5 Key elements of a successful Project Management Career

Project Management Career

The project management career is one of the most dynamic professionals fields. The project manager should have the ability to continuously identify and adapt to changes and become comfortable in using various project management tools & techniques.

Also, before onboarding your project management career, you should check if this career is right for you. Reach out to Project Managers & Industry leaders, ask questions, read articles, vlog, or even try a project management internship.

Once you have chosen Project Management as a career, you should start working on five key components of a successful Project management career. and if you are wondering what are those then, here are the five key components of a Project Management career.

Project Management Concepts

Learning Project Management Concepts is crucial for any individual who wants to develop his/her skills for managing projects. Studying project management will help aspirants inculcate expert knowledge on setting project objectives and targets, and take step-by-step action to achieve the goals. The purpose of the study is to help you connect up all the critical links of projects and the different work activities for project completion.

When I say Project Management Concepts this includes both hard and soft skills.

Remember, Project Management is both an art and science of getting things done on time, within budget. It is an art because there is no one definitive answer for how to best manage a project, and a science because there are well-developed techniques and processes that can help significantly to complete a project successfully.

And acquiring this knowledge & expertise for complex projects is not an easy task. You will need both soft (art) & hard (science) skills in tandem to manage the project.

Also, before taking on a new career, it is important to know as much as you can about the project management career path. You can get mentorship by interacting with professionals with project management experience to validate your career plan. By attending seminars, conferences you can learn more about the challenges and new development in the field and the fulfilling aspects of the career.

So, how do gain knowledge of Project Management concepts?

With the boom in E-learning, the modality of Project Management education is breaking all the traditional boundaries and methods. From project management books, videos, articles, online tools, software to apps including online project management courses, there is an abundance of resources to help you to acquire a decent working knowledge of project management.

There are plenty of options available, question is that how to start and it’s all depends on your aspirations and professional commitments.

The below table will guide you on where you can study Project Management concepts and act as a starting point (aka baseline) of your project management journey.

Professional Certification/Degree

There is no pre-requisite to start learning the project management concept. However, once you enter into the professional world, you will need to prove your knowledge.

Having a sound knowledge of Project management helps Project Manager handle all the processes, methodology, skills, and knowledge to achieve specific objectives.

With this knowledge, you would be able to develop specific project management strategies suitable for your projects to ensure the project is delivered on time, on budget with optimum quality.

A professional certification or degree would help to prove your mettle in project management knowledge. These certifications or degrees can be acquired through project management courses.

The purpose of a project management course is to help you connect up all the critical links of projects. It helps to connect your experiences and aligned it in the logical structure of project management processes. These courses usually include process framework, methodology, tools, techniques, and practical examples.

A well-developed Project Management program will help you to learn how to integrate and manage project resources like people, processes, and tools.

These courses help aspirants to inculcate a leadership quality, take an informed decision, set objectives and targets, and systematic action to achieve the goals. There are numerous globally renowned courses and learning opportunities in various industries.

Also, upon successful completion of this course, you will receive a certificate and degree which proves your knowledge and ability.

There are different degree courses that one can opt for in project management. They range from Bachelor of Management Studies (BMS), Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA), to Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (BSc).

At Post Graduation levels, these courses are Master of Business Administration in Project Management (MBA), Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM), and Master of Management Studies (MMS).

If you’re interested in deeper research, you may opt for Ph.D. levels courses. There are plenty of options for a Ph.D. in Management, Business Administration- Project Management, Business and Management, Construction, and Project Management.

With basics understating of project management, you may consider a higher degree course to gain advanced expertise on the subject and a more in-depth business knowledge. A degree can also enhance your employability in the project management field.

Obtaining a project management degree or working in a management domain can help you gain certain skills to succeed in your project management journey

Most popular among working professionals, a project management certification course is the best way to poof the working knowledge and credibility as project managers. If you are choosing for certification, you should relevant course sustainable for your industry-specific. 

You would be surprised that only half of the project managers working in the construction and software industry are certified and skilled.

The company prefers to recruit a certified individual who has the skillset, knowledge, and expertise to handle complex industry-specific projects.

Here are the top 10 project management certifications courses that can take your career to the next level.

1. PMP: Project Management Professional
2. CAPM: Certified Associate in Project Management
3. CSM: Certified ScrumMaster
4. CompTIA Project+ certification
5. PRINCE2 Foundation/PRINCE2 Practitioner
6. CPMP: Certified Project Management Practitioner
7. APM: Associate in Project Management
8. MPM: Master Project Manager
9. PPM: Professional in Project Management
10. CPD: Certified Project Director

Project Management Tools/Software

Having Project Management knowledge and degree alone will is not sufficient for a successful project management career. In today’s digital world modern world, you would need the skill of using Project management tools/software.

Project management software helps the project team to complete project requirements in the specified time, budget, and scope constraints. They centralize all data and allow users to track progress, assign tasks, and give feedback. It plays a crucial role in project controls and project performance measurement. Tools help better way to acquire, engage and retain stakeholders and project team for the complete project task.

Project management software/tools are continuously expanding their functionality and breaking traditional boundaries of efficient project management.

On simple projects require nothing more than a checklist while another complex project requires detailed planning, assigning tasks, setting deadlines, making sure that everyone sticks to them, and monitoring the resources spent.

There are a wide variety of tools, techniques & software which can be used to analyze and resolve project problem. Many of these tools have been around for a long time and originated from various industries.

There’s a lot of project management software tools out there, and it can be hard to identify what’s essential for your projects, what’s beneficial, and what’s not worth your attention.

 Tools and techniques

Some of the tools and techniques that can be used in program and project management are outlined below.

• Gant Chart
• SWOT – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats
• RACI – responsible, accountable, consulted, informed
• Stakeholder matrix
• Cause and effect diagram
• Risk map
• Decision tree
• Radar chart

Domain Expertise

Project Management knowledge, degrees and tool skills are good to support your claim of having knowledge of project management but not enough for successful project management career.

Please note that projects are always specific to type of industries and no two projects are same ever. An IT project will be completely different form a construction project. However, concept of project management process remains same. 

Remember, Project Management is both an art and a science of getting things done. Thats why you will find many project managers (or accidental project manager) in specific industry. Because they are the subject matter expert of the industry specific. They might not be certified project manager but they are well aware of business specific project management practices.

So, it is very important to have domain knowledge of the particular industry.

You don’t need a degree to become a project manager but you must need relevant experience to became a project manager. In fact, the career path to becoming a project manager without a degree or certification is all about acquiring practical project management experience.

But don’t worry, it’s not quite the chicken-and-egg situation. Project management experience and the skillset is probably something you’ve been developing without even realizing. Only thing is that you need integrate it with you domain expertise to give you maximum output on projects.

And remember Project Management is not the final destination of your project management career.

So how start getting domain specific project management experience?

There are many different project manager titles that can exist in any industry. However, there is a hierarchy as people work their way up the professional ladder. This can be separated into three tiers.

You can start working with different tier even lower one to get hands on experience project management. Refer to below table for ranking of post titles in Project Management industry.

Project Work Experience

The last but most important element of a project management career is actually working on projects. Working on a project provides hands-on experience of project management process, tools & people.

It is linked to significant improvements in individual performance, learning, and engagement. It also gives the opportunity to build stronger relationships with project team members by acting as their hands-on guiding leader.

During this period, the project manager is responsible for finding new opportunities with a strong connection to the main business field. Project work provides a great opportunity to learn new tools and techniques for managing projects efficiently.

While working on a project, the Project team learn the specific and deeper understating similar type of projects.

Most projects involve lots of moving parts like feasibility study, initiation, planning, budgeting, coordinating, controlling, managing resources, communication, and much more, that all works need to be managed and monitored to make sure that the project is meeting its objective.

Practical work experience provide an opportunity to learn where the gaps in an individual’s project management knowledge area and how to reduce that skill gaps.

According to the Project Management Institute’s Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (or PMBOK Guide), there are 10 key project management “knowledge areas”:

• Integration management
• Scope management
• Schedule management
• Cost management
• Quality management
• Resource management
• Risk management
• Communications management
• Procurement management
• Stakeholder management

Conclusion

Projects are all around us, so wherever you get a chance to work on a project join it even if it’s on a volunteer basis. If possible, you can take extra responsibilities and develop your project management skills including planning, scheduling skills, people management skills, and many more.

Remember learning is a continuous process and you should always thrive to learn whatever you can or intertest yourself about project management. You don’t need to become a Subject Matter Expert of everything but should have enough knowledge of each area to successfully integrate everything in a project management framework.

Every project manager or aspirant should on these five key areas to achieve success.

1. Project Management Concepts
2. Professional Certification/Degree
3. Project Management Tools/Software
4. Domain Expertise
5. Project Work Experience

Tell me, currently which key area you are focussing to excel in Project Management? Let me know by leaving a comment below right now.

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