PM1 - Week 1 - Do I want a career in Project Management?

Do I want a career in Project Management? Well, probably not, at least not right now. I still feel more comfortable dealing with numbers. Besides, I barely know much about it. So far as I know, project management (PM) is the process to manage a series of project activities by applying your knowledge, skill, techniques and tools in order to accomplish the project targets. But is this definition a little vague? What are those skills and bases of knowledge? What techniques and tools are normally used? Also, having a career in PM, what are the job duties and responsibilities? Are any specific credentials or education required? How are the job opportunities? With all these questions, I searched on http://www.monster.ca/


First of all, I searched under the job title of "project manager" in BC. As a result, there are 37 job postings between July 27 to September 10, 2007. Twenty-seven of them are available in the Vancouver and Lower Mainland area, including three junior positions, 19 intermediate and five senior positions. From the listings, businesses and organizations hire project managers from all different industries and fields. Also job titles differ such as "project coordinator", "IT manager", "product leader", "business analysis manager" and "project manager." Actually, there can be seven types of position for PM based on the duties and responsibilities: project coordinator; project scheduler; assistant project manager; project manager; senior project manager; program manager and; portfolio manager. (From Kathy Schwalbe, "Information Technology Project MGMT", fourth edition.)

In addition, I took a closer look at those jobs. I went through all the postings from junior to senior positions and compared them based on some basic criteria.

Education and experience

As a project manager, besides the professional education and experience related to specific industry, it's required candidates also have the management background and experience. The education requirement varies but basically the more executive a position in a bigger company, the more education and experience are required. At the other end, junior positions often ask for only a college diploma with no experience in management while intermediate and senior position applicants are required to have a Bachelors Degree with 3-10 years experience respectively. A couple of companies require their candidates to have the experience in working with large projects, such as over $30M. One thing that surprised me is that only one employer - TELUS -requires formal PM training while most employers didn't even mention it prefering experience in project management as a higher priority.

Job duties and responsibilities

The work for a project assistant involves project liaison and the preparation of reports, schedules, budgets and related documents. The intermediate position of project manager is the most challenging one as it requires a lot of detailed work from initiation, planning, execution and control to its completion. Project managers need to deal with not only scope, time, resource, cost and quality of the project but also the general management process including human resources, communication with project team member, vendors and project stakeholders and reporting. For senior project managers, the key responsibilities are: plan and control the project; ensure its success; coaching, mentoring and building an effective team; communicate and negotiate with internal project teams and; to build a strong relationships and loyalty with customers.

Skills

Almost all of the employers require strong written and verbal communication skills from their applicants. Moreover, they have to have demonstrated expertise in their professional areas by showing their skills as team leaders, problem solvers and decision makers. Overall, effective communication and well-developed social and inter-personal skills are key factors to become a successful project manager.


The job list:

Project Assistant
Project Coordinator
Project Manager
Senior Project Manager
Business Analysis Managers
Project Engineer
Project Support Specialist