Is a Career Change to Project Manager 'Easy'?

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Career Development  

In any given month, I am contacted by a lot of different people, with a lot of different questions. One of those is how people can break into project management—individuals looking for tips and guidance to help them start out on a PM career.

The vast majority of these people are open minded, willing to do whatever it takes, and genuinely looking for some pointers that will help them get on the PM career ladder—or to help them climb that ladder as a result of their abilities and achievements.

But there is a subset of people who seem, shall we say, a little disappointed that they haven’t already made more progress. They’re a minority, but I have seen a few more of them recently. And that made me wonder why.

“Why aren’t I making more progress?”
Every situation is different, and there is always a danger in making generalizations, but that’s what I have to do here to provide some examples of what I am referring to.

Before I start however, let’s recognize that there are legitimate scenarios where PMs have the ability to go further and faster, but find themselves in an environment where project management isn’t valued as well as it should be. In those situations, the PM either has to be able to change their current environment (which is unlikely), or be willing to move to a new opportunity where their …

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