Tried handing off a project to a junior PM last month and it turned into a 3-day mess because they didn't know the client's hidden deadlines

The client had a trade show date buried in an old email chain that I forgot to flag, so the whole timeline got pushed back and the client almost walked.

2 comments

2 Comments

the_patricia13d ago

...and yet, the client didn't actually walk, so maybe it wasn't as huge of a disaster as you're making it sound. Hidden deadlines in old email threads are basically a rite of passage at this point. Every PM I know has been burned by something like that at least once, it's practically tradition. The real question is whether the junior PM learned from it or if this is going to be a recurring issue. If they figured it out and fixed it, I'd call that a win, not a mess.

charlie_stone7212d ago

Oh man, that's exactly the kind of thing that's happened to me more times than I can count... buried info in old emails is basically a rite of passage for any PM. I had a project blow up last year when I missed a client's internal approval deadline that was only mentioned in a two-line reply from six months ago, and it cost us a whole week of rework. It's wild how something so small can snowball, but honestly, if the junior PM took notes and checked for those hidden dates next time, that's a lesson they'll never forget.