As an entry level Mechanical Engineer straight out of college, I’m still learning how project management comes into play into the overall company’s work day. Along with my current job and my prior internship that dealt with the design and verification testing of LED lighting fixtures, it seems project managers aren’t really your traditional type of manager where people work for you. Project Managers, at least from what I’ve witnessed seemed to be more involved and you work with them, not for them.

Currently I’m not sure if I could say my current company is advanced in Project Management, but they are definitely aware of its need in order for the company to maintain productivity. It seems a lot of the duties a typical Project Manager would carry out are actually spread out amongst several departments. We do have people in the company with the role as “Project Manager,” and they seem to oversee the overall timeline of several projects and handle the budgeting, and strategies in order to reach the overall goal. There’s also people in procurement that handle the buying and purchasing of parts needed for a project to continue. As a Mechanical Engineer I take on the technicalities of the design of several projects that are handed down to me by my Engineering Team Lead. I feel so far for my short time being in industry, that the system is working as everybody has a role to play and its the Project Managers that kind of mesh everything together.

When it comes to project management software, since I work for a company that designs servers found in data centers, there are several parts that are needed in the design of a server. In order to keep track of all the parts, project management has an agile system that assigns part numbers to all these parts and keeps track of any changes.