Based on my experience as a PM, I often handle direct communication with clients—from gathering to analyzing both business and technical requirements. I usually also prepare a database structure to support the development team.

The document above is from one of my past projects. It’s intentionally not too formal, as it was designed to be simple and easy for developers to understand.

In many of my projects, I didn’t always have a CTO, so I often took the initiative to support dev ops preparation—thinking through the architecture, flow, and necessary third-party integrations. This process would then be handed off to developers to refine and find the best solutions.

Flowcharts are a crucial foundation once a project begins—they help developers clearly understand how a feature should be built and support more effective discussions. I also create an API plan as a reference to ensure nothing is overlooked and to enable developers to build on it independently in the future.

Due to limited resources and the client’s need for speed—combined with the fact that this client is extremely busy—it was difficult to apply a textbook project management approach. While I used a waterfall methodology as the foundation, I enhanced it with agile principles to adapt to the project’s realities.

The key focus in this phase was to sharpen the requirements as precisely as possible, reducing the risk of issues during development. Contractually, we separated the requirement analysis and development phases with distinct budgets, which helped mitigate financial risks.

We prepared the project thoroughly to minimize potential issues during execution. My main focus early on was to get the operational aspects up and running quickly to prevent downstream problems.

Here’s a general overview of my day-to-day activities as a PM. My key focus areas are communication and support. I believe these two elements are essential to ensuring a smoother project flow and motivating the team to perform at their best.

As a PM, I also implemented strategies and established basic rules to ensure the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) ran effectively. From defining the framework, I translated it into actionable task assignments. Managing who takes the first steps and planning out subsequent actions helped keep the project on track and minimized issues within the development team.

As a technical PM, I also worked to optimize resources and costs to ensure the project remained profitable. One of the strategies I applied across several projects was using a customized native CMS builder. This approach not only increased efficiency but also allowed for reuse in future projects. The CMS builder had been refined to overcome challenges related to security and performance, ultimately accelerating project delivery by up to 200%.