Never Too Young for Project Management

Chinna is a transformational business executive with cross-functional experience in commercial operations, project and portfolio management, engineering and technical support leadership roles.

  Career Development  

Chinna would like to thank his daughter Abirami for her help in writing this article.

It’s not a secret that a majority of project managers have not had a formal education in project management…me included! However, we all have done and continue to do projects every day at home, school or work. Our life is one big project, made of short- and long-term projects. Hence project management becomes a life skill everyone should learn and sustain.

The term “life skill” refers to the skills one needs to make the most out of life; they are usually linked with quality of life. They are useful to accomplish our goals (big or small) and live life to our full potential. I was searching for a perfect list of life skills one should have, but I could not find a definitive list. I realized that each one of us will have our own list depending on our life, location, age, socio-economic status, beliefs and amount of risk we are willing to take. However, I strongly believe project management will be one that applies to everyone.

The thought of teaching project management to my kids came to me around the same time I learnt about the project management K-12 program offered by the PMI Educational Foundation through Myles Miller, PMIEF Liaison from PMI’s Keystone Chapter. A quick introduction of the program to my daughter’s sixth-grade teacher started it …

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