Do you know about Project Management ... and can I pick your brains please?

[Twiglett]

I am a SAHM but I previously had a career as a Marketing Consultant (had been Board Level for 3 years by the time I left in 2002). I also have a good redbrick uni degree in Economics and Management

I want to go back to work in about 3 years .. but not to marketing. DH thinks what I did was prime project management territory (financial / critical path / problem solving / human resources / outsourcing / delivery etc)

But, I don't understand how project management is a role in its own right (ie I did what I did to acheive specific marketing strategy I wrote) and how to identify and transfer the skills I have and into what areas, whether I should study for qualifications in the meantime (OU) ..

can you talk to me about what you do and in what field and make it a little clearer please?

I think maybe my brain is addled by childcare

any help appreciated

Message withdrawn

yes cod .. but you're missing the point .. I want to make oodles of money out of it .. without selling my soul to the devil ... again

gosh that's useful cod

twig, ask cd think she is one....

sounds to me like you'd walk an interview btw.

seems to me (used to be called a product manager, but sounds as if same as you as was marketing) it is absolutely transferable and you have all the skills necessary and some....

project management is about making it happen and nothing go wrong unless am mistaken? being hub of wheel type person.

Message withdrawn

I don't think every job titled 'Project Manager' is going to be the same though is it? So not sure how to describe it. In my lost job I was effectively a 'project director' - we did market research for pharmaceutical clients. Being the director meant you oversaw (is that a word?) the whole project but actually everybody below you did the 'managing' really!!

It was all about doing a proposal for the project, pitching for it, winning it, setting up the project, organising timings, costings, setting up external resources, managing any issues that cropped up along the project, ensuring everythign done on time and if problems coming up with solutions, pulling together all the data afterwards (perhaps organising external resource for that), pulling together presentation, presenting to client, doing extra bits client asked for, closing project, wangling more work....

Yes it sounds like all your skills are transferable so it's just about finding a job that sounds interesting and suits your skills and then applying for it, making sure you match together what they want and your experience to prove you have it.

I'm totally waffling but I guess what I mean is, there isn't a 'qualification' in project managemetn is there? Or is there? I haven't got one - do have 1st yr of MBA though (professional certificate in management or something) - don't think that makes any difference.

from googling it appears that not only are there qualifications, there are govt. accredited qualifications and even an association FGS

hence my confusion, but thanks TR (I've commissioned MR and sat behind the glass on many an occasion )

Does the association have its own Project Manager?

Well, I never knew that!

Ooh, I love sitting behind the glass. Alwyas lots of yummy food and a fridge full of chilled drinkies!

Hang on Twig, I've just read your post to my DH who was in Project Management (full life cycle PM at a senior level, APM Fellow Accreditation) for 7 years. This is his response.....

PM is a generic discipline, but people often specialise in managing projects of a specific nature eg, construction, HR, IT etc. All projects are built on a fundamental set of principles as follows...

• A project is a one-off event (often the delivery of a business plan/ set of business objectives)

• Is unique (although it may bear similarities with other projects)

• Is constrained by one or all of - time, resources and budget.

All projects have four generic phases - Definition (understanding the high level requirement and business objectives). Design (developing the plan). Build (often called delivery). Implementation. It is the build phase where often specific PM experiences are brought to bear, eg a PM experienced in managing IT projects would struggle to manage a construction project due to lack of familiarity with the build phase.

Sub-disciplines within PM include - Planning (task breakdown, critical path analysis etc). Risk Management (risk analysis, mitigation and contingency etc), but the reality is that PM is a subset of generic management because it's all about managing/leading/motivating people to meet an objective.

DH moved from PM into Sales Management in 2003, and has found that the majority of his skill-set is entirely transferable

www.apm.org.uk, should help you.

hi

you weren't gone long then?

i've been an it project manager in the city for 9 yrs...

...what ndp's dh said

I'm glad it made sense to someone, bk. My audio-typing skills are a little rusty !

Twiglett

I am an IT Project Manager - I work for a large Information Communications Technology (ICT) company and mainly work on Ops IT Infrastructure Projects.

In IT the most recognised certications are:

PMP through the Project Management Institute (the English equivalent is the APMP). This covers the Project Management Body of Knowledge but I think it requires that you have a minimum of three years project management experience plus degree before they will accept a PM for enrolment

Prince II - a PM methodology widely used in the IT Industry

A lot of Project Managers in the IT industry are now required to have an ITIL qualification.

I am currently doing my PMP and ITIL Qualifications so if you have any questions, I'd be happy to fill you in.

Hi Twiglett, my DH is a project manager so I got him to read this thread and post his reply.....

Project Management is a profession in its own right. The kind of techniques you've mentioned like critical path, outsourcing etc. apply across loads of different industries and sectors and if you know about them and other project management stuff you can easily move around. The public sector where I work is desperate for good, experienced project managers with delivery experience - and there are plenty of well paying short term contracts out there. Lots of project management qualifications around but avoid the academic ones like MSc etc. Go for the APMP from the Association of Project Management (apm.org.uk) or PRINCE2 practitioner or possibly some from the Project Management Institute. Go to jobserve.co.uk and search for project manager jobs to see what you could get.

i don't have any formal qualifications in IT PM - but recognise those dejags mentioned as the industry standards.

Re : qualifications you could do a Prince II course and APM exams in advance of re-joining the workforce. APM membership requires certified experience and a membership board votes on whether it is good enough. You would I think find the exams straightforward with your past experience.

Some market sectors require real specialist skills - construction being a prime example, more than others.

all the responses so far have been from IT PMs - is this the area you're interested in? btw, the hours can be (though not necessarily) very long, especially when milestones loom...

Twiglett, before DD and redundancy I was an IT Business Analyst/Junior Project Manager

Your skills sound very transferrable to PM. A true project manager should theoretically be able to run any project (e.g in IT, it should be immaterial what technologies are being used and whether the PM is an expert on those particular technologies). Of course, in practice, this doesn't always happen and PMs often know absolutely loads about the business reqs/techy stuff , but I did also work for PMs who had no in depth idea of the nitty gritty of the product we were developing but were still good at managing the delivery of the project.

This is because the idea is that other, techy or business people produce the requirements and deliver the IT product to meet them, whilst the PM manages everything to do with targets, deadlines, risk, slippage, planning, critical path analysis, deliverables, budgets etc. etc. and organises (and yes, bosses) everybody. So the actual role of PM is a separate role which should be transferrable to any industry which is project based, or where what you need to do can be broken down into projects. Methodologies such as Prince2 break down all projects into the same stages and areas, each of which is associated with different activities, personnel, deliverables, documentation etc. - the idea being that you can keep a tight hold over the progress of the project and that you can run any project in essentially the same way.

One of the main points of the Prince2 methodology (which, if I remember rightly, is government sponsored or something) is that although it's great for IT, it can also be used for any type of project in any industry - so it's a very useful thing to know about if you're not necessarily going to manage IT projects.

This is a total ramble - was trying to show you how PM is a role in it's own right, and also see if I could remember ANY of what I did in my job - not sure if I can as maybe this doesn't make sense at all.

of course it isn't always transferable and some industries will always require specifc experience/qualifications, but if you are a Prince2 practitioner it doesn't mean you can only run IT projects, if you see what I mean.

Oh that Prince2 one sounds familiar. Dh is an IT recruitment consultant and i know he's talked about that.

I never did a qualification but worked up in my field iyswim - that's probably why I didn't need one.

Wow, I am learning so much by reading this. Feeling slightly insecure now because although I am supposed to be a "project manager", in reality, I am only of the clipboard variety. The only thing I know about project management is the MOSCOW principle. Prince II is news to me.

Twiglett, I thought I'd post if only to show the diversity of project management roles out there.

"Projects" in my role means one-off PITA erm projects which other people too bogged down by day-to-day tasks to take on. Very often, it involves developing IT systems for the area I work in - which tends to be a chunky piece. So within my company, I am the business counterpart for the IT PM assigned to this project. My contribution is my understanding of the business requirements in my specialist field and user behaviour. So I would be instrumental in gathering the business requirements and working out the design and signing off the functional spec. There is also the whole issue about getting approvals, marshalling resources (IT being one of them), budgets, working to time lines.

Guess I would be a homegrown PM rather than a professional one.

Nae, Blueshoes that is very much project management.

blueshoes, sounds like project management to me too.
have remembered that on big projects in my old place we would have more than one PM as well - a business one, a development one and a programme management one. Just to make it even more of a mess