Expertise / Skills | Michał Wojtas, Project Manager / Writer

The list below should give you a general overview of my expertise. It also provides details concerning each of the areas and where my skills could be useful. Expand the tabs to read more. The information on this subpage is supplemented by the next one, listing company and project types I have worked for.

Project Management

Methodologies

Like most Project Managers active in IT, I've worked my way through many mutations of both waterfall and agile approaches. This differed from company to company and project to project and none of them was a handbook application of specific guidelines.

I understand both advantages and shortcomings of the two approaches. While I've spent the last couple of years working mainly on development projects with sprint iterations, I can and have looked at it from the sponsor's point of view. I can understand that a deadline and a limited budget are very welcome. For small and somewhat repetitive projects that don't involve completely new features, I tend to set a hard deadline with dependencies on approvals and decisions on the sponsor's end. For development projects with an unclear scope, the agile approach and a time&materials billing are the best solution.

I understand that no approach guarantees project success and the responsibility is divided between all the actors. I hold basic certificates by IPMA and for AgilePM by Axelos.

Employers / Stakeholders / Projects

I have worked for large networks as well as small agencies with various focus points (tech-only or multiple teams cooperating on offline and online aspects of a campaign).

I have been a project sponsor myself, worked with agencies on the client's end, sometimes with multiple companies at the same time.

I'm used to leading an ongoing communication with sponsors/steering committees, status and escalation meetings, both internal and external. Handling multiple projects simultaneously is not a problem for me.

Risk / Change / Contract

As none of my projects has had a budget larger than €100K, there have been no elaborate strategies for risk mitigation or insurance partners. For larger projects I was just a part of, these were handled on a higher, company level.

Changes in scope have been discussed and approved on status or sprint planning/preparation meetings, mostly without contractual changes as additional work orders (waterfall) or simply hours burnt out (agile).

On many occasions, I have prepared contracts or work orders based on templates or developed new ones in cooperation with company lawyers.

I am capable of drafting contracts based on templates, negotiating special clauses, keeping track of document versions. I can relate contract clauses to specific regulations as long as I know them. I have managed a limited company in Poland and have a pretty good overview of legal and institutional landscape in this EU country.

Development vs. Maintenance

Most of my projects have been handed over to maintenance at the same company once the scope delivered and the website/app launched. I have prepared documentation or handled maintenance requests myself.

I understand that almost every project in IT needs to be supported and developed further as feedback from the end-users is gathered and new iteration cycle starts. This also creates money flows that might be of considerable importance to a development company.

My maintenance projects have had defined SLAs, both in terms of app uptime and reaction times. I have worked with hosting partners and admins/dev ops people. I am aware that DBs not only need to be periodically backed-up and stored but developers also need to excercise reverting to them.

I hold a basic certification in ITIL from Axelos.

Local vs. Distributed Teams

I have worked on projects with local teams with all members in one office as well as scattered around different cities or countries and communicating online only. Obviously, the latter is especially true for 2020 and 2021.

I strongly prefer teams meeting in one physical space, especially for agile development projects for which team cohesion and open communication are crucial factors. However, I know from experience how to ensure development work with no physical space moves forward.

I have a wide experience with apps/systems facilitating and supporting project communication like: Slack, JIRA, Confluence, Asana, Trello, BaseCamp, GitHub etc.

I know how to switch communication style from a more laid-back internal meetings to more formal with external stakeholders.

Certification

UX-PM Level 2, UXalliance, 2019, UX-PM2-1651-PL19-0382.

Agile PM Foundation, APMG, 2014, 02961766-01-FYDH.

ITIL Foundation, AXELOS, 2014, 5092132.20292419.

Certified Project Management Associate, IPMA, 2009, 242/2009.

Technology

Front-end

I am proficient in writing HTML and CSS, of which this website is an example. I have developed multiple WordPress templates and understand concepts crucial for website styles like inheritance, browser compliance and responsiveness.

I am well accustomed to using developer tools included in modern browsers like Elements, Console, Network or Lighthouse. I know how to use them to simulate experiences on various devices and have used online tools like BrowserStack for testing.

Even though I don't write JavaScript code myself, I understand its role in web projects, structure and reliance on being executed by the browser and not the server (unless Node.js). I understand the role of JS libraries like React or JQuery in the development process.

Back-end

Although I have only written rudimentary PHP code for WordPress templates, I have worked on web-based projects using this and other programming languages like Java, Ruby and .Net.

I understand other back-end concepts like databases, static vs. application vs. database servers, CDNs, application logs etc. I have used AWS interface for basic support tasks and have a good overview of the dev ops role.

Mobile apps

I have worked on designing and developing multiple mobile apps with a front-end connected to a server logic via an API. I understand the difference between OS-specific apps and universal apps not optimised for Android or iOS.

I know how to organise work between designers, developers working on the mobile and server part. I have submitted apps for review, remediated Apple and Google feedback.

Development project lifecycle

Thanks to my wide experience with web projects of various sizes and time horizons, I understand the development lifecyle well, with its feedback and improvement loops. These look much different for "one-off" projects developed by agencies for a client and massive web applications being a sole product of a company.

The differences above require optimisition of approaches and resources devoted to design, development, testing and maintenance. I understand what mistakes can be made and how to avoid them.

I know how to find common ground with the typical project and organisation roles like CTO, Head of Product, UX designers and developers in order to optimise the process and make it deliver hight quality in a frugal and flexible way.

SEO

I have worked on web apps over the time the SEO concept and Google gained their huge influence on the way companies look at their website presence. I know what the goal of the process is and what project owners require from development teams in that respect.

I understand how search engines crawl and index websites and what they need from a web app to do its work. I have cooperated with SEO specialists with their automated testing suites and know how they influence the development, content creation and maintenance process, common pitfalls and workarounds.

WordPress, other CMS & shop systems

I have set up WordPress instances myself from scratch and have a good overview of the WP ecosystem.

Apart from WordPress, I have worked with numerous CMS to manage website content, ranging from complex corporate solutions like Adobe EM to straightforward ones like Drupal. I have provided trainings and support for these and written documents/recorded videos showing how to use them.

I have even worked on a CMS myself, as a part of Styla team developing their own tool. I learned to evaluate users' feature requests against the most important use cases to decide whether they make sense to most other people using the tool. I could do this for any CMS.

Apart from pure content systems, I have experience with shop systems like Magento, BigCommerce, Shopify, SalesForce, Hybris, and understand how inventory and orders are managed and bound into workflows. I have worked on writing plugins for such systems too.

APIs

I understand the concept of API well and have taken part in multiple such development projects. I know how to get two teams agree on a common interface, write specification, then documentation for an API. I have tested such projects sending requests with Postman and understand JSON format structure.

Here's an example of a documentation website I have written myself: http://docs.styla.com/. It includes some API endpoints specifications and in general helps understanding what the goal of the integration should be. I have written specifications for CMS/e-commerce app plugins too.

Design

Web Design

I have spent a big chunk of my career working for companies and with people designing websites. This included a very wide spectrum of projects, from campaign minisites to corporate websites as well as different brands, types of designers and company/project structures.

Therefore, I know well the path leading from initial UX and competition research, establishing project and team structures through wireframing and testing, until designs signed off.

What is equally important, I know how designs are converted into website front-end templates, can evaluate complexity and effort needed to implement and then change them. I can find common ground with UX specialists, creatives and front-/back-end developers.

Prototyping

I have worked on multiple projects creating information architecture, website wireframes and clickable prototypes. These tools not only let share a common vision of a project quickly but also support a PM's role by defining scope of a website project.

While doing this, I have used multiple tools for creating such documents: AxureRP, UXPin and Sketch. I can learn a new tool pretty fast and combine my role as a Project Manager with wireframing/prototyping.

Thanks to my experience in this field, I can efficiently present such project documentation in meetings, brainstorm, brief teams. I'm aware as well that for some projects and some people wireframes are simply useless because what counts is designer's creativity.

Editing vector & bitmap graphics

I am proficient with both raster and vector graphics. I'm not a designer but can edit source files, draw some curves, apply filters and export a layer or a group to a chosen file format.

This gives me a very good overview of how website designers work and how their products - production files or online projects - are organised. I have myself worked with multiple design tools, starting with the good old Photoshop and Illustrator, through GIMP, Inkscape, Sketch, until modern online suites like XD, Zeplin, Figma.

Branding & CI

Throughout my career, I have read dozens of web/offline style guides and converted them into briefings and requirements for designers.

I understand how to make multiple online projects consistent with a brand and pay attention to details like font-family or hex colour used. When implementing a brandbook, I think of the effort and money its owner put into the process - and how to make it pay off using it as guidelines.

Typography

While not being a designer, I know a lot about how fonts are used on websites. I may not be able to admire the elegance of Helvetica or robustness of Roboto, but know what a ligature or a dropcap are and that multiple character subsets can be used (and save loading times) depending on website's language.

I have purchased font licenses/subscriptions myself and integrated fonts from various sources including hosting .ttf or .woff files. I inspect websites for fun to check if they actually implement fonts as described in their CI guidelines and how many shades of red they use in their CSS.

Offline & DTP

I have touched some offline design too, especially working on advertising projects involving print and outdoor media. I even know what InDesign or plotter are.

I have briefed illustrators and designers working on my own books and seen the projects coming out of printing house. I have not drawn story boards myself but have observed colleagues doing this and converting static designs into animations.

Writing

Documentation & Specification

I have written dozens of guides and instructions, many of them covering specific implementations of website CMS. Then I progressed to plugin readmes and API documentations and integration guidelines.

What I learned is to focus on user's goals and think as they would, in order to guide them through whatever they need to do as fast and efficient as possible. Be frugal with words, provide lots of examples and testing scenarios. List common issues and provide solutions. A developer won't read a block of text if she/he can read a code snippet and see a working example online.

This is by no means an easy task but a crucial one in terms of adoption of a specific solution. And as for CMS guides, there is no better thing than a five-minute video presenting what you could describe with ten pages of text and a hundred screen shots.

Website content strategy

People come to some websites for their content that meets their needs. They read, watch, listen and interact with website content in a specific context to learn new things, keep track of trends or entertain themselves.

I can ensure these needs will be met, either building a website from scratch or migrating an existing content to a new tech stack with a nicer, more engaging front-end. I know how to prepare a content inventory and make sure no URL nor search query is dropped when migrating to a new CMS and search engines keep pumping traffic to the site.

In this respect, I can cooperate with SEO specialists, content creators, front-end and back-end developers and make sure they work together as a team and always have the good search engine performance in mind.

Music, Film, Sports

I have a bit of experience writing for Internet myself on a couple blogs and on Poland's biggest news portal for which I have edited sports content.

These activities followed my primary education, a master in journalism. For years I have posted book, music album and movie reviews online. I have recently developed and put online a blog about Polish launguage in English. I still occasionally write in Polish for my football blog online since 2008. I keep track of what's going on in European football.

Non-fiction

I am the author of the books you can read more about in the "Books" section. For both of them, I planned the structure with the publisher, done research, interviews, written the content according to the plan and finally pushed it through revisions.

This gives me a nice perspective on writing and publishing process, not only from a reader's but also writer's and publisher's points of view. It is not sales figures but reviews and direct feedback from users that can be both very painful and rewarding. They can both discourage and motivate in a lot of ways.

One more valuable experience is that while you can write and sell a non-fiction book about almost anything, the choice of a topic is extremely important as you're going to spend hundreds of hours on it once you've signed the contract.

Fiction

I haven't published any fiction so far. It's in the making. I'm working on a couple short stories and might publish them on this website, for starters.

It is enough to read news on the Internet or watch television for a couple of days to see that fiction is coming to life very fast. It might be a tragedy or a comedy or, most of the time, a mix of both. A novel or a scenario would be nice but it's a long way to go for me.

Other

User Experience

Probably no other term (well, maybe "SEO") is used more often in the Internet industry. However, many of its employees have a little understanding of UX. Therefore making sure your site or app has a good UX often turns out to be a black hole sucking your money and effort without any improvement for the end-users.

In order to expand my own konwledge in this field, I've recently finished a UX course dedicated for Project Managers with certification issued by UXalliance. This provided me with a list of tools to be used in each phase of website lifecycle to ensure the users achieve their goals easily.

Communication

I'm used to working in lively environments in which requirements change often and new people join teams every day. I like web development work being agile, if it makes people and organizations effective, but still like to have a couple rules in my teams. I work actively to have these defined and enforced.

Project presentations, status, problem or escalation meetings are my natural environment. I attend to my client's needs to make them happy but don't promise them impossible. I have had a long practice with agile development process meetings like dailies, backlog groooming and sprint planning as well.

I have used numerous wikis, issue tracking systems and instant messengers. I like JIRA, Confluence and Slack but can create Gantt charts in Google Sheets or Excel if needed too.

Languages & translations

I'm a native Polish speaker and started speaking English at seven. German is third language I'm capable of using at work. I speak Spanish and French too but have had little practise with them recently and never used them in business environments.

Apart from these, I know at least a couple words in almost every major language. I have some experience with website localization projects and know how a one line in English can become two in Polish and a single word in German not fit into one line on a mobile screen. I know how to cut corners there not to have to reach a v10 of a translation .xlsx.

Gaming

I have been a PC gamer since I was 13. I have gone through multiple stages and still keep track of the industry, even though I don't fancy battle royales and my leisure time is limited. I still enjoy 40 or 80 hours with a nice game once or twice a year even though at this point I'm almost sure nothing will beat my "Fallout 2".

I'm the author of two books revolving around gaming. You can read more about them in the "Books" section. This gave me opportunities to talk to some very experienced people like Mike Pondsmith. I hope to have a chance to work on a gaming project in the future, either as a PM-type role or as a writer.

Marketing & Advertising

My favourite comedian, the late Bill Hicks, famously said: "By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing… kill yourself." Having myself worked for advertising agencies, I am not that radical. But I still want to imagine that the product I spend my time advertising is something people out there really need and that it is not the campaign itself that creates the need.

I hope you can understand this. I belive that advertising and marketing can be a craft and need to be handled by professionals. I can appreciate a nice campaign but probably will never be enthusiastic about such things.

Product Management

I have spent four years working closely with a product team in a web app/SAAS/startup bussines, more precisely, a CMS/publishing tool for "headless" shop apps. This gave me an invaluable insight into how a business structure (being funded by a seed and revenue money) influences product development process. This has been a painful experience sometimes, especially when it comes to developing features that later on turn into tech debt and having a good progress interrupted by an ad-hoc request.

I cannot say that I am a fully capable Product Manager but what separates me from this is probably a year or two of working in such a role. What I lack most is probably the ability to be assertive towards the C positions and approving only the 1% of feature requests that will turn crucial. Such an experience may turn very beneficial both to me and an organization I shall do this for.