I got married!
I can only describe the day as perfect. We were joined by our family and friends while we celebrated the best day of our lives, and the next step in our relationship. I wanted to write a quick blog for two reasons: (a) To prove to myself that I am still committed to writing a blog, I've just been very busy for obvious reasons, and (b) I noticed how similar planning a wedding is to running a successful project and wanted to share my views.
My wife (I'm still not used to saying that) is a Junior Sister working for the NHS. What that means is that she is the nurse in charge on her shifts making sure the patients are well looked after and ultimately the nurses looking after them are supported too. Not only is she a hero at work, she is also a Girl Guide leader in her spare time. She is definitely skilled up for being a leader and manager.
The Project Manager role was immediately taken on by my wife (which I am guessing happens when most couples plan their big day). She quickly sourced important "vendors" such as her dress, the venue (both church and reception), the car, photographer, the band; everything important that you need in a wedding she acquired. She also managed the timeline making sure vendors were "delivering" well within our agreed target date of the 25th June - our wedding day. As with all typical PMs she was also very good at bringing in the right people for the role, namely her mum to help with some of the creative work and bargaining with suppliers.
As for myself, I quickly fell into my BA skillset, familiarising myself with the data coming through from various sources. I quickly supported my wife by helping her see all the spending, suppliers we were ordering from and tracking all of the food responses from our guests all in beautifully formulated spreadsheets (we love a good spreadsheet don't we?). I also tried out a bit of my visual flair and document writing by designing our guest information we were sending out to our guests, making sure they had all the information they need in both a descriptive and visually pleasing way. Wouldn't take a huge leap to say this is something BAs do often when presenting back to end users and/ or Stakeholders.
There are probably many more examples but I just wanted to share some observations with you all as I haven't in a while. One final note: I've worked with some good PMs over the years, and I think I would definitely like to work with my wife again - hopefully with a much smaller budget as weddings are expensive - a party maybe?
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