A Journey into Project Management

Steven is a project manager/contractor in the United Kingdom with experience in service support, service delivery, service management and project management.

  Career Development   New Practitioners  

My journey into project management started when I saw a course in a newspaper that promised to teach me to design and develop e-commerce websites—and also help me find my first job in IT. I had been to university to study sport science, and at the time had no formal qualifications in computer science. I decided to look at taking the course through what I thought (at the time) was a reputable distance-learning provider.

I discovered later that I could have taught myself the same subjects on the internet and applied for the exams at a fraction of the price I paid the training provider. Lesson learned! However, I am a firm believer in “everything happens for a reason”—and that every decision I made up until this day played an important part in achieving the goals I accomplished.

In the meantime, I was working as a data-entry clerk and made my ambitions and extra-curricular studying known to management. I asked (more like persuaded) them to consider me for any future IT or management roles. Soon enough, I was offered a customer champion role for one of the company’s major clients. The role involved managing customer relationships and continual service improvement projects, which required basic IT skills that I had learned in the course. This covered both of my requirements, as I was managing and also using my newly found IT skills.

Then the …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.