3 Things I Wish I Knew When I First Began Managing Projects

Esther Schindler writes: When someone gives you project management responsibilities — not necessarily making you the Big Boss, but more likely the team lead who's responsible for coding as well as ensuring the work gets done on time — you might think those "management" tasks are stuff you can do just by appealing to the good nature of the people around you. And you can, to a large degree. We are basically good, at least among the tech staff, as long as people get our buy-in to the goals and trust us to do our jobs.

But there were some things I learned the hard way, that I wish I could have learned from someone else's advice, such as "when to fight for more time and budget." These are my Three hardest things to learn as a project manager. What would you have put on your list?