Shit! Do I just need to tell people to fuck their ear?

I've done PM from time to time. Was PRINCE accredited at one point but it's long lapsed.

Ha ha

Any qualifications are useful for CV when it comes to project management jobs. There are a lot of them out there, and what employers tend to want from them (in my experience) is someone they can rely on to get the job done (or more accurately, make sure other people get the job done). Qualifications provide some of that reassurance.

PRINCE 2 (practitioner) for eg, despite being massive overkill outside of a huge government level programme of work is still highly valued. Anything APM looks good too, so for sure do it. These days you should also gun for something Agile, getting at least a scrum master (https://www.scrumalliance.org/get-certified) is useful so you don't get lost with stupid terms like ceremonies sprints and retros. You should be able to get scrum certified with a couple of days work, it's just learning terminology and multiple choice.

It's so weird though. SO much effort and learning and jargon when really, project management in most industries that I've worked in boils down to

a) understanding what has to be done, who's gonna do it, and when they've said they're gonna complete it
b) tracking their progress in completing it

OK sure, you track risks and dependencies and run meetings and such. But really it's about making sure people do their jobs, and being able to talk about it.

Not a PM
Have managed projects, some big ones too
Love Trello and regular meetings

Morning.  I got the Prince 2 Practitioner qualification a few years ago and as has been mentioned it's great in theory but you're never going to get the budget to run a project like that unless you're dealing with projects that have budgets into the millions.  In my industry (O&G IT) PMP and Prince 2 still seem to be the main ones, although Agile is getting a lot of attention in my field.  Having looked into Agile this is dumb because as far as I can tell Agile was developed primarily to manage software development projects, which has fuck all relevance to most of what I work on.

I spent most of my career without any formal PM training.  It's 99% common sense and 1% understanding jargon.  Formal qualifications can be a foot in the door but once you're actually doing the job they're pretty much pointless.

All of the above is of course based on a sample size of one, i.e. me, so take with pure hunners of salt.

Funkstain wrote:

Mind you I tried to project manage our house renovation and well that's not a mistake I'll be making again

So true. I think project management in construction should be treated as a totally separate profession.

Unlikely wrote:

All of the above is of course based on a sample size of one, i.e. me, so take with pure hunners of salt.

 

Sample size of two, FWIW (100% more)

GooberTheHat wrote:

Having looked at agile it does seem to be almost exclusively suited to software/IT development.[...] so need to start getting myself set-up with some bells and whistles on my CV.

The point I think both Unlikely and I are making is that, as you say, your experience is what counts - but you wanna get that foot through the door (that's the expression right) and for that, trust me, Agile is both easy to get and useful to have in almost any PM area. Is Agile useful outside of self organising, small software dev teams? Erm, sometimes and kinda? but not really. Is Agile something that a high percentage of hiring managers think is absolutely necessary and will mention at every stage of your interview? OMG yes

There are several contracts I would not have been offered without Agile bollocks on my CV and the ability to "talk Scrum"

Funkstain wrote:

Unlikely wrote:

All of the above is of course based on a sample size of one, i.e. me, so take with pure hunners of salt.

 

Sample size of two, FWIW (100% more)

GooberTheHat wrote:

Having looked at agile it does seem to be almost exclusively suited to software/IT development.[...] so need to start getting myself set-up with some bells and whistles on my CV.

The point I think both Unlikely and I are making is that, as you say, your experience is what counts - but you wanna get that foot through the door (that's the expression right) and for that, trust me, Agile is both easy to get and useful to have in almost any PM area. Is Agile useful outside of self organising, small software dev teams? Erm, sometimes and kinda? but not really. Is Agile something that a high percentage of hiring managers think is absolutely necessary and will mention at every stage of your interview? OMG yes

There are several contracts I would not have been offered without Agile bollocks on my CV and the ability to "talk Scrum"

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely will be looking at getting agile and scrum certification, I was just agreeing with unlikely that agile (as it is what it was intended for) is best suited to software/devops type stuff. That's probably the area I would be most comfortable in anyway so it'll likely be the route I take.

Thank you'd be an excellent PM by the way, good luck with it!

Cheers, I'm not firm on it but I need to give myself options. I'd probably be happier running a grilled cheese truck for hipsters in London/festivals but I'm not sure that would pay the mortgage.

Good stuff

Project Management is 'just' common sense.

The thing is.. a lot of people lack common sense.

It's just ushering people to do what they should be doing.

Maybe everybody hates me, don't care, i don't go to work to make friends.

I find different people need to be managed in different ways. Some need a nag some need a micro manage some need to be made to believe they are the expert.

Djornson wrote:

I find different people need to be managed in different ways. Some need a nag some need a micro manage some need to be made to believe they are the expert.

This is a point worth noting, and applies not just to team members but also customers and other vendors.  Managing the customer can be an extremely delicate process.