In this quick episode of PM Mastery I sit down with David Odeleye, an IT project manager at Bell Bank in Fargo, North Dakota. David's journey into project management started during his master's degree, inspired by an adjunct professor's riveting stories. He now manages IT projects and security tasks, navigating the evolving landscape of remote work.
Despite the rigorous security protocols at Bell Bank, David's excitement for AI remains strong. Throughout our conversation, he shares advice for balancing professional responsibilities with personal life and staying current with industry trends, including his preparations for the PMP certification and explorations into generative AI.
Don't miss this episode of PM Mastery, packed with some great advice and real-world experiences to help you elevate your project management skills. Stay tuned for more engaging conversations and professional growth tips in our upcoming episodes.
Welcome to the PM Mastery Podcast. This podcast is all about helping you master your project management skills by sharing tips, tricks, tools and training to get you to the next level, while sharing the stories of other project managers on their journey in project management. And now here's your host, walt Sparling.
Walt Sparling:
All right, welcome everybody to the current edition of PM Mastery. And today I have with me David Odelia. Yes sir, yes sir, that's right. Okay, good, I hope it was All right. So we're going to start off with you telling us a little bit about yourself.
David Odeleye:
Absolutely. My name is David. I've been a project manager for four years. I'm married Beautiful wife Debbie. I have a 14 month old. Her name's Sophia. We love, we love the outdoors. I love everything project management so you'll probably hear me talk about a lot of things that I'm doing involving project management. Huge fan of AI, so I'm dabbling into that project management and AI space, and so that's me, ai is the thing these days, right.
Walt Sparling:
So tell us a little bit about, like, with your job. What's your position title, what do you do, what kind of company do you work for, et cetera.
David Odeleye:
Sure, so job title is project manager. I work for a company called Bell Bank out of we're headquartered out of Fargo, north Dakota. It gets super cold here in the winters. You know, it's really nice right now, about 85 degrees outside, so great weather, yeah. But yeah, like I said, a bank. So dealing I actually what I do is a lot of IT projects. So if we're building locations and starting up locations all over the country, I'm in charge of the IT aspect of you know how many computers do we need? Do we need telephones and all that other stuff? You know, in terms of IT-focused tasks, I also do a lot or a few IT projects and security stuff for the bank as well. So I manage those projects on that end as well.
Walt Sparling:
So do you have to travel for these openings?
David Odeleye:
Unfortunately, not, I would say unfortunately for me. My wife probably likes that, um, but no, I don't travel so a lot of because of the um, what's the word? I'm looking for the advancement of remote work now, um, I can do a lot of stuff, you know. Okay, how many computers do we need? We need 50. Okay, jake, you're in arizona, do we have those computers on ground? Jake says, yes, that's okay.
David Odeleye:
I talked to ben in phoenix or florida, wherever it is, wherever he's at at that time. You know, um, we talked to talk to them over a project call. We meet, uh, weekly, you know we, we have standups and agile stuff, you know. But, yeah, that's pretty much how it goes. Why, why do you do project management? That's a great question.
David Odeleye:
Well, so, um, I got into project management my second semester of my master's degree program. My professor was an adjunct professor and she was a project manager with IBM, and just the story she told about being around developers and being around people and just managing projects, I'm like, well, this first off, this sounds amazing and I would like to do that. And so I did some research into this little course called project management and got opened to the entire world of project management and I think that's really what kickstarted my thirst desire, hunger for project management. My undergrad was in computer science, computer information science. Was going to school for my master's in computer science and discovered project management and, um yeah, I didn't get a project management gig, I think till my second year of my career.
Walt Sparling:
So yeah, but it's the fact that you're doing it pm-ing and you have a computer degree and got into while you were in college, so that's perfect, perfect alignment, thank you. What do you do now? Obviously, you have school learning, but in order to keep up, like you say, you're a fan of AI and you're in technology I mean, I used to be years ago and the struggle was always keeping up, and nowadays you've got AI and you're interested in that. How do you keep up with the PMing, the AI, et cetera?
David Odeleye:
Sure. So, first off, I'm in the banking industry. We're pretty locked down, a lot more locked down than the rest of the world. I've talked to other PMs in the industry and it's like, well, we can do this and we can do that. We have this shiny toy, Fun fact chat GPT is blocked in our systems just because of that potential risk, our systems, you know, just because of that potential risk. So what I try to do is, you know, very up to date on project management trends. You know project management software. I try to go to projectmanagementcom. I stay abreast of what's happening on PMI right now studying for my PMP and taking an AI course, a generative AI course, on PMIorg. But yeah, I try as much as possible. While keeping my hands on everything, I try to stay focused but still just diversify as much as I can.
Walt Sparling:
Okay, and you have your PMP.
David Odeleye:
Yes, no, I am actually studying for it, so I am going to take it in October. Okay, you ever see APM, I do. I have a PM IACP as well.
Walt Sparling:
All right, I was wondering because I know we were talking earlier about a common friend or acquaintance, joseph. Yes, trainings, yep, yep, trainings, yep, yep. Okay, so AI you do outside, which, because security and PMI and you're taking their AI course, I got a good course. I'll recommend to you too. That's really good. What about you? You know you've got a 14 month old I believe that's correct. You've got a full-time job. Uh-huh, how is there anything that like that's giving you challenges, you know, or is everything just move? His eyes?
David Odeleye:
so, um, I love to write, um and on linkedin, you know, I write in journals. Uh, one of the things that I wrote very recently was, uh, work-life balance is a myth, you know, it's all about work-life rhythm. I'm going somewhere with this. Um, the rhythm, I think, going somewhere with this, the rhythm, I think for me has been going to bed at midnight. I'll put my daughter to bed about seven o'clock and then mess around till about midnight and then wake up at about six o'clock, and that's just been terrible for me. You know that's a challenge right there.
David Odeleye:
You know, going to bed late, but one of the things that I had done very recently was late, but one of the things that I had done very recently was, you know, she goes to bed at seven. We try to go to bed, my wife and I, at about 9.30, 10. We don't always meet it, but hey, you know that's one of the challenges really is finding that time to sleep with a 14-month-old. She sleeps through the night, thankfully, but now I just need to be more disciplined about old. You know she sleeps through the night, thankfully, but now I just need to be more disciplined about, okay, I need to be to bed at this time and not mess around. And you know scroll or watch netflix or watch.
Walt Sparling:
You know the news I think that's a common struggle, right, right, I try to get seven and a half hours. That that's my target, and sometimes I'll adjust my alarm clock after I'm in bed. I do the scrolling and then I'm like oh All, right, doom, scrolling yeah.
David Odeleye:
That's the name for it, right there.
Walt Sparling:
Yeah, I stole that term. I've heard it on or seen it on post, where people see your life away by doing doom scrolling. It's like I don't know the only thing I do. Right, right, that's my absent minded entertainment. Ok, what about tools? What kind of? Do you have any favorite tools you use in your job?
David Odeleye:
Um, yes, I have to. I think we talked about this just before. So OneNote is huge for me. Yes, I have two. I think we talked about this just before. So OneNote is huge for me Day to day. You know, once I pull up my work computer, work space and whatever, first thing I pull up is OneNote, next thing is Smartsheet. Those two go hand in hand for me.
David Odeleye:
Another thing that I use I don't know how many people use this anymore really Sharewall. Basically Sharewall, we've been able to integrate with Smartsheet, you know, and that's been really helpful for me. So our IT folks have tasks out of Sharewall that they sync into Smartsheet that I manage. Okay, this guy's closed this task yesterday. This guy's closed that task, you know, still needs to work on this task and I can ping this person when you know when a task isn't done. So those three, I would say, are really huge for me right now. Can you do spelling in terms of work? So it's C H E R W E L L. Okay, that's a new one. I haven't heard that one, so it's going out of life here pretty soon.
Walt Sparling:
So, or we're not going to be using it for very much. It's going end of life. Gotcha, okay, I won't look it up, but now it's going end of life too, so I don't know what the replacement's going to be. Oh, wow, but I think it's going to be gone. They're trying to do things to. You know. They're always introducing new apps, like the Microsoft Planner and the Microsoft To Do, and I don't know OneNote's. I remember when it first came out, I was not a fan. I got to learn something new and got into a groove. I'm like, okay, I have so many OneNote notebooks. It's crazy.
David Odeleye:
Yeah right, Couldn't live without it, honestly, at this point.
Walt Sparling:
Now, one of the reasons that I connected with you is you don't just do your job, you do stuff on the side. You do stuff on LinkedIn and I believe you're building a website right now. Can you tell us a little bit about what we call your side hustle, what you're working on?
David Odeleye:
Absolutely, absolutely. So I actually came in. Well, the reason I started posting very, very consistently on LinkedIn was because, well, four years ago, who I was four years ago, basically, was struggling to get into project management. I knew what I wanted to do, but I couldn't get where I wanted to get to Right, and so what I came up with is this concept, if you will, it's called my project brand I help professionals transition into project management jobs, so I so it took me about three years to do it. What I do is help people do it in six weeks or less and basically, like I said, this is where I was four years ago, and I'm trying to help as many people as possible get there in a shorter time than I am, while teaching you project management skills the things that industry jargon, really. Basically, if that makes sense.
Walt Sparling:
Okay, and you're going to be. I think in our earlier conversation you said you're going to be launching your site, your official site, at some point here soon.
David Odeleye:
Yes, that's correct, cool, Stay tuned.
Walt Sparling:
This probably won't go out for a couple of weeks, but if you, as soon as you do get a posted, let me know and I can help you in promoting that, and if it's before this goes live, we'll throw a link in the in the notes. Absolutely, Thank you. Appreciate that. All right, so do you have anything that you like to chat about yourself?
David Odeleye:
Not that I know of, let me see. Oh, I should have come with topics of my own. I don't believe I.
Walt Sparling:
That's okay. I don't always let people talk about themselves. No, okay, I know we talked a lot before we got started recording, so I think we've talked through a lot of that stuff. But one of my favorite things is the did you know, and everyone has to do a did you know? Do you have one that you can share?
David Odeleye:
I do. Did you know, Walt, that snakes can predict earthquakes?
Walt Sparling:
No, I did not. That's a new one, that's. I guess they're pretty well connected to the ground, right, right.
David Odeleye:
Oh, I see what you did there. I like it All right.
Walt Sparling:
That's another. That's a good one. We've had some doozies on here and, speaking of which I'm and I mentioned this to you earlier I'm going to let everyone else know that one of the things I'm doing this as we move forward on interviews this year is doing a switch up and offering interviewees the chance to do a did you know? Or I want to say a day in the life, but really more of a week in the life, because day-to-day changes, but typically a PM's week kind of has a rhythm to it. Yeah, so for future, for those out there that are just dying to get on the show and be interviewed, keep that, because that's coming All right. Well, I don't have any other questions for you. It's been a pleasure meeting you and getting to know you, and I have a feeling we're going to be working together on other stuff in the future. Absolutely, I appreciate you coming on and, for everyone else, we will see you on the next episode of PM Mastery.
David Odeleye:
All right, great to be here. Well, appreciate you having me on here.
Intro/Outro:
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