Tuesday, March 11, 2008

The Future of the Project Manager

I was at the Kansas City PMI Chapter meeting last night. The speaker, Brett Hirsch from IBM, talked about the future of project managers. He didn't really have any earth shattering revelations, just some points to think about. Get a mentor early in your career, network, keep up on the latest tools, etc.

To me, a key piece of advice for anyone these days is to keep up on your skills. As the world continues to evolve, new tools are introduced, projects are sent overseas, those of us that are continually updating our skills are the ones that employers are going to find valuable. Brett mentioned agile project management and this is an area I am seeing growth in. The person sitting next to me said his company, a consulting company spun off from a Big-8 accounting firm, was starting to adopt Scrum. Others I talk to in the IT & Telecom SIG are also doing work in this direction and a bunch of us have gotten our Certified Scrum Master certification.

So what are you doing? Is it time for another certification? Time to take another position to gain some additional skills? Back to school for another degree?

1 comment:

Sai Hijara - Ferraris said...

Very true. We have to keep abreast with latest developlement...and we can't just stop from learning.