Don’t get me wrong, I am all for credentials. That four year engineering degree was the best 6 years of my life. A master’s degree in engineering management was another 2 years. And after that? A P.E. license. I’m a bona fide registered Professional Engineer. Check. But who cares?
What does this have to do with managing projects? Nothing really. The topic of project management in academic terms is kind of like taking ‘business’ classes. You can take multiple classes but you never really know how to run a business until yourun a business.
You can learn scheduling software, file sharing portals, task management and budgeting software and a whole host of other software tools and tricks and theoretical methods, but until you actually manage a job to successful completion, you are not a project manager.
If I have to choose one credential that best prepared me for a career in project management it’s probably not what you might think. It wasn’t necessarily the math, learning MS Office, or statistics. Nor did it exclusively have anything to do with writing essays, reading comprehension or logic. The best academic training experience that prepared me for a career in project management was this: I never actually enrolled in a project management class.
When I started, I didn’t know a Gantt Chart from Pareto Diagram. Earned Value? Hell, I still don’t know what that means. (Just kidding)
I began with the basics, Scope, Schedule, Budget starting here: As a new project manager, I was lumped with $1Million dollars to spend installing new chocolate pudding blending equipment for a large CPG company who wanted a return on their investment, and it had to work.
There were no additional funding rounds, there were no angel investors, there was no dedicated advisory board, and there was no ‘out’. You did X with Y dollars by Z date and that was it. End of Story.
Thus, there is no universal remedy and the result of the treatment depends on many factors like the age of the patient, how long they http://greyandgrey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Walczyk.pdf on line viagra have been infertile and general state of health. When a male is going through this health problem while if we see universal stats we’ll come to know that a large number of men face, very few viagra online dechechland greyandgrey.com are able to get medicines like Ultram, Tramadol and Celebrex which make a strong intimate relation. Sometimes, men can not realize when they have crossed the thin line until they experience levitra 60 mg visit here the unpleasant symptoms and their lives have been badly affected. buy tadalafil cipla http://greyandgrey.com/spanish/third-department-cases-5-9-13/ However this is not true. With no experience with project management, no certification, and not even a project management class under my belt how did I do it?
I proceeded forward with my $1Million at warp speed until I hit a roadblock, then I asked for help. As a young engineer and knowing I had much to learn, I diplomatically asked anyone who would listen and obsessively gathered data on the topic until I felt comfortable making a decision. Once the bump was smoothed out, I again continued ahead full speed until I reached another hurdle. The faster I moved the more information I accumulated before the next hurdle for which to ask better questions. With more data, each impasse was easier to traverse as I accelerated toward the goal.
As I got closer to the goal, decisions became easier because there were fewer variables and the variables that were still in the air were more defined. Soon, I was in “The Zone”, making decisions one after another in quick succession and before I knew it, I had reached the goal with success.
As I gained more experience through subsequent projects, I reached “The Zone” sooner in the project timeline. The decisions happened faster, with more precision and less uncertainty. When there is a $500,000 piece of equipment sitting idle, anything and everything is needed to get that piece of equipment up and running making money for the company. If there is a problem, quick decisions are necessary and experienced project managers have learned how to make those decisions confidently and expeditiously. No college course or certification can teach you that.
What I’ve learned is a good project manager absorbs the chaos, is continuously analyzing the critical path and correspondingly assigns tasks in bite-sized chunks while making sure data to complete each task is available or obtainable. The internal dialog of the project manager consists of each task having a level of stakeholder expectation attached to it. He or she acknowledges the sum of these tasks done well, and strategically managed, results in a successful project outcome – a project delivered on time, within budget, meeting quality and performance specifications.
Thinking back on that first project, I didn’t know what I didn’t know but it didn’t matter. I had the drive to accelerate toward a goal, courage to ask questions and basic technical knowledge to arrange the puzzle pieces until they fit. My young self didn’t rest until the picture formed, deliverables were 100% met and the stakeholders were happy. Is there any other way?
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