My Internship Experience: Anju Gurung [Project Management]

Tasking Through Chaos: My Project Management Internship at Skybase Innovations

When people hear "project management," most imagine Gantt charts, endless meetings, and color-coded calendars. But when I joined Skybase Innovations as a project management intern, I quickly realized that there’s a lot more beneath the surface and that I had more questions than answers.

What exactly is scope creep? Why are timelines always “tentative”? And why does everyone flinch when you mention the word deadline?

Jumping into the Unknown

I walked in with zero practical experience, armed with nothing but a curious mindset, a handful of textbook knowledge, and a belief that “things can always be fixed.” (Spoiler: they can’t always.)

My understanding of “agile” was limited to gymnasts and cats. But the team at Skybase welcomed me with open arms, real responsibilities, and lots of firsthand learning.

From day one, I was thrown into the deep end:

• Attending meetings

• Jotting down notes like my life depended on it

• Nodding at technical terms like tech stack, CI/CD pipelines, and dashboarding while internally Googling everything afterward

Learning Through Action

Thanks to patient and supportive mentors, I slowly began to untangle the mystery of project management. They helped me:

• Understand project scope and workflow

• Manage cross-functional communications

• Navigate tools like Kanban boards and Gantt charts

One of my earliest “wins” was organizing a chaotic team workflow. Watching disorganized tasks transform into clear priorities was like solving a jigsaw puzzle made of missed deadlines and forgotten updates.

From there, I began managing timelines, facilitating meetings, tracking bugs and errors, and yes I proudly color coded everything (because serotonin).

Embracing the Bumps

Not every day was smooth sailing.

I :

• Forgot to send documentation

• Mixed up a timeline

• Slacked off in a virtual meeting (just for the formality)

• Sent the wrong version of a document (whoops)

But every mistake became a lesson. The culture at Skybase was collaborative, fast-paced, and yes weirdly obsessed with productivity memes. I was never treated as “just an intern.” I was looped into planning calls, retrospectives, and brainstorms from the start.

When I messed up, the response was always constructive: “Here’s how we can fix this,” never  “Why did you mess up?”

Growing into the Role

By the end of my internship:

• I wasn’t just taking meeting notes I was running meetings

• I wasn’t just updating task statuses I was ensuring deliverables met deadlines

• I was even (nicely) reminding developers to update their progress on time

Somewhere between chaos and Kanban boards, I found my rhythm.

Final Takeaway

This internship gave me more than a resume line it gave me clarity, confidence, and a solid foundation in real-world project management. It taught me how to:

• Stay organized amidst chaos

• Communicate with clarity

• Adapt to shifting timelines and priorities

• Be both structured and empathetic in a fast-moving team

I may not be a full fledged PM (yet), but I can confidently say: I’ve learned how to wield a Gantt chart like a lightsaber and that’s a start.