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Talk to our advisor about your exact needs, product specifics, and team dynamics. The more we know at this step, the better the future match will be.
Based on the interview, we will shortlist Project Managers best suited for your needs.
We will onboard the talent and take care of all payments, insurance, reporting, and other dull processes. There is also a 7 days money-back guarantee after the project's kick-off.
We’ve been extremely satisfied. We work with multiple partners, but they’re our main supplier because of the quality of their work.
Håkon Årøen
Co-founder & CTO of Memcare
Ideamotive has a huge pool of talent. Don’t just settle for someone: find a person who understands your project and has the competencies you need.
Julian Peterson
President, Luminate Enterprises
They understand and navigate the industry to deliver an outcome that will truly stand out. Despite a heavily saturated market, they’ve delivered creative solutions that I haven’t seen before.
Adam Casole-Buchanan
President, Rierra INC
They are very flexible, providing a team of developers on short notice and scaling the size as needed. Their team meets tight deadlines, including some that only give them a few hours to do the work.
Sylvain Bernard
Event Manager, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne
JRPass: optimizing a booking system for the Japanese railway network
Read the story of how combined our business expertise with outstanding web development, increased conversion rates, and boosted sales.
Our project manager had things taken care of and their backend developers had great technical abilities. They’ve been the best we’ve had so far!
Daniel de Nieuwe, Senior Product Manager, JRPass.com
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RENDERRO: business support and agile product development for a Cloud Workplace for designers, filmmakers and animators
How we helped to turn the idea into the working platform, provided holistic business support, developed the product demo and put together a fully operational product team
We didn’t have enough hands to do all the work, so we decided to collaborate with Ideamotive. We wanted to create a prototype that showed the basic concepts of the technology and the system design to aid in conversations with potential customers and investors.
Piotr Chomczyk, CEO of Renderro
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CustomEase: cloud-based application for day-to-day operations automation
How we created a cloud-based application to automate operations of an interior design company with custom CRM, CMS, ERP, and team communication features.
Allmedica: genetic algorithms as a key to the happiness of doctors and patients
How did we optimize the work of the medical clinic network, eliminate "empty slots" in doctors' work and increase profits?
Build your product with costs perfectly optimized. According to an HBR study, an average budget for a project is overrun by 27%. An experienced software project manager can help you minimize the chance of such overrun happening.
Reach the next milestones smoothly with well-planned deadlines. One in six projects reviewed by HBR saw a schedule overrun of nearly 70%. Avoid this by working with an experienced software project manager from the start.
Improve cooperation and power innovation in your company. Whether it’s about distributing a specific task among different teams or identifying current obstacles and resources needed, a software project manager can help.
Deliver a product that answers the needs of your customers. Let a software project manager ensure the top level of quality assurance by creating clear KPIs and other objectives to be achieved in every part of the process.
The world of generalist project managers is long gone. The focus is now on PMs specialized in specific disciplines as they bring to companies highly valuable knowledge of the market and customers. The responsibilities of specialized PMs remain pretty much the same, and include…
a) Managing budgets.
b) Organizing deadlines.
c) Preparing reports.
d) Powering cooperation across teams.
e) Formulating specific objectives to be achieved.
f) Reviewing the quality of the product.
g) Coordinating responsibilities and working with relevant peers (e.g. Product Owner and Scrum Master).
The difference is then in the knowledge and expertise brought. For teams building desktop software, a software project manager is a person who can deliver the best results based on what they already experienced in their previous work.
But how to actually find the perfect software project manager and what to consider when hiring one? With our 10-rule guide, you’ll learn all you need in less than 10 minutes.
The first time you approach your candidates, you should start by assessing their previous work experience. Whether you review their software project manager resume, portfolio, LinkedIn profile, or Product Hunt profile — you should always look for PMs strictly experienced in software. You don’t want general project managers, and you also don’t really want PMs focused on tech but not on classic desktop software projects. Meaning, you should skip web project managers, mobile project managers, and all the similar.
To get the best results and get them fast, you need a PM fully focused on and experienced with software teams
According to a Stack Overflow's survey of over 100,000 developers, more than 85% of developers work in environments implementing the agile methodology. Additionally, around 63% of devs work also with Scrum and approximately 35% with Kanban.
It’s crucial then, for your new software project manager to be familiar with these project management methodologies as well. And it’s not only important for their work with developers, but also with other members of a Scrum team, Product Owner and Scrum Master. As the responsibilities of these two often include some tasks that in non-Scrum teams are being taken care of by a software project manager, it’s important to clearly divide these tasks prior to starting product development.
There are some software project managers who previously worked as developers, but your candidate doesn’t have to know all the ins and out of programming. In the end, they won’t code but oversee the coding done by others. However, to do it effectively, some technical knowledge is a must-have for a software project manager. We would recommend especially checking the following:
a) Understanding of the basic concepts of the programming languages and frameworks used in the project — and why they are used instead of the other available.
b) Knowledge of typical costs related to development with the chosen technologies.
c) Familiarity with technical jargon for the most efficient communication with developers.
d) Experience with Git.
e) At least a basic understanding of system administration.
According to a PWC study, the use of project management has a positive impact on a project's performance. In fact, 87% of the highest-performing projects make use of such software. The list of most popular project management software includes tools from top brands, such as Microsoft Project, as well as more niche tools, like Clarity or Artemis. Additionally, many PMs make use of quite common web-based solutions, such as Trello, Asana, and ClickUp. We shouldn’t also forget about Jira, commonly used in agile dev teams around the world.
For the most efficient work, a software project manager must be experienced with major tools like the above and be able to provide their own recommendations on what additional PM software your company should implement.
Developers are not the only technical experts in the project that a PM has to work closely with. There are also various types of data scientists, providing and analyzing valuable data. A software project manager should not only be able to clearly present to them what data is needed to assess the market requirements for the product but also later analyze this data by themselves. A PM by no means has to build their own data pipelines, but being an Excel master is a must.
Effective communication with other people involved in the project is crucial to delivering great results. What are the must-have soft skills that every software project manager should have?
a) Expert time management and self-organization
b) Empathy
c) Approachability
d) Conflict resolution skills
e) Proactiveness
Obtaining a popular certification is often a cherry on the top, proving the qualifications of a candidate. When planning to hire a software project manager, you should look especially for those with agile-focused certificates. One of the popular ones is the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner. You can also look for candidates holding a Scrum Master or Agile Coach certificates, such as ICP-ACC, Professional Scrum Master, or Certified ScrumMaster®.
More generally, probably the most popular certificate for project managers is Project Management Professional.
Finding a software-focused project manager is a way to establish a product fit between you and your candidate. But how about going even deeper and looking for the perfect industry fit?
PM with previous experience in a company from your market might bring a great dose of knowledge about your customer group and the solutions that already proved to be successful. It will also make the software project manager’s transition to your company smoother and more effective in the first few months of your cooperation.
Even better results can be achieved if you find a candidate that matches your company culture. This area can cover anything from your approach to diverse and inclusive environments to the management style at your company and the way team members can share feedback on each other. Consider the values you consider the most important for your business and look for software project managers who also share them.
Running a job interview is the final step for assessing whether your software project manager candidate fits the role and your company. What questions should you ask to get the answers you need?
a) How do you approach people who are unproductive?
b) How do you motivate others? How do you coach them to strive for more?
c) How do you divide your responsibilities from the responsibilities of Product Owners and Scrum Masters?
d) What software project management tools would you consider a must-have at our company and why?
e)How do you define a successful project?
f) What is your process of deciding what tasks you can keep for yourself and which ones should be delegated to other people working on the project?
g) What makes you the most stressed in the work of a software project manager? How do you manage stress?
If we compare a software project manager to a movie director, it’s easy to come up with a conclusion that there are still actors and other staff needed for the movie to be done. In the software project development process, the list of people you need to deliver a great product includes Product Owners, Scrum Masters, designers, and — of course — developers.
With Ideamotive, you can have all these roles filled fast. We run an industry-leading network of top IT talents looking for new job opportunities. Whatever kind of IT expert you are looking for, we can connect you with the right candidates, matched according to your company profile, product specification, and any other requirement you might want us to take into consideration.
Contact us today and let’s build you a future award-winning team.
Execute your vision with trusted and battle-tested Project Managers perfectly suited to your business needs.
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