even when it’s technically not supposed to fall entirely on you.

It takes a mix of soft and hard skills to roll out a project successfully and on time. And here are a few very practical tricks I use and believe to be extremely effective.

1. Learn

Learn the basics (at least) of everything that might help you. And know that this is a never-ending process. There always will be something new you’ll have to learn and apply to keep being successful in projects delivery.

Here are some examples:

• Learn Agile methodology. Even a basic understanding of Agile principles can be extremely helpful, especially when working in IT.
• Basic SQL knowledge has allowed me to quickly answer simple data questions directly from the database. I don’t need to create tasks for analytics teams or wait for them to complete requests. Instead, I can get answers to my marketing questions quickly and independently. And yes, even some basics of SQL are enough to do so. What typical marketer asks and consider important is a pretty basic for data analysts, but they do usually have a huge backlog, and you might wait too long for some basic info that is crucial for decision making, but annoying as a task for data analysts.
• Google Analytics – now with GA4 God bless us all with this new version! But learning how to create dashboards that answer performance questions on your own saves you tons of time and ensures your decisions are data-driven from the start.
• Due to the same reason (to be data-driven), know your CRM and data structure. If your company uses Salesforce, invest time in understanding the differences between objects, the data structure, and basic reporting. Being able to quickly find answers to your questions is an invaluable skill.
• Learn basic HTML. Spend some time learning how to read it and make simple edits. At the very least, train yourself to use tools like ChatGPT to assist you with it.
• Learn Excel. It feels like there’s no end to the features and advanced tricks you can discover in Excel. Every year, I make time to complete a new course on Excel how-to’s, and I’m always amazed at how much I still don’t know—it’s just the tip of the iceberg!
• Find unexpected skills that can help in surprising ways. For example:
  • I completed a three-year interior design course that included composition, color studies, and other disciplines. This knowledge has been incredibly helpful in communicating with UI design teams. It has given me the ability to provide professional feedback and collaborate effectively, which I believe has led to the best results.
  • I worked as a radio DJ for a while, and this experience has made me comfortable conducting calls or meetings. I don’t overthink or overprepare because I trust my improvisation skills to guide the conversation effectively.
  • Knowing the basics of different languages (and overall, I’ve tried to learn around seven different languages) helped me perform a content manager's job better and even identify issues with translations.
• Finally, learn how to use AI to assist you. Spend some time learning how to write effective prompts that can help you with coding, design, or text-related tasks. For example, as a non-native English speaker, I often check the grammar and tone of my writing using available, free AI tools.

2. Document

This might sound obvious, as it’s a fundamental principle of nearly every project management methodology, but I’ve seen countless examples where proper project documentation was missing. As well as the absence of clear tasks structure, no connections between several tasks under a single project epic —so let me start with this: document your projects and never underestimate the importance of this step.

Depending on the nature and scope of your project, it might include the following milestones:

2.1 Answer the question: “Why are we doing this?”

In other words, create a Business requirements where you clearly define all business goals for the activity, including targets, and KPIs.

Don’ts: What you should avoid doing is assigning tasks to the team without having clear business requirements in place. In large companies, there may be many different stakeholders requesting multidirectional updates to existing workflows or the creation of new ones (these requests could come from Sales, Product Management, the CEO directly—you name it). If you, as a project manager, lack an internal filter to prioritize and consolidate these requirements into a clear and agreed-upon "to-be" state that suits all parties, you risk creating chaos! Sometimes, a single page that consolidates and visualizes these diverse requests can help decision-makers clearly see the multidirectional requests, align, prioritize and define the proper next steps.

Also, because it’s always better to be data-driven, provide a snapshot of the current state—unless the project is entirely new and there’s nothing to analyze. Analyzing how things work today can help define KPIs and identify opportunities for optimization and improvement. Include everything you have—such as all collected metrics, scroll and heat maps, flow analytics, customer feedback, results of UX research, etc. All of this will contribute to creating a well-informed and effective future roadmap (or may lead to a decision to cancel the project).

After that, you’ll be able to create a high-level project overview and a preliminary roadmap that outlines the main milestones and deliverables. Additionally, you should prepare a project charter that specifies responsibilities, identifies decision-makers, and provides a preliminary estimate of the resources required.

2.2 Answer the question: “How are we doing this?”

This can be fulfilled by creating several different requirement documents, such as:

• Technical requirements: Collaborate with your developers to draft, review and sign off on technical documentation. Separate backend and front-end requirements. Involve architects when needed. Consult with QA early on to ensure their involvement and understanding of the project scope.

• Content requirements: Ensure input from both the Product Marketing and SEO teams is included—this forms the foundation of your future traffic.

• Legal requirements: In today’s landscape, compliance, privacy, and other legal aspects must be addressed upfront. Make sure you adhere to all relevant legal checklists.

• Design mockups: Finalized and detailed design mockups with documented flows and behaviors are essential before development begins. Ensure all breakpoints are included and designs are approved by stakeholders. For complex projects, start with wireframes, and have them approved before moving on to the design stage.

• Tracking markup: Ensure that appropriate tracking and analytics requirements are documented to capture the necessary data.

  
  

Having all this documentation in place will enable all teams to begin the implementation process smoothly. You’ll address most questions upfront, ensuring everyone has clear visibility into what exactly is expected under this project.

2.3 Answer the question: “When are we doing this?”

Once all requirements are collected, designs are finalized and approved, and technical documentation is ready, you can move to the implementation stage.

• Timeline or/and Gantt chart: Develop a granular project overview, allocating time and resources to each specific task. This will provide clarity on the project schedule and ensure proper planning for each phase.
• Assign people.
• You can also include the documentation and design phases in the beginning of your timeline for completeness, but these are generally more predictable and quicker compared to other stages. I usually plan it separately, during the early stage of my initial planning.

Do’s: Whatever you’re doing as a project manager, make sure to get it approved—multiple times and by different people, depending on the stage of your project. Approve all business requirements and the desired future state of your project with your stakeholders, using design mockups for clarity. Review and approve technical documentation with your development teams and solution architects. If necessary, involve analytics and operations teams as well. Approve with legal department to be compliant. Always play it safe—get your plans approved before moving into implementation.

When the entire cycle of project documentation, planning, and approvals is completed, the only remaining step is implementation. And the better prepared you are, the smoother the process will be.

Based on practice, at the very beginning, when I first start drafting project documentation, I don’t focus too much on the format. Most of the time, in addition to using a notebook (which I still rely on heavily for handwriting and sketching), I use tools like Miro boards to create rough sketches, mind maps, and diagrams of systems and their interconnections. My initial notes might be somewhat chaotic, and that’s okay.

As I gather more knowledge, collect all requirements, and have discussions with the necessary teammates, the structure of the documentation naturally evolves. I refine it, organize it, and clean it up to make it ready for sharing with other teams.

For detailed guidance, you can refer to resources on creating project documentation directly within tools like Atlassian’s Confluence, which is widely used in the IT industry for both Project and Tech documentation. But just start to compile something, and it will evolve.

3. Collaborate

Remember, to deliver your project to production successfully and on time, you’re the "three-in-one persona" and the one in charge—so take the lead. Be proactive and stick your nose into everything. It’s on you to:

• Reach out to stakeholders.
• Go through and actually understand all the documentation that’s already been created.
• Talk to different departments to make sure they’re not going to be “damaged” by the update you’re working on.

Set up meetings to get the requirements you need. And widen your ‘advisory board’: find the people who know all the “whys” behind the current solutions—those who can explain what’s possible to change, what’s not, and why. Understand your technical debt. Brainstorm with the teams to figure out the future state of the project.

Do’s: Don’t be afraid of being annoying by asking a million questions. It’s so much better to get everything clear before development starts than after. That said, do your homework first! Make sure you’ve checked the existing documentation and haven’t skipped over something you could Google yourself. When you do ask questions, show up prepared—you’ll get much better answers that way. But I’m also not afraid to play dumb when needed. Sometimes, that’s the only card that works!

4. Simplify

Make things simple! If something feels too complicated, break it down into smaller, simpler parts. While the overall architecture of the project may indeed be complex, each individual component should be straightforward.

If I can’t explain something in simple terms, I take it as a sign that I don’t fully understand it. This prompts me to dig deeper, gain clarity, and develop the ability to explain it in clear, straightforward language, often with examples.

Sometimes, you might inherit a project with overly complex logic that takes ages to comprehend. In 99.9% of cases, there’s room for simplification. This is often because the way people think varies, and some tend to overcomplicate things due to their natural inclination toward complexity. Most of the time, with ‘my iteration’ I rebuild such projects in a much more straightforward and efficient way. There’s always a way to simplify things, largely because I’ve trained myself to approach problems with simplicity in mind.

So, develop the habit of simplifying.

5. Practice

You can read hundreds of articles on how to be a successful project manager, but nothing can replace real-life experience. Just do it!

Fail or succeed → Learn → Repeat

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes in the beginning. Learn from your experiences. Practice, and continue gaining new knowledge along the way. All it takes is for you to start. If you’re truly determined, you’ll figure it out—sooner or later, faster or slower—but you absolutely will.

And in case you’re just starting your journey and need some mentorship or advice, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn.