Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme, Sixth Edition

What Do You Need To Do?

The map of your journey has four parts.

Experience Acquisition

Your organization might have defined a project manager position family. Here's one you can use in case they haven't:

1. Team Member
2. Task Manager
3. Activity Manager
4. Associate Project Manager
5. Project Manager
6. Senior Project Manager
7. Program Manager
8. Director of Project Management

Adapt this position family to your situation and find out what it takes in the way of experience and skills to move up in this position family from wherever you are to wherever you want to go.

On-the-job Training

Take stock of the requirements of your current position. How do your skills match up with those of the position you now hold? Where are your weaknesses with respect to performing your job roles and responsibilities as well as you can? Prioritize these development needs and start looking for training opportunities to address them.

Off-the-job Training

What skills and competencies do you need for that next position? Addressing these is essential to moving forward on your journey. Look for assignments that will give you an opportunity to acquire some of those skills and competencies. You might also find a project manager who is particularly good at a skill or competency you need and volunteer to help them or join their team if possible. Then watch how they do it and learn from their example.

Read, read, and read. There is a vast amount of literature on every aspect of project management, and you have to become familiar ...