Is Your 10-Year Career Plan Realistic?

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  

I always find the start of a new year to be an exciting time. Throughout my career, I have tried to take the holiday period off work and enjoy the opportunity to rest and recharge. That creates a bit of a break from everything that happened in the last year, and provides an opportunity to look forward to the next year with a degree of anticipation.

In recent years, the amount of change that has happened in project management has been considerable, and that change continues today. As a result, there is always a degree of uncertainty around what the future holds, but in the context of a career, a 12-month period still offers a degree of predictability.

However, we also have to inevitably consider how that change will affect us over a longer period, so while considering what is likely upcoming this year and next, I believe that it’s also important to consider how a project management career is evolving.

A very different career
None of us can foresee the future of course. But it’s safe to say that unless you are a new PM, a future PM career will be different from what you initially envisaged when you came into the profession.

But how different? And in what ways? That’s a little harder to predict. Okay, that’s a lot harder to predict. That’s why it needs some of our attention to consider and plan for.

While the next year may not …

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