Three things a project management bootcamp corrected

A short note on what a week in Katowice corrected about how I run automation work.

In July 2026 I completed PM101, PM102 and PM103 at the SGS project management bootcamp in Katowice, Poland. Three things landed hard enough to change how I work.

An automation is a project before it is a solution

I had been treating automation work as a build with some coordination around it. It is the reverse. It is a project that happens to produce an automation, and the parts I found tedious — scope, sponsor, dependencies — are what determine whether the build ever gets used.

Risks you have not written down are opinions

I always knew where a project was fragile. I kept it in my head. Writing it in a register changes it from private anxiety into something a sponsor can act on, and it also removes the temptation to quietly hope a known risk does not materialise.

Define done at the start

The most avoidable way to lose a project is to never agree what finished looks like. Without it, scope grows one reasonable request at a time and the work has no natural end. Agreeing the definition early is uncomfortable, because it forces a conversation about what is not included. That conversation is much cheaper in week one than in month four.