Project Management Is a Journey, Not a Destination

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’m sure this isn’t unique to project management, but I find myself getting very frustrated by the amount of advice available to prospective project managers. If you Google something generic like “project management career,” you’ll find countless articles talking to the benefits of pursuing it. But many of those articles come from a very self-serving place. They’re often provided by training companies who are trying to sell you something and don’t necessarily have your best interests at heart.

Case in point: One outlined a three-step process to become a project manager…

1. Complete the coursework and get certification
2. Apply to work as an entry-level employee for a large-scale company
3. Work with a project management organization

Clearly, numbers 2 and 3 are simply afterthoughts to what they really want to say—take our training. Forget the fact that it’s highly unlikely that anyone without any experience working with projects (or without current opportunities to gain that experience) would gain anything from taking such a course. These are not people who are helping you develop a career in project management!

Now, I recognize that some of that can be eliminated by more targeted searches, and by considering the source of the information that is being provided; but this kind of thing obviously works, or …

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