Why Reskill as a Project Manager in 2021?

Are you looking to reskill into an entirely new career in 2021? If so, a role in project management could be a great option.

It’s not a role that many people are aware of, but one that is critical to a wide range of different industries. Many businesses would struggle without a strong project manager on board!

Read More: AgilePM Foundation: APMG International Agile Project Management - Foundation

If you’re organized, love working with new people and thrive under pressure, you’d fit right into the role!

Join us as we look at what a project manager does and how a career change may benefit you in 2021.

What does a project manager do?

A project manager (sometimes referred to as a PM) Is responsible for planning and initiating specific projects for an organization. They set timescales, monitor spend and make sure that everyone involved in the project is doing the work that is expected of them.

It is the PM’s ultimate responsibility to ensure that a specific project runs as intended.

Some companies have a team of project managers, each one working on a completely different project. Smaller companies may have one PM that looks after everything project related.

Why reskill as a project manager?

You’ve read the job description; now you’re wondering why you should make the leap into project management.

Here are some of the reasons why it’s a great career choice.

Project managers are in high demand

Project managers are essential in making sure projects run on time and to budget. Properly implemented, they can save a business a lot of money and time. This makes the role an extremely valuable one.

PMs are traditionally found in industries like manufacturing, construction, healthcare and IT, but many other businesses are seeing a need for them too. After all, if you have goals to achieve, they need to be managed in order to achieve a successful outcome!

Many PMs also work freelance, coming in to work with businesses that need a little extra help. This may be a great option if you are looking for a career with flexibility.

Project managers can achieve a high salary

As PMs are in extremely high demand across all industries, this is reflected in the salary they receive.

The average salary for a project manager is £48,000, rising to £57,000 for a senior project manager.

As you climb the career ladder, you may find yourself looking after a team of PMs. You will help ensure that all of their work is going to plan and give them extra support where needed.

An excellent PM with an outstanding track record can name their price!

You may already have the skills

Although qualifications are essential in project management (more on that later), project managers rely on a wide range of different soft skills too.

What does this mean? It means that you may already have the ability to be a good PM without knowing it.

Soft skills you need to excel in project management include:

◉ Time management

◉ Organization

◉ Communication (both written and verbal)

◉ Decision making

◉ Leadership

◉ Problem solving

The ability to get on with a wide range of different people is an advantage too. This is because you’ll be working with everyone from administrators through to the board of directors!

How do I reskill as a project manager?

To reskill as a project manager, experience is critical.

You can ask to take on more PM responsibilities at work or ask to shadow people in your project management department to see what they do and if you would be a good fit.

It may be that you have already done a lot of project management in your role, just not in an official capacity. For example, if you have coordinated an event, ran a marketing campaign or managed a tender application, these all involve a degree of project management. Think back to all of your previous achievements and how they may have boosted your skillset.

If you don’t have a project management department at work, reach out to people who work in the field and see if they would be happy to support or mentor you. You may know someone in your network or on LinkedIn that can help.

Do I need a qualification?

You don’t need a formal qualification to be a project manager, and there are several exceptional PMs out there who do not have one.

However, an accredited qualification can help you get to grips with the methodology and skills needed to excel in project management.

Plus, a qualification looks good on your CV if you look to move to another company in the near future.

Examples of recognized qualifications you can take include:

◉ The benefit of PRINCE2 is that it was developed in the UK, so it is exceptionally relevant to UK-based organizations

◉ AgilePM is an excellent option for fast-moving industries like IT and engineering

◉ Change Management. This qualification is good for those that are involved in organizational change – working with people rather than projects

Source: itonlinelearning.com

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The Best Part of Being a Certified AgilePM Foundation

Agile Project Management Foundation is in high demand in the world of business. Studying AgilePM Foundation equips students to thrive in Agile project teams, allowing them to create business value while also gaining experience. Becoming certified in AgilePM Foundation can also enable students to unlock new career opportunities and even higher-paying roles.

AgilePM Foundation has proven to be a demonstrably robust project management framework. It prioritizes the end product. Goals are made and established iteratively based on developing project requirements and environmental factors. This adaptive approach leads to results that are far better suited to client requirements.

What sets AgilePM Foundation apart from other Agile frameworks is its more excellent center on control and alignment. This counters many of the main problems that businesses tend to have with Agile management and enables them to enjoy the benefits of Agile without having to worry about projects becoming unfocused or going off track.

As the methodology is founded on being sensitive to change, the risk of a long-term project failing is significantly reduced. The final solution is more likely to fit the requirements of the business or customer, even if the original designation has changed many times in the interim. The close relationship between the project team and the customer or business allows all required to understand and validate changes to the proposed solution appearing in greater customer satisfaction.

Is Agile Project Management Foundation (AgilePM Foundation) a Good Idea?

The idea of the Agile Project Management Foundation (AgilePM Foundation) might strike you as wishful thinking at first. It is like the notion of limiting yourself to just one more episode of your favorite show on Netflix. It sounds like a brilliant idea. Please pull it off. But in reality, it probably cannot be done.

This is because most professionals, including most project managers themselves, have been trained to study project management as quite the reverse of the agile approach. Consider those traditional project managers.

Delineate everything needed to complete an action down to the last detail - the tasks, the deadlines, etc.

Develop their plans using more extended time horizons, and try to stick as nearly as possible to those plans throughout the duration.

Take project management tools based on how well those tools provide tracking progress, but not based on how easily the plan can be updated to reflect new realities.

How Does Agile Project Management Foundation Work?

Even at an organization whose culture manages its project managers as tactical organization managers, people responsible only for making sure the tasks get done, and the cases get checked, there is an opportunity to complete the Agile Project Management Foundation.

Doing so might be simpler than you believe because it does not require a considerable company discussion or restructuring your organization’s current processes. Suppose you are a project manager and want to try the Agile Project Management Foundation methodology. In that case, arguably, all you will need is a willingness to change your approach and perhaps introduce one new tool.

Agile Project Management Foundation is Smart Project Management

A well-known military says: “All plans are excellent until the first shot is fired.”

As a project manager, you have likely been trained to believe in creating and working long, highly accurate, and primarily fixed project plans. But in today’s fast-changing business environment, these static, long-term plans lose strategic advantage quickly after they are drafted.

With that in mind, your ability to try the Agile Project Management Foundation approach is a smart one. We hope you will follow the simple step process outlined and give this new approach a try.

Every Project Serves a Strategy

This means that even a conscientious project manager, who skillfully completes all of the details described above, is still missing a fundamental element of the job: Strategy.

An essential benefit of the agile methodology used by product managers and developers is that it helps frequent reviewing and retooling of current plans based on new information that the team is constantly gathering and analyzing.

In other words, the agile methodology lets a product team improve its preferences and plans whenever doing so performs strategic sense. These teams do not get stuck in an antiquated plan because they have committed to understanding it.

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