Your Project Management Career Is A Journey

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PM Tip, Week of 16 October 2022

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Careers in Project Management: https://www.accidentalpm.online/careers

Partial Transcript:

Hi everyone, Ray here, it's time for a project management tip. Today let's talk about your project management career as a journey, not a destination. If you treat it as such, you're more likely to succeed. So rather than rush to get a certification, take the time to learn and absorb the knowledge. Here are some reasons why you should look at it this way. Project management takes a lot of knowledge. Just as human knowledge doubles daily, project management knowledge expands exponentially. The PMBOK Guide started as white paper of fewer than 100 pages. Today, to absorb the same standard requires two editions, the sixth and the seventh editions, which consist of more than 1,000 pages combined. And there are hundreds of books that elaborate on this knowledge, you're not going to learn it all overnight. Cramming for the PMP and taking it to get that now virtual piece of paper is self destructive. The PMP intends to tell employers you have a basic knowledge and a minimum of three years of experience. However, if you cram, you're not very likely to retain that knowledge, and certainly have not had time to practice it. So you're going to fail. And when you do, your employer will think less highly of the certification and move on to another candidate. I know because I've done this as an employer in the past. Instead, carry yourself for the journey. Read books like Accidental Project Manager and Accidental Agile Project Manager. Learn the basics. Look for opportunities to shadow or assist project managers and put the basics into practice. Take the time to learn and grow through experience. Project management takes many skills. As a discipline, it's a collection of skills. In recognition of this, the PMP is now divided into three major groups of leadership, business and strategic skills, and technical project management skills. Each of these areas has a dozen or more sub skills. You can't learn them all overnight. Taking a journey and managing different projects with different circumstances will help you decide which skills are essential for the current stage of your trip. Focus on these and hone them. There will be opportunities to learn others with the next project. Once you've grown these skills will be time to consider certificates and certifications. Practitioners make critical decisions. Project management standards of the PMBOK Guide are non prescriptive - there is no thou shalt. The project management practitioner must decide what practices to use and when to use them. You will be making critical decisions. The critical thinking skills needed to make these decisions effectively come from practice, training, and experience. I started expressing an interest in project management in my career, and was provided with some basic training. After that, I had an opportunity to assist the project manager. I didn't need to make the critical decisions, they did. I learned why certain practices work, and didn't. And at the same time, I learned about the norms of my organization. The next step was to have a small, but a central project to lead management trusted me to make the right decisions. With each project I built my skills, learned from the journey, and took a step into management in some years. Projects come from many forms. Projects can be big or small, complex or straightforward, and assignments differ vastly by industry and organization, and even within an industry. There can be many different types of projects, each requiring further knowledge and skills. Just within our local power company, I've encountered many different types of projects and project managers, such as facilities projects to move people and equipment between buildings, power infrastructure projects, projects to manage nuclear facilities, projects to create customer programs, business projects to create growth, and it projects. Think about the skills you want to gain and what projects will help you best game them. For example, a new practitioner managing IT projects may not be helpful for a nuclear facility project. Want to learn more about a project management career. Check out our careers in project management page, which I'll put in the links below, Want to help others on their journey? Share a story from your journey in the comments below. Thanks for listening everyone and watching. See you soon for another project management tip.