Hello, PMI community! I have a question about project charters and budget management. I work for a very small company. I’m the only full-time employee, and I report to and work closely with the company CEO. I help supervise the work of three contractors in addition to liaising with 3rd party vendors and additional external contractors. Project Manager has been my official title at the company since 2018, though I also do a significant amount of operations management and project work - for example, on a project, I assign project team members to tasks and help develop the production schedule, and then I’m one of those main team members who actually creates deliverables and completes the project work. The CEO completes some of the project work as well. Despite the overlapping of my roles on the team, I believe (and very much hope PMI agrees!) that my years of experience managing projects will qualify me to take the PMP exam. I’m seeking some guidance for how to translate what I do into PMI terminology. For example:
I take my direction directly from the CEO, and we do not have a process of creating formal project charters. The CEO will assign me to a project, often via email, with general details about the project we are planning to undertake. I don’t really need to seek approval through formal documentation for using company resources because we are both aware from the beginning of roughly the amount of time needed, who will be part of the project team, and the general scope of work to be done.
Another example… because we are such a small company, I have never had an active hand in managing the finances and overall budget for our projects, so I’m wondering how to speak to that while describing my activities on the projects. If I don’t have any experience managing the budget for projects outside of my own hourly work schedule and helping to supervise those of our contractors, will PMI still recognize my qualifications? Any insight from the community on these topics?
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