How People Break Into Project Management Without University #capm #pmp

Speaker A: Hello, my friends. It's your buddy Phil here. Project management trainer and coach. A recurring question I get is, Phil, do I really need to get a degree to be a project manager or to effectively use my skills? Because I believe I have good project management skills. And the answer is, frankly, no. You do not need to go to college to become a project manager. If you want to become a successful project manager. More importantly, what you need is the ability to learn fast and implement it back into your world. Learn fast and implement it back into your world. Now that sounds pretty general. Uh, well, let me explain what I mean. If you want to become a project manager, having a willingness to learn is paramount. And being smart to implement what you've learned comes next. To become a project manager, you can actually start off by understanding first what project management is. Project management is about managing work to achieve goals. Simply put, managing work to achieve goals. How do you manage work? Is the question. You manage work by putting on your leadership hat. Putting on your leadership hat means you are ready to do whatever it takes to understand, apply, learn, grow, analyze, and the loop continues. The project manager is one who manages, schedule the timeline, budget what is spent, scope what is done, and, uh, when it comes to scope, scope is all about containing what is done so that people don't do more than is required and so that they do, uh, all that is required. See, you can say that project management is the application of knowledge and skills, tools and techniques to work to ensure that the end goal of that work and the project is achieved. It's that simple. So let's get real pragmatic fast. What does the world of a project manager look like? Well, uh, the world of a project manager in the office could look like this. Meet with the team to decide and define what needs to be done. And a lot of times what needs to be done comes in the form of senior management asking you to finish work or get a project done. So if management says we have a project to implement software X, Y or Z across the firm, you are going to be the project manager. It means that you need to find everything that needs to be done and effectively drive it to completion. That means understanding the scope that is needed to be able to implement the software, understanding the timeline that management wants, understanding how much it will take putting a team together, hiring any outside help like vendors, contractors, consultants, and driving it through from the very beginning to the end. And when I say from the very beginning to the end, you can look at a project such as this in stages. One set of stages is project management. Stages, for example, you have to initiate the project, get full compliance, and buy in from the people involved, get clear directions and put that into what we call a project charter. The project charter, you can Google this. It's just a document that authorizes the project, that authorizes the work to be done, and says XYZ person is the project manager. This is what is going to be achieved. So that's initiating. The next stage in project management is planning. And planning just means deciding what needs to be done and mapping it all out to, um, be able to achieve the project goals. You've often heard if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Well, that's true in this case. We're looking at effectively planning everything. Scope, schedule, cost, quality, planning the resources, planning, communications, planning for risk uncertainty, planning what to procure, how and when, and planning for stakeholder engagement. So when we say planning, you can look at it in a variety of ways. And that all maps to what we call a project management plan. And that's what we do in planning. The next thing that you can think of as a stage here is executing. Executing is all about carrying out the work. Who carries out the work, who implements the software, who designs whatever infrastructure needs to be in place or confirms it, technical experts, the team. So executing is all about carrying out the work to ensure that everything that was planned is done. So we have initiating and planning and executing, but we also have monitoring and controlling, which is another stage. And that just means you are checking to ensure you are on track. If you are not on track, you do need to change something. It could be changing the way you are running the project, it could be changing the schedule, it could be changing the budget or the scope. So monitoring and controlling means you are checking and acting accordingly, ensuring that you are doing what was planned, when it was planned, how it was planned. So we have initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling. And lastly, closing and closing just means we are closing out either the project or, or a phase in the project. Because projects have segmentations and sometimes closing out does not mean you're closing out the entire project, but you could be closing out a phase in a project, a tiny part of the project. And when you close a phase, you move on. So a phase is a segment of a project where generally technical work is done. So think about it. We've talked about stages of managing the project, now let's talk about stages of effectively working the technical aspects. You know what comes to play here, right here. This is where we are discussing the concept of the life cycle of the project. Here we got to think phases. So in my example of implementing an IT software or system, you could think like this. Analysis a phase, analyze all that needs to be done, design, design the solution, develop, develop the solution, implement, implement the solution and then test, ensure that the solution works, analyze, design, develop, test, and lastly implement. Analysis, design, development, testing and implementation. This could be looked at as a project life cycle for tech. And it's very popular. A lot of organizations do analysis, design, develop, test and implement. So there are two moving cycles on every project. There is the cycle of project management life and there is the cycle of technical work being done, the project life cycle. So think of it like this. Project, project management life cycle and project life cycle. And being a project manager means you understand these two life cycles and you are, uh, able to effectively manage and lead at all levels. That's really what project management is. So the question is, Phil, do I need to get a degree before I become a project manager? The answer is no, you don't have to. You could learn project management first and then apply yourself to take in project management certifications. And there are quite a few project management certifications available. But the certification to take it really depends on, on where you are and your bandwidth right now. The first certification that I will talk about is called a Certified Associate in Project Management capm that is available from the pmi, the Project Management Institute. To take this, you could study anywhere from a couple of months to six months and you could come away with a, uh, Certified Associate in Project Management, a CAPM certification. This has been a door opener for many people that I know. I have a, uh, Certified Associate in Project Management. And I can tell you that it will really equip you with the knowledge and the understanding to go further in your project management career. So what do you need to do this? Well, all you need is a high school diploma and the right amount of education. Amount of hours. I believe it's 23 hours. You can check on PMI.org to find this precise number of hours depending on when you're listening to this. But you need the hours and a high school diploma. And it's quite straightforward. If you study, you will be able to overcome that exam by following methods and study ideas that I have on my Udemy course. If you go to Udemy and you look for my name, Fela Kingwale M over in Udemy, you find my CAPM program. It comes with a book, it comes with all the information you need to succeed on that exam. And many people that I've mentored Trained and coached have succeeded on that exam. So my recommendation would be for you to study accordingly using materials that are available to you and really look into it. Go to pmi.org and you'll find all the information you need for the CAPM exam. Okay. And again, my program is very robust. So that's one exam. The next exam that you could consider if you wanted to get to that next level in your project management. If you have 5 years experience and a high school diploma, or if you have three years of experience and a degree, bachelor's degree, yeah, you can go to that next level and you can study to pass the PMP exam as I have. Project Management Professional. It really depends on where you are in your career, what experience you have, and of course the funding to take the exam and courses. If you have any specific questions about the PMP exam, you can reach out to pmi, but you can also check on the Praiseeon channel where there are tons of videos about the curriculum for the PMP exam. Some people might not have gone to college, but they have those five years of experience managing projects. Then they can take the pmp. So the PMP is a little bit of a more higher level exam. It's more rigorous, quite unforgiving, but it absolutely can be achieved. I've uh, mentored, coached and trained thousands of people for that. The final one that I would recommend is a certification that focuses on leadership and it's the professional Project Leader certification. This focuses on understanding project management through uh, a leadership lens. And when you understand project management through uh, a leadership lens, you are bound to succeed because leadership is what everything rests on. The great John Maxwell said everything rises and falls on leadership. Leadership is all about influence and that's what project management revolves around. You do need to be able to to effectively influence to be a successful project manager. If you have any specific questions, do drop them in the comments below. I appreciate you joining me and I hope this has served as a good first lesson in project management because project management is multifold and project management evolves over the years, project management has evolved from being a side task to be in a full role in many organizations. All right my friends, I'll talk to you soon. All the very best and bye for now.