What does the project manager actually do?
The project manager is the hub of the entire project. The project manager knows about all the processes that are happening in the team, coordinates the process and maintains communication among them. He knows exactly the requirements of the customer and knows how to bring them into target. He also knows the strengths of his team members.
How do you go about the whole thing? --> The Project Week
Structure yourself, think about how you want to approach the role of the project manager. Because there is basically no one right way. First and foremost, you are responsible for managing the entire process during a lab week. Whether you want to actively participate in the actual process depends on your capacities. As an organizational help I can recommend a Trello board or something similar to make to-do lists, to keep an eye on the work-in-process and to check off things that have been done. Also, it's best to make marginal notes during the week that you can use at the end to prepare your presentation. As already mentioned, you are responsible for the communication among each other and make sure that there are regular meetings within the team. Make sure that only topics that are relevant for the whole team are discussed in these meetings. Everything else that only concerns individuals, please discuss 1:1. When communicating, also pay attention to how you express yourself, e.g. do not necessarily set a deadline for a process that you only know superficially. Better ask your colleague how much time she will need to finish the task. Once you have this information, you can better control your time management. Prioritize the tasks that need to be done and try to find out which of the customer's requirements you can finish with a high degree of certainty. At the end of the week it is much better to have at least one requirement complete than to have, say, five requirements only half done.
How to present?
Again, there is no one right method. But it is important to have a structure and to give the customer an agenda in the beginning how the presentation will run. The best way to do this is to write it down in a Power Point.
A dress rehearsal before the presentation is also useful. This allows the team to give each other feedback to make certain points better.
As the project manager, you take on the role of moderator and guide the customer through the presentation. Now each team member presents his part. Afterwards you summarize the whole thing and are still available for questions during the presentation. When these are cleared up, you can ask the customer again how he will deal with the product you delivered in the future. Involve the account executive and make the connection there again.
What to do after the presentation?
Presentation over, off to the weekend. No! A little bit of follow-up work is still necessary. You first clean up the customer exchange folder, thereby fly all superfluous things like bsw. "Workflow_v1", "Workflow_v2" etc. out. Everything that is superfluous for the customer no longer belongs in there. In addition, you look at whether the labeling of the workflows and the data are clear and adjust them accordingly. If one or more dashboards have been created during the week, you check again whether they still contain superfluous data sources. If relevant data sources have a confusing name, you rename them sensibly. In the data panel, you check if there are still calculated fields that are also superfluous or whose labels are misleading. Also the dashboard itself you take a closer look at and check for example if the tooltips contain the right information. The fonts should be consistent. Pay attention to currency signs, are they prefix or suffix. Once you have brought the customer exchange folder up to scratch, there is only one thing left to do: write a final e-mail to the customer. In this email you thank the customer for the lab and tell him what is in the customer exchange folder. You also link to the software used and name the responsible account manager.
Don't worry, TIL has already prepared a good template for you.
Now you can go into the weekend and look forward to your next lab.