subject: Step Up To A More Successful It Project Management Career In Business [print this page] Project management responsibilities can lead to unpleasant, frustrating careers and a low quality of life for unprepared IT professionals. However, these risks will be ignored or dismissed by new IT project managers who are basking in the pleasure of thinking about the career opportunities they optimistically perceive to lie ahead.
At first the pathway to success looks rosy for new IT project managers. Despite a lack of experience the first project will ultimately be completed . . . even if the project manager has to invest vast amounts of extra time and energy.
If the first project is also considered to be a success, the new IT project manager will continue in that role and over time will become better at project management. Unfortunately, the assignments will grow bigger and more complex just as rapidly, or even more rapidly, than the person's project management skills develop.
The IT professional's views of the project management role also change with time. That first opportunity to head a project is exciting and will always be remembered as such. The second time may be fun also.
However, enthusiasm and satisfaction will eventually diminish with each succeeding project unless the challenges can be easily handled. Otherwise as tougher and tougher assignments follow one right after another, what was once fun eventually seems very old, tiring, uninspiring, and possibly overwhelming.
What's the alternative to discouragement? Many IT project managers cannot find a good one. Some seek jobs at new employers, hoping for an improvement. If the new employer turns out to be even more demanding or more desperate for results than the old one was, such hopes will be dashed.
Let's consider what else an IT project manager can do to gain a rewarding career and to enjoy a satisfying personal life. Sometimes solutions to difficult problems can be found and understood most easily by looking at best practices in totally different activities. With that idea in mind, let's consider how young tennis players improve their skills and then apply those lessons to help IT project managers improve their careers and lives.
Learning the most effective playing methods helps a lot in tennis. If instead you make up you own ways to prepare for and to execute shots, you'll often be out of position and make unforced errors. As a result of those mistakes, a player with a better understanding of the fundamentals will take you apart in a game, even if that player isn't as athletic or in as good physical condition.
Practice also counts for a lot in tennis. At some point whatever players practice becomes automatic during matches. If you know the best things to do, practice helps; but practice is counter-productive if you don't: You first have bad habits to break before you can learn and master an improvement.
Even with great teaching and excellent practice habits, tennis players find it challenging to move up to the next level of competitiveness. Being pressed by players who are just a little better than they are improves skills, develops confidence, and helps players master the subtle challenges of overcoming a difficult opponent.
A great coach who plays well can directly provide pressing competition by playing against the learning player. The brilliant coach can also provide more of this competition by carefully matching the right learners against one another so that their matches help both improve.
With the challenges of learning to play tennis in mind, let's look more closely at how IT project managers develop skills. First assignments are often given to those who are good programmers. While writing code is a helpful skill to have as a project manager, it's unfortunately just a small part of the management tool kit that's needed for someone to head a successful project.
Most organizations have so few proven IT project managers that they cannot spare any of them to coach or teach new project managers. As a result, IT project managers are often in a situation like a promising young tennis player who is trying to improve without either the help of a coach or matches against other players. That way of learning wouldn't work for very many tennis players and usually doesn't work very well for IT project managers either.
Fortunately, even IT project managers whose learning isn't supported by their employers get the skills and coaching help that they need elsewhere. Let's consider the example of Mr. Matthew Lartey, an IT project manager who is an MBA graduate of Rushmore University.
For Mr. Lartey, working with high-flying IT technology was a big stretch when he was a youngster because educational opportunities to learn programming were quite limited in his native Ghana. Despite the very limited number of university openings there, Mr. Lartey was able to study computing at the undergraduate level. That scholastic opportunity led to a job with the IRS in Ghana where he learned to apply programming to practical problems.
When he later became an exchange student in Australia, his choice of career opportunities dramatically expanded. While in Australia, he accepted a job as a systems analyst/programmer and learned most of the new cutting edge software and operating systems while on the job.
Mr. Lartey spent ten years with his Australian employer and became an IT project manager. To improve effectiveness, he took courses in project management and gained helpful background in how to perform the role. He started in an MBA program in Australia to gain more knowledge of project management, but he had to drop this program after accepting a new job as an IT project manager in the United States.
He continued to learn about IT project management through self-directed study and qualified for the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification. Seeking more knowledge he enrolled in an MBA program in the United States that emphasized telecommunications, but he later decided that this wasn't the right course to follow and dropped that program, too.
Mr. Lartey received more job offers and the offered titles were impressive. He was a little discouraged to discover that although he was being called a senior project manager, the work didn't seem any different.
Mr. Lartey worked hard at being a people person by encouraging his project management team and at being an innovator who could conceive improved solutions to difficult problems.
With those orientations, is it any surprise that he next joined with a friend to found a small IT consulting firm? When the technology slump in the early 2000s made finding new assignments difficult, he decided it was time to once again begin work on an MBA degree in IT project management.
This time Mr. Lartey finished the program and earned a degree. Here is how he assessed that learning experience and its value to his career:
"I broadened my scope as a project manager in applying Information Technology and elevated my confidence level in dealing with other professionals within my industry. What I learned has also given me an edge in this highly competitive global economy by providing me with strategic insight and the ability to apply most of what I studied."
With the new learning, Mr. Lartey is poised to make even faster, more satisfying progress in his career during future years. Clearly, his best days are ahead of him.
Anyone who can successfully perform as an IT project manager is obviously very talented. Trying to figure out on one's own all of the lessons to be even better at project management is difficult. Everyone else can see our faults and opportunities to improve better than we can. Is it any wonder that a successful IT project manager is going to do even better by polishing skills through gaining new knowledge focused on areas of personal weakness?
Who will coach, teach, and challenge you to be your best as an IT project manager? Hopefully, you can find people where you work to play these roles. If not, you need to find such a highly capable mentor elsewhere and also gain opportunities to learn from the greats in your field as often as possible.
by: Donald Mitchell
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