Project Management Career FAQs

1.  I have 10yrs of experience and am currently playing the role of project manager. I want to take up program/product management. How to prepare towards this goal?

• 1. Perform self-assessment on the competencies needed for program management. Program management guides from PMI can be referred to.
  2. Post that, devise a learning plan to work on improvement areas
  3. In your company or in LinkedIn , look for few persons who are in this role already and request any one of them to be your mentor
  4. Plan career discussion with your manager and work out next steps together
  5. Optional -> Program Management Profession certification from PMP

2.      Which is better: a technical career path or a project management career path ?

It depends upon your competencies, aspirations & personality preferences.

3.      Will AI have an  impact on Project Management? If so, what would be the high-level impact?

According to a 2019 Garnet report “80 Percent of Today’s Project Management Tasks Will Be Eliminated by 2030 as Artificial Intelligence Takes Over.”

4.      There is no project manager role in the Agile way of working. After playing the PM role, If I want to move to an Agile environment, how to prepare for it?

The role of product manager is closer to the project manager role.  So, explore          opportunities to play this role to fulfil your skillset.

5.      How will I come to know, whether I will be a successful project manager ?

The success of a project manager depends on understanding both the strategic objectives and operational objectives of the project and ensuring that you are able to influence your team towards achieving both the objectives.  Also, success depends upon how well a project manager can operate within project constraints.

6.      What are the benefits of obtaining a PMP certification?

Practitioners who hold the PMP certification are well-positioned to provide the professional skills necessary to lead project teams and achieve successful project results. Satisfies project experience for the PMI-ACP® or PgMP®. The PMP® certification is accredited against the internationally recognized ISO 9001 and ISO/ANSI 17024 standards. PMP certification establishes the credibility of you as a seasoned project professional, makes it easy to be accepted by the project management community in the workplace , especially while working with global clients.

7.      Being a project management professional and holding PMP, will I be successful if I switch between industries?

Changing industries is a risky decision. Having said that, the project management certification will surely aid in easy transition to the new industry provided that if the industry is matured and follows the project management process.

8.      How will my career as project/program manager survive in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI)?

AI is and will continue to dominate the project management area. Still as project/program manager, we can thrive in the AI world by leveraging AI outcomes with leadership skills like adapting to change, emotional intelligence, negotiation and communication skills ,strategic thinking, and business acumen to achieve project objectives.

9.      What kind of mindset should I possess so that I am ready to handle any situation in projects ?

You should be a multi model thinker, you should be able to analyse a situation using the following 4 thinking dimensions.

1. 1. Strategic Thinking
   2. System Thinking
   3. Design Thinking
   4. Lean Thinking

10. How can I stay updated with the latest trends in project management?

Being an active member in PMI, people would be having access to  www.projectmanagement.com. This website holds great knowledge on various trending topics like Agile, AI, Career development, change management, communication management, etc. It contains a forum where experts would answer your queries.

1. 1. Get subscribed to PMI newsletter, that brings the latest happenings in the project management field.
   2. Actively participate in the webinars and conferences organized by PMI as well as from local chapters.
   3. Enrol in the Community of Practice(COP)-Project Management in your company and make active contributions.

11. When should one look for a job change

Below are the indicators:

1. 1. learning saturated
   2. current role doesn’t fulfil your aspirations
   3. Reward & Recognitions are not matching with your effort/contributions

12. How we can use AI towards project management?

1. 1. Helps to monitor specific patterns and forecasting project scenarios and outcomes and that will help to increase in project success rate.
   2. AI Tools: Automated meeting minutes.
   3. Predictive analytics: can gather past project information and forecast, with high degrees of accuracy about project completion date, health of a project progress.
   4. Risk Management: AI has the ability to offset potential risks using data points and can crunch that data in real-time as the project progresses and helps to take data driven decisions.
   5. Improve Efficiency/Productivity: AI can help automate repetitive manual tasks, allowing teams and project managers to focus on more high-value delivering activities

13. How can I transition into project management from other domains like operations, technical, etc?

First get enrolled into the course -> PMI Project Management Ready™. This entry-level course brings together foundational project management knowledge, including basic business analytics and agile methodologies. To perform this course, no education/experience requirements are needed. Post this course, you know and understand the language of business delivery. Then start with entry level project roles and then slowly build your expertise in project management.

14. How do we excel as program managers in today’s Virtual/Hybrid work environment?

1. 1. Focus as usual on human connections - Know your stakeholders
   2. Understand your stakeholder needs and organization objectives/strategies
   3. Always be on video calls as much as possible
   4. Ensure, you connect 1:1 with key stakeholders to handle any conflicting situations or key alignments.
   5. Plan to meet your team members on regulate basis
   6. Be familiar with all virtual communication medium (MSteams, Menti, Trello, Miro, etc.)

15. How do you stand out as program manager to be seen as a valued partner by core engineering/product teams?

1. 1. Even though programs can be managed without technical/functional knowledge, still we always have an edge over others when you have high level knowledge of functional/technical stuff, it helps us to ask the right questions and manage programs more effectively and to deliver on time.
   2. Invest your time on Business Acumen, whichever industry you are in.

16. How PMP certification can help a Sales & Marketing Professional / Non-Project Professionals  to grow in his career?

Project management, as a concept, can have a place in the context of most sales processes. If we look at the sales process, right from prospecting to qualification to pitching to closing — essentially qualifies as its own stage of a greater project. With PMP certification, a lot of valuable methods, tools and framework are exposed to practitioners which helps to manage projects in a more professional and structured way. In the long run, below benefits are possible: Increased customer delights, Increased customer portfolio, more closed sales & Increased revenues.