Spec me a start into a Project management career

citizenx13

citizenx13

citizenx13

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Joined
23 Jun 2010
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Good morning.

I was wondering if I could call upon the knowledge of the OCUK crew, I have hit a glass ceiling in my current working environment and am thinking of a career change.

I work in IT and as a contractor have fill many roles and one of them was working on projects, did not run any per say but got quite involved from time to time and thought that this would be something I could enjoy and get the drive back into my life.

I have done some research and called a few collages offering courses but I was wondering if I could get some input from troops on the ground, I have saved up a fair bit of money and would like to put it towards my skill development.

Does anyone have advice on where to start what courses are a good to take, any good collages I could contact?

I am looking for a starting point, beginning my new adventure from scratch and hopefully this old dog can learn some new tricks.

Looking forward to any advice.
 
Interested and will follow this thread, I aspire to become a project manager myself.

Currently my method is via the IT test route.

Tester > Senior Tester > Test Manager > Project manager is my planned path over the next few years, on step 2 so far!
 
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if my project management lectures are anything to go by you will be bored to tears by project management. i suspect the boredom is because of **** lecturers rather than a poor subject though
 
Most people in my industry have a MBA or the likes for project management roles.

KaHn
 
The project management role in my company is dull as ****. They facilitate communication and change timing projections when things slip. That seems to be it!
 
I don't think full time study is the best choice.

You're on the right track. Get involved in projects. Discuss your interest in more projects with your manager. Projects are generally closely related to "change" in the organization. Demonstrate a "change" attitude (as opposed to business as usual every day). Get close to the project people in your organization. Buy them drinks, whatever. :) Express your interest. Tell them to keep you in mind for the next time around when there is an opportunity.

Getting a project management role generally requires one of two alternate career paths.

1) You are already in a project management role and you have a long experience of delivering projects. The nature of the projects may be different (you can jump from logistics to banking, but you are doing it on the strength of your existing project management skills). You bring your project management skills and experience to the table - they teach you what you need to know about derivatives.

2) You have no project management experience but you can demonstrate an interest in projects from your past involvements. However, you are a subject matter expert in an area where your company is planning to run projects. Your knowledge of the area and of your company makes you a good candidate. You bring your expertise (and network) to the table - they teach you project management.

The company I work for has around 100 people working in project management, and 99 were recruited through one of the 2 approaches above. 1 was recruited as a graduate, it worked out but I'm actively discouraging that approach. The graduate also agrees that it was generally, a bad idea.
 
Reaper 392 said:
you find it hard to believe that my lecturers make project management seem boring?
they could make sex sound boring tbh
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Haha, point taken!


In the company I am working for, the PM role has a lot going on and I've always taken interest, the PM's are rushed off their feet with the different workstreams, it is something I'd love to be a part of! Some of these are multi-million £ projects though, the accountability and stress levels must be somewhat huge.
 
i dont know if youve ever watched the naked gun (2 1/2), but my project management lecturers are about as good as doctor rinehimer's speech near the end :p
 
Thank you to everyone for their input

I work for a big energy company and my current role is a local support engineer, like I said I am contractor and have worked all sorts of roles for said company.
Yet my downfall is that I do a good enough job that I am not placed into different types of roles and as I am pretty bored and have very little to learn so I thought I’d go and educate myself in something that caught my interest, project management.

My first hurdle is to decide if a simple collage course would suffice or as stated earlier a MBA would be a better investment, part time or full time and if possible any suggestions/names of collages if applicable.

I would rather educate myself than spend the next years finding a new job and praying I get to move up through the ranks, rather get my qualification and then start in the trenches working my way up yet have a piece of paper proving I know the theory.

The getting buddy- buddy buying beer etc is in my plans but again when I do invest in that tactic I’d like to be able to say yes I have the skill you require.

Again thank you for showing interest in my new found ambition in life

Regards
CitizenX
 
You might want to look at getting some Prince2 training. It is pretty much the defacto standard for project management and most of the other delivery frameworks are based on it in one form or another.
 
RDM said:
You might want to look at getting some Prince2 training. It is pretty much the defacto standard for project management and most of the other delivery frameworks are based on it in one form or another.
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Thank you for you info, but I have inquired regarding Prince2 and was advised that i first need a base knowledge of Project management and then go on the Prince 2 course, this info was given to me by Prince2.

Hence my queries on where to start from scratch :)
 
citizenx13 said:
Thank you for you info, but I have inquired regarding Prince2 and was advised that i first need a base knowledge of Project management and then go on the Prince 2 course, this info was given to me by Prince2.

Hence my queries on where to start from scratch :)
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Surely they provide training material, or material pre-course may be available?

The company I work for has a bespoke project lifecycle, yet we had to learn the exact one from Prince2 (done during the course) for the sake of the exam..

Granted there isn't a huge difference in the 2 mentioned, but they were distinguishably still there.
 
Another vote to complete your Prince 2, it's by far the most expected/required qualification

although I was a project manager for 6 years and never bothered :p
 
TommyV said:
Surely they provide training material, or material pre-course may be available?

The company I work for has a bespoke project lifecycle, yet we had to learn the exact one from Prince2 (done during the course) for the sake of the exam..

Granted there isn't a huge difference in the 2 mentioned, but they were distinguishably still there.
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Agreed.

In a similar thread to ITIL really. No-one uses the industry-standard setup (or very few people anyway) but you need to know the methodologies nonetheless.
 
Gilly said:
Agreed.

In a similar thread to ITIL really. No-one uses the industry-standard setup (or very few people anyway) but you need to know the methodologies nonetheless.
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Much like a driving test, no-one drives how instructors teach people in every day life(hands at 10-2, check every mirror to a point where you'll get a crick in your neck!), but for the sake of the exam, it's all important ;)
 
citizenx13 said:
Thank you for you info, but I have inquired regarding Prince2 and was advised that i first need a base knowledge of Project management and then go on the Prince 2 course, this info was given to me by Prince2.

Hence my queries on where to start from scratch :)
Click to expand...

Surely you have a base knowledge of project management having been managed in a project and seen project managers at work? :)
 
Gentlemen thank you very much for all your input.

To reiterate, I am a complete NOOB in PM, I have worked on projects as the ground force, managed deployments, application discovery and user testing co-ordination, have sat with some project managers updating them on progress done some work for the ones kind enough to allow me to get involved but nothing major.

So let’s treat this as if I had no experience what’s so ever, am a young fresh mind with some funding who wishes to change his career.

I understand Prince2 is "step two" I would like to start somewhere to have a paper I can put to my CV and send out into the big world, if I start volunteering so I have some knowledge I can put to practice and how to go about acquiring this knowledge on my own with my long saved hard earned cash.
 
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