Project management in life and in the organization

Hi, I'm Amar.

I'm a Senior Engineering Program

Manager at Google Shopping.

On a day-to-day basis,

I drive programs which

spans across multiple products at Google.

The way I look at program management,

it's more like, life is program management.

Everything in life is program;

having kids, building a house, buying car.

Everything we do there's a start and end deal.

What we see across

the board in anything and everything we do,

there's a tremendous amount of friction in the system.

In the decision-making, in

the budgeting, everything in life.

That applies equally to software program management,

or even if you are in the construction industry.

If you see right from starting the construction project,

to really getting the bids and all the stuff.

There's a tremendous amount of chaos from

the perspective of that you know,

are the right people connected?

Are the right decision-making people in the meeting?

Are there the right number

of approvals that we have in a timely basis?

There are many of these things

that I had witnessed during

my career and the previous companies and even at Google,

that those were not efficient and

those were really adding a huge risk

or exposing the risk late in the development cycle.

That is what I had seen as a chaotic world.

I really felt that you know what?

I can really help out in solving some of that chaos.

On a day-to-day basis,

I work on bringing order into chaos.

There's chaotic world out

there in the software program development,

so we as a program manager,

make sure that we bring that together.

When I started my program management journey,

one of the main thing,

what I was looking for,

(and thanks to the mentors,

I really cherish the mentors)

one of the thing they taught me, that you know what?

"Amar, when you're coming to work every day,

ask what are the top three challenges

that you want to solve today?"

To date, I follow...

I always follow...

think about what are the top three things

that I want to address today?

Big ones, impactful ones,

as well as I also look at and also

help my team understand on a weekly basis,

how success looks like.

Every Monday morning, I'll

have meeting with the strategy folks.

Very strategic discussions on

how the success looks like in this week.

How would we define the week is successful?

That is how I start my week.

It works miracles in

the program delivery and overall in life.

I love those aspects.