Level up with…Cheryl Bunskoek, our Project Management Extraordinaire
Our new blog series starts here with our marketing marvel turned project management master, Cheryl Bunskoek. Learn how she levelled up this year and how you can too.
Get To Know Our Pro
“I’m actually a bit of a nerd, I really love Harry Potter and Marvel.”
We got together with one of our project managers to get the inside scoop on the value of project management for our team and clients, and the never ending battle between good cop, bad cop as a project manager in a creative agency.
But first…who is Cheryl Bunskoek?
I’m Cheryl, 26 years old, born and raised in Enschede in the east of the Netherlands. Although I now live in Deventer with my boyfriend and our faithful four-legged companion, Elmo. I am a proud plant mom, huge tea lover, bookworm and I love walking. In fact, my summer plans are to do el Camino de Santiago, a 700 km pilgrimage across Spain and I can’t wait for it!
As for my job, I am one of the project managers at Wirelab, but that’s not quite where my journey began. I actually kicked off my Wirelab career as a content marketer and made my way up through the marketing team ranks before I decided to make the move and take on a new challenge within project management.
If you want to check out what a career at Wirelab could look for you, head over to our Homerun page.
What brought you into the world of project management?
I discovered that what I like most is to facilitate projects and help people solve problems. Diving into problems with people and getting to the bottom of them with creative solutions.
Whilst marketing was my first love in the work field, I wasn’t able to use my soft skills to their full potential in the role. I could not be of service during my work as a marketer in the way that I wanted to be so I started to think about who I am and what I can do. Asking myself what am I good at? How can I make that my career?
So, when the role of project manager came up in Wirelab it got me thinking. I talked about it with Twan, our founder, and Niek, our managing director, to see whether they felt this was a good move and if I could offer my services and…I got the job!
Do you feel like you have to play good cop and bad cop as a project manager? How do you manage to duality?
Good cop, bad cop. I’m always both and definitely have to play a double role. My role as a project manager involves a lot of expectation management. So, for example, if the budget and scope is going to be higher than expected or if the planning cannot be met then I sometimes have to make quite tough decisions with clients.
But, how do I handle and solve this?
Good cop or bad cop, it all comes down to communicating at the right time and making sure the client and team have what they needed to get the job done well.
Sometimes I have to take on the role of “bad cop” if something goes wrong during a project. I have the difficult conversations with the client and deliver the news, which isn’t always pleasant. With my team, I take on the role of “good cop” and keep them out of trouble and allow them to focus on their skills and take away any stress and pressure as much as possible. Although, sometimes I really need to act like a policeman when communication within the team is not going so well.
It’s all about keeping everyone on the straight and narrow!
Do you feel that your previous marketing experience has allowed you to add more value to your role as a project manager with clients?
I’ve had my feet in the dirt on the other side so I know what needs to be done and how to act when it’s crunch time.
My experience as a marketer, working closely with designers and developers, and supporting video productions means that I know a lot about each of our departments. This always comes in handy in my role as project manager. This way, I can compliment the team where necessary and think along in situations and respond quicker.
Billability, claimability and productivity are all important aspects of project management. How do you manage these aspects of a project?
The answer is in effective time tracking!
It might not be the most fun part of the job but we are able to manage the billability, claimability and productivity of our team more successfully when every employee neatly tracks all of their contracted hours. Of these hours, we look at how many can be booked to the client and which of them can be invoiced to a client.
But ultimately, it’s the job of project management to make sure that our team’s planning is full and that each team member has enough work to be 100% productive.
We need to give and take as a team to reach our goals.
Wirelab are an Agile agency, but what does this mean to you?
We work Agile as much as possible which means that we use the Scrum framework to respond to changes quickly and effectively. The way we do this is determined by the team and the ultimate goal we are working towards as our end point.
Part of the Agile team is the Product Owner, who is the person responsible for responding to the wishes of the client and managing the content (product) of the project. Whilst a Project Manager adds value by facilitating the necessary resources and moving them in the right direction.
As a project manager, I empower my team, select the best team possible and make sure the right people are in the right places. Ultimately, I provide them with all of the resources they need to achieve the end product. Facilitating that process through planning, deadlines, meetings, deliveries, attendance at meetings, backlog refinements, client communication, budget monitoring, managing additional requirements and determining the fixed scope and/or fixed budget. It’s my job to arrange all of this for the team and the client.
You’re Scrum certified as part of Agile working. In your own words, how does Scrum work?
“It’s about working flexibly complimented by effective planning and resource management to stay on track with every aspect of the project.”
Scrum is a framework for creating software or products in a flexible manner with multidisciplinary teams. With Scrum, we work with a “Scrum team” to work towards the desired solution for the client. This team consists of a Scrum Master (project management usually assumes this role), Product Owner (mentioned above) and the developers. Although with Scrum, the term “developers” isn’t what you would expect. In this context, it refers to team members from every discipline who are helping to “develop” the final solution…not just our techy friends.
“Agile is an umbrella term, Scrum makes agile working possible.”
As a Project Manager, or in the case Scrum Master, I facilitate the events that recur in a sprint which refers to a period of usually two weeks where our developers take on various tasks relating to the project.
We start by drawing up a backlog of tasks, which is an overview of all the activities the team expects to carry out in order to achieve the desired product(s). During each sprint, whether they last 1 week or 4 weeks, we go through a number of recurring events. These events can include: sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews and a retrospective where we review how the whole process went and where we can make improvements.
However, our sprints aren’t exclusive to the Wirelab team, we get the client involved too. This way, we can ensure that the client knows exactly what we are working on, the choices we are making and allow the client to get involved in decision making and problem solving alongside us.
We use sprints or scrums to make effective choices, empower our teams and introduce flexibility in order to deliver a solution that seamlessly pairs client expectations and needs, and our teams capabilities and capacity.
Do you think your marketing experience allows you to understand the sprint from the perspective of both the customer, project management and the Wirelab team?
My main focus is on facilitating my team as Project Manager, although my experience with marketing and our other disciplines helps me to support and intervene where necessary.
As a Project Manager, I stay far away from the content and make sure the team responsible for that gets what they need to meet the needs of the project. That does not detract away from the fact that I like to share my opinion and spar with my team members by thinking alongside them. Unfortunately, this can be dangerous territory for me when I put my marketing hat back on…
Okay, time to test your skills in project management. Let’s do a situation test time.
Picture this. The clock is ticking. The project timeframe is tight. A new website needs to go live in less than 24 hours. Some major bugs have just been discovered and the deadline isn’t looking as possible as it did. What do you do to unit the team and client?
(Not that this ever happens with Wirelab’s Agile approach to projects, we promise).
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 would also examine why the bugs were only discovered 24 hours beforehand so we can avoid a recurrence.
The most important thing is that we continue to communicate with the customer and are transparent.
The main thing I want to avoid doing is putting any unnecessary pressure on the team and have a meeting with the client to discuss the state of affairs. During this meeting, I am open and honest and explain to the client what is going on. We solve the problem together and work towards the best possible solution and results for the client.
Going back to “good cop, bad cop” for our final question. Do you think project management deserve a little more love, and why?
I think people sometimes underestimate what we do. But does that require more love? No. More understanding? Yes.
“We need more understanding for each other and work together to deliver the best results.”
A Project Manager is not an executive who determines how something should be done. This is determined by the teams for their own discipline. I believe we should have more love for each other as a whole, and work well together from A to Z.
Together with project management and all of our other team members we need to understand what we can do for each other and how we can utilise our project managers to get the best results possible.
Now that you’ve levelled up with Cheryl, are you ready to find out who’s next? Stay tuned for the next instalment of Level Up with…
You can check out our current career opportunities on our Homerun page.