Level up With Cheryl

Tell us something about yourself. Who are you? What do you do for a living?

“I love Harry Potter and Marvel and am actually a little bit of a nerd.”

I am Cheryl Bunskoek (26). Born and raised in Enschede, former bartender in my grandparents’ family restaurant and currently working as a Project Manager for Wirelab. I currently live in Deventer with my boyfriend and four-legged friend Elmo, I am a proud mother of plants, a huge tea lover and this year I will be walking a 700 km pilgrimage in Spain.

About five years ago, I started at Wirelab as a content marketer for one of its start-ups. After having translated various issues into concrete marketing strategies, I made the choice about six months ago to successfully supervise these projects from A to Z.

What brought you into the world of project management?

I came to the conclusion that I like to facilitate and help people with their problems. Diving into problems together with people and solving them. Marketing was my first love in the work field, but I couldn’t use my soft skills in it. I could not be of service during my work as a marketer and started looking for who I am, what can I do? What am I good at? And what would I like to develop further in? Then came the internal vacancy for project manager. I talked to Twan and Niek to see whether this position suits me and whether I can offer my services… and I got the job!

Do you feel you have gone from good cop to bad cop with the change of role within a project? From marketeer to project manager, overseeing the budget and time.

Haha, I am not a cop. But if we talk in those terms, I am both. I have a double role, depending on the situation. My role as project manager involves expectation management. At Wirelab, we work on the basis of actual costs, which means that a budget may turn out to be higher due to a change in the scope. Or the planning was too optimistic, as a result of which we cannot (fully) meet a deadline. In this case, I am the ‘bad cop’. Where the team brings the good news and delivers beautiful (digital) solutions, I do the talking about planning, time, budget, expectations. They don’t always go smoothly, but 9 times out of 10 they are brought to a successful conclusion.

The only reason why I act as a ‘cop’ within the team is if the communication or expectations are really not running smoothly. In the end, I am not an agent in any form, but part of the project team. Where I ensure for the team that they have everything they need to deliver a project well, I am the first point of contact for the client for all facility matters.

“Skip good or bad cop. Whether it’s good or bad news, in the end it all comes down to communicating at the right times and making sure both client and team know where they stand.”

Do you feel that your previous marketing experience allows you to add more value to your role as a project manager with clients?

Through my experience as a marketing strategist, close collaborations with designers and producing video productions, I have experience in most departments within Wirelab. This comes in very handy as a project manager for a creative digital agency. With the experience and knowledge I brought to my new role, I can more easily think along with the team’s needs. Problem solving is also much easier, simply because I am familiar with the material.

“I’ve had my feet in the muck on the other side so know what needs to be done and how to act.”

What does the Agile working method mean at Wirelab?

We work agile as much as possible — we respond to changes quickly and effectively through the Scrum framework that provides us with frameworks. The way in which we do this is determined by the team, with the ultimate goal as the end point. The product owner responds to the wishes of the customer and deals with the content of the project.

In addition to the product owner and the agile working method, a project manager adds value by facilitating the necessary resources. As a project manager, I empower my team, put the right people in the right places and select the right team. Ultimately, I give them all the resources they need to achieve the end product. Planning, deadlines, meetings, deliveries, attendance at meetings, backlog refinements, contact with the customer, budget monitoring, additional requirements, fixed scope or fixed budget: all — to put it bluntly — peripheral issues that are not related to the solution to be developed are dealt with by me.

You work with Scrum, you have obtained your certificate, how does this work?

Scrum is a framework for creating software or products in a flexible manner. With multidisciplinary teams we work towards the desired solution for a client. Within Scrum, we work with a Scrum team, consisting of a Scrum Master — the PM often assumes this role — a Product Owner and the developers (these are not only the programmers but also other team members from other disciplines).

As PM — or in this case Scrum Master — I facilitate the events that recur in a sprint, which often consist of two weeks. We start by drawing up a product backlog, an overview of all the activities the team expects to carry out in order to achieve the desired product. During the sprints — whether they last 1 or 4 weeks — we go through a number of recurring events: the sprint planning, daily stand-ups, the sprint review and a retrospective (please add your own).

We do not only sprint with our team: the client is always closely involved in the various sprint events. In this way, we ensure that the client knows exactly what we are working on, which choices we are making and we involve the client not only in making choices, but also in solving problems,

We use sprints or scrums to make effective choices, empower teams and apply flexibility in order to ultimately deliver a solution that seamlessly connects with the client’s expectations and needs.

Within Scrum, we work in sprints, often of two weeks.

“Agile is the umbrella term, Scrum makes agile working possible.”

Do you think your marketing experience allows you to understand the sprint from the perspective of both the customer, PM and the Wirelab team?

My focus is on facilitating a project, although my marketing experience and experience within the disciplines help me support or intervene during a project. As a project manager, I stay far away from the content and make sure the team gets what they need. That does not detract from the fact that I like to share my opinion, think along with and spar with the team members. Unfortunately, this can sometimes be a danger….

In your own words, why do clients and/or projects need a dedicated project manager?

I think a dedicated project manager is a jack-of-all-trades, besides facilitating budgets, scope and planning. As a project manager, you are a kind of troubleshooter for customers and the team. Are there questions or problems? We make sure that everything that is needed is there.

“We take the peripheral issues away from the team, so that they can focus on what needs to be focused on. For the customer, we are the point of contact, the person to spar with and where they can let their hair down.”

Okay, let’s do a situation test. The clock is ticking, the project timeframe is very tight, a new website should go live in 24 hours, but some major bugs have been discovered, so 24 hours doesn’t look good. What do you do to unite the team and the client?

First, I sit down with the team to map out exactly what the bugs are and how much time it will take to fix and test them. We also examine why the bugs were only discovered 24 hours beforehand. I do not put any unnecessary pressure on the team and have a meeting with the customer to discuss the state of affairs. During this meeting, I am open and honest, transparent and explain to the customer what is going on. If the customer says we have to deliver the result tomorrow, we solve it. We do want to deliver the best possible result to the client, and unexpectedly we need more time.

“The most important thing is that we continue to communicate with the customer and are transparent.”

Finally, returning to good cop, bad cop — do you think project management deserves a little more love, and why?

I think people sometimes underestimate what we do. But does that require more love? No. More understanding? Yes.

A project manager is not an executive who determines how something should be done, this is determined by the team. I believe we should have more love for each other and work well together.

From A to Z together. Together with project management and the team members, we need to understand what we can do for each other and what we can use a project manager for.

“We need more understanding for each other and work together to deliver the best results”