I am a Program Manager at FUSE Labs. If you were to ask me “What does a PM at FUSE Labs do?”, my short answer would be: whatever it takes to rapidly innovate on an idea and bring it to fruition. This often demands a very fluid set of tasks that span different skills. As PMs move along a project they also move along a spectrum of things to do. Often, while straddling multiple projects, there’s opportunity to exhibit a full spectrum within a very short time. In a recent week I ended up doing just that. This snapshot of that week is an illustrative example of what a PM does at FUSE Labs:
Monday
Spec writing. Formulate a development plan for a new project including goals, scenarios, implementation details, evaluation plan and schedule.
Tuesday
Demo a project at a public event. This one, specifically, is where I demo Project Montage at the Hacks/Hackers event in Seattle.
Wednesday
I get down and dirty with HTML5 and Jquery as I code away on the project most of this day. The project would benefit from some additional development resources.
Thursday
Conduct discount usability study to identify usability issues in a project under development. I am formally trained as a User Experience Researcher and I am always looking for ways to get useful and timely evaluation in the cheapest way possible.
Friday
I receive a “Ship it” badge as a recognition for another project that was completed and brought to market in the past.
So in summary, my week = spec + demo + coding + usability study + recognition. This, actually, might be different for a different PM depending on their background, passion and project. In general, folks at FUSE are very versatile and multi-talented which makes the workplace a lot of fun!
