Project Management in a Global Pandemic

[shaownhasan]

If you told me back then that managing the build of a new office in a city 2000 miles away across multiple internal departments and external vendors was possible, I would’ve laughed. But that’s exactly how we had to execute. I learned a lot working closely with our Workplace Experience team to ensure IT was informed and prepared to equip our new space in Seattle. It was like one big puzzle, and one that involved brainstorming, discussion, sequencing, and collaboration. No one individual could have completed that initiative on their own, and it could have been the moment in time, but the feelings of togetherness and teamwork really line data shone through and made me proud of what our team accomplished.

The Seattle office build is just one of many projects I’ve been able to manage from the Corporate IT side. Many others sprung up as Sprout kept scaling and requiring solutions that grew with us, including the migration of our Human Resources Information System (HRIS), the removal of physical phones and commitment to digital, our Dublin office build, introducing Sprout’s Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP), plus several iterations of Return to Office, to name a few.

This is what project management currently looks like at Sprout: it’s the ability for one person to gather the right stakeholders to discuss and agree upon a project’s goals, milestones and target timeline. We define what project management is, given our different ways of working, as opposed to forcing rigid structures and tools across teams. While we leverage many best project management practices, we aren’t beholden to them. Once a project plan comes into fruition, it’s about keeping the project team on track, engaged and informed. Project risks are omnipresent and one (or many) things may fail in the process, but out of failure comes growth.