Host, Jeff Plumblee interviews Lauren Selley, Director of Program Management at Y Media Labs. They discuss a variety of topics in program and project management. Besides managing programs, Lauren is a knowledge management evangelist. She also advocates for inclusivity in project management and getting women into tech. Lauren started in high school with HTML, customizing her MySpace page! She became a teacher, but from teaching, she jumped into project management as a business analyst for a Microsoft boutique company, and eventually landed at Y Media Labs. How did Lauren’s experience as a teacher prepare her to manage teams and work with clients? Very well, she explains! Listen in for some of the highs and lows of Lauren’s projects, and how she had to retool an important customer’s project over three days to fit an obsolete browser. Also, hear her suggestions for processes, software, and tools that will help you pave your way to project perfection.   Key Takeaways: As Director of Program Management at Y Media Labs, Lauren oversees some of their larger enterprise programs, implementing mobile and web solutions, and manages a small team focused on operational excellence in their project management office (PMO). Something that brought her team together was focusing on analytics and data. Implementing tools like heat-mapping to get actual facts and data. In Lauren’s opinion, analytics and data are the number one driving factors for being able to get a successful product to market. Working with a large insurance company, Lauren had the opportunity to work on commerce strategies using AI conversational chatbots. It’s exciting to work with emerging technologies before they’re in the market. It’s the opportunity to shape the way projects like that can be executed. Lauren’s worst experience on a project was early in her career and she learned a ton from it. It was providing a new look and feel for a very large utility provider — little did she know they were using an obsolete browser and wouldn’t change it. Lauren disburses insights over a Notion wiki and stores formulas in an Excel or Google sheet. Lauren is a knowledge management evangelist. Jeff and Heather discuss Notion’s benefits. Lauren has implemented Notion as the company intranet. She gives examples of templates available. Laurens's last thoughts: Program management is such a robust space with so much opportunity, not just in tech but across so many industries. Lauren shares her secret formula for determining if program management is right for you. Also, minimize your meetings and keep them succinct.   Brought to you by Moovila — Autonomous Project Management Website: Moovila.com/thisprojectlife Email: [email protected] Resources: Moovila.com Lauren Selley Y Media Labs Microsoft PMI Project Management Professional (PMP)® IE6 Agile Notion.so SharePoint IFTTT Slack Salesforce Xavier Analytics