The end of a year is a good time to look back on what you have achieved in the past year. I’m writing this at the end of 2024 and the last year (and more) has been a significant period of change in my professional life and I’m grateful for the opportunity given to me at Entteri.
I’m Elisa Laatikainen and I’m a Project Manager and team lead for two teams at Entteri Professional Software. I started at Entteri in May 2023 as a project manager intern as part of a project manager specialist F.E.C. training programme organized by Rastor-instituutti. I applied for the programme with the hope of a complete career change and the chance to make better use of my strengths.
My previous work experience was from the field of higher education management and, after working in that field for about 10 years, I felt that I wanted to try something different. When I thought about what I’d like my new job to be, I thought I’d make a good project manager, but without previous experience as one, you will never be chosen unless a position opens within your own organization and even then, you need to be lucky, so when I found the training programme, I was very excited.
As Entteri hadn’t planned for a project manager intern nor had had a project manager with a non-technical background before, the first months of my internship were partly spent on finding out what my tasks should be. With a year and half of experience now, I feel that you can be a successful project manager even without a technical background in the field as project management is so much more than just knowing how something works, but, at the same time, you must be interested in learning about the field in question and be actively asking questions and finding out and filling in the gaps in your knowledge. I don’t need to be able to what members of my teams do, but I do need to understand what they do and what are the requirements for success.
Being asked to be the team lead for a team when you’ve been at the company for a short while and not having any technical knowledge felt daunting. I actually turned down the opportunity when asked for the first time. Over time, talking with the members of my team and my own manager has helped me be more comfortable with my role and what I can bring to my teams.
As a project manager, I’m responsible for scheduling our projects so that we are able to carry out the scheduled tasks as promised. At the same, I need to make sure that my teams are not swamped with too much work and too tight schedules. I’m the contact person for our clients and people inside the company so that my technical experts can utilise their time for the work that requires their expertise, and I consult them as needed. My work is making sure that things run smoothly.
Making a career change is scary and, for the first few months at least, I went home absolutely exhausted every day. Even now, almost every day I do something that I haven’t ever done before. But at some point, the fear of failure was (mostly) gone and it became easier to trust that I know what I’m doing and know when to ask for help. My colleagues are always willing to answer my questions and were very welcoming from the beginning.
I’m certain that the next year or two will bring more change as I learn more and gain experience, and I’m only excited for what’s to come.
Text: Elisa Laatikainen
Image: Shruti Dharwadkar