How did you get into project management?
This past Christmas weekend, I visited my wife’s family. It was a lovely time and we had lots of good conversations. One of the conversations we had was about careers. Most of the family is out of college, and we all have different careers. One is a lawyer, one is a salesperson, one is in marketing, one is an engineer, and I am a project manager. Most of the other professions are easy to explain, but mine is more difficult.
After explaining to them the basics of what project management is, I was left to detail how I got into project management. This sounds like a simple topic, but it was not straight forward. I was a psychology major in college and never thought about a career in project management.
My first few jobs after college were not what you would call project management jobs, but they did require many of the same skills that project management requires. And they all seemed to lead me down a path that resulted in project management as a career.
One of these jobs was as the assistant manager of a golf course. One of the responsibilities of this job was to facilitate and arrange corporate golf outings to our resort. The skills that were required for this job were organization, prioritization, and communication. These same skills are essential for the successful management of projects.
Another of my earlier jobs was as an Information Systems Coordinator. This job required that I work with various stakeholders to define business processes and requirements for newly-developed internal systems. This job helped me to gain experience in requirements gathering and stakeholder management. It also shifted my career from more service-centric to increasingly technology-centric jobs.
After this job, I received several more technology-heavy jobs. These jobs all required that I increase my technical aptitude and my ability to manage the deployment of the systems I was involved in. It was this responsibility of overseeing the deployment of systems and projects that ultimately led me to project management. I noticed that my interest and passion laid with ensuring that my stakeholders and customers were satisfied with what I, and the rest of my team, delivered.
It was at this point that I began to more rigorously attempt to increase my project management knowledge:
- I read every project management book I could get my hands on
- I took online training courses that prepared me for the PMP exam
- I listened to project management podcasts
- I attended project management events and conferences
It is this combination of experience, training, and involvement in the project management community that has brought me into the project management fold. It has been a winding path from being a psychology major at Notre Dame to being a project manager for a technology firm, but it has been a path I am glad I walked down.
Now I ask you the same question that was the impetus for this post:
How did you get into project management?
Related posts: