How to fast-track your career as a digital project manager

You not only need to be great with clients, whilst smashing estimates, project plans and scopes of work out of the ballpark.

And be a team player. Easily guiding people with colourful agendas and personalities toward a successful finish line.

To go from average to expert, you’ll need to become ‘T-Shaped’ and that means:

1. Being a highly skilled project manager (the vertical bit) and;

2. Knowing (at least) the basics of what your co-workers are doing, why they do it and how they do it. (the horizontal bit).

By doing this you’ll grow your knowledge exponentially and get 100x more effective at delivering projects.

So, whether you’re an account OR project manager working in an agency, this guide will help you grow, and make your job more fulfilling in the process.

Your Free Bonus

As a bonus, I’ll give you a ton of resources to get a head start. All the best courses, books and other great stuff I’ve used in my 19 years working for work class agencies.

Go from Junior PM to Superstar PM

So where do you start?

Here’s a simple method - with a little help from AI (in step 3 - also in the video)

It’s called ‘Role Mapping’

Step 1: Write down the job titles of everyone you work with.

I have done this for my agency, below:

• Account Manager

• Strategist/Planner

• UX Designer

• User Researcher

• UI Designer / Digital Designer

• Art Director

• Copywriter

• Creative Director

• Front End Developer

• Back End Developer

• Software Engineer

• QA Tester

• Data Analyst

• SEO consultant

Step 2: Break down their jobs into the tasks they perform

The beauty of this method is that you will have knowledge and skills that cross over some of the roles, so you can cheat a little. 👿

I’ve picked an Account Manager as plenty of the skills and knowledge they need to know will be similar to a Project Manager.

• Account Manager

  • Customer service/phone manner

  • Writing professional emails

  • Presentation / slides creation

  • Sales skills

  • Creating estimates

  • Creating time plans

  • Writing a scope of work

  • Running team meetings

  • Contact reports / meeting minutes

  • Resource management

  • Writing a creative brief

  • Writing a general briefing document

  • Briefing the team

  • Desk research

  • Setting and managing client expectations

  • Working with data and spreadsheets

  • Brainstorming

I could go on for longer, but I’m sure you get the idea.

Let’s do another one.

• Front End Developer

  • HTML/CSS

  • Javascript

  • React framework

  • Version Control/GIT

  • Responsive design principles

  • Web design principles

  • Testing and Debugging

  • Accessibility

  • Estimating time

  • Working with JIRA (project management tools)

  • Creating documentation

  • Communications

You can see some of the skills above also fall into digital design and project management too.

The remaining skills - things like HTML/CSS & Javascript, although not something a project or account manager will do day to day, If you complete a basic course then your technical knowledge will grow considerably, and it will be like getting a head start on delivering complex website projects and working with Developers.

Step 3: Use AI to finish the task

Now you can use AI to fill in the gaps and save some thinking time.

Pop this prompt into your Gen AI tool of choice and off you go. If you use ChatGPT then you can use my Digital Project Manager GPT to help out.

[First prompt]

Here is a list of roles that work in a digital agency that creates websites, mobile apps, email campaigns and online content.

1. Account Manager

2. Strategist

3. UX Designer

4. User Researcher

5. UI Designer / Digital Designer

6. Art Director

7. Copywriter

8. Creative Director

9. Front End Developer

10. Back End Developer

11. Software Engineer

12. QA Tester

13. Data Analyst

14. SEO consultant

I want you to create a table that lists each role.

Next to each role, list all the job specific skills, knowledge and soft skills needed to perform the role.

Highlight all the skills, knowledge and soft skills that cross over between each role.

Take a deep breath and work through this problem step by step.

[Prompt 2 - follow up]

Create a list of job specific skills, knowledge and software skills that a digital project manager could learn (outside of project management skills) that could help them accelerate their career.

[Prompt 3 - output]]

Create a .CSV file of the table output so that I can upload it to Excel.

Upload the file to Excel or Google Sheets.

Fast-forward your career

Now, I appreciate you have probably just been presented with a TON of different topics to learn.

Knowing what everyone is doing is a bit of work. And you’re not expected to learn everything overnight.

It’s taken 19 years of growing my skills and knowledge to be that ‘go-to’ person.

I’m doing this to give you a head start.

I’ve also interviewed and hired a lot of project managers.

And the ones that stand out, know their craft, but they are proactive in learning on the side, and it’s clear that they have something extra to bring to the team.

If you’re totally brand new and looking for your first role, then this is even more important. You can use this guide to learn more about the types of people and roles that work in advertising, marketing and digital agencies.

So many benefits

Becoming ‘T-shaped’ has so many amazing benefits:

• You’ll impress the hell out of a hiring manager in a job interview.

• You’ll have knowledge and advice on tap for your clients.

• You’ll connect personally and professionally with your colleagues.

• You’ll be able to ask the right questions before, during and after projects.

• It will help you finish projects on time and make them profitable.

I also think it will make your job more interesting and make it easier to pivot your career, should you wish to, in the future.

Always think about your CV and the next role that you might want.

Curated resources (your bonus)

As a bonus, for 15 different topics, I’ve curated all the books, courses, websites and other resources that I’ve used to help me become an indispensable project leader.

They’ll not only boost your project management skills but also strategy, design, web development, content marketing, data and Generative AI.

It’s a brand new section in my Substack.

Please share it with a friend or colleague that might find it useful. 🙏

Thanks so much for your time. Tim