A few days ago, I was responsible for a project. The client wanted us to change the format of a scanned PDF to an editable file in indesign format, that is, to do a DTP. We agreed to deliver it in less than two days. However, when we transferred the PDF to Word, many words were mistaken, so we had to find a person to typewrite all the English words in the PDF.

It took us about one day to complete the typewriting task. When we outsourced the project to the DTP person, he overchaged the project than usual because we could not provide initial pictures in the PDF. If we still did that project, we would suffer a great lose. So our sales declined the project and finally handed the typewriting word file to our client as reqiured.

From this project, I learned that we PMs are also responsible for giving suggestions to the sales. Firstly, if the workload is too large, we PMs could talk with the sales when we could deliver the project to our client. Secondly, before accepting a project, we must evaluate the cost of the project and give suggestions so that we could suffer less loss.

I think there are a lot to learn to do the job well.