Skills To Your Credentials And Be Recognized (NAPSA)—Is your career sedentary? Are you feeling the need to develop an edge the boss will notice and reward? Do what other successful professionals have done: Pump newlife into a career by adding professional project management skills to their credentials. According to the world’s leading advocate for the project management profession, the Project Management Institute (PMD, project management is a proven business approach that organizes resources and drives results. Project management applies to virtually every industry, career path and personal pursuit. Managing a project well can mean completing a multi-million dollar skyscraper ahead of schedule and under budget or making the best use of precious time, manpower and money when planning an important business event. Rather than being the management technique “du jour,” project management is an evergreen skill set that works in concert with other established business processes like Total Quality Management (TQM) and Six Sigma to help an organization make the most of its people, time and money. “Project management is all about doing the right things right,” said Debbie O’Bray, CIM, Chair of the PMI Board of Directors. “If you can demonstrate to a prospective employer that you can select the right projects in the first place and then execute them well, you’re going to be in demand.” O’Bray worked at Manitoba Telecom Services (MTS) for over 20 years in functional staff Photo credit: The Project ManagementInstitute 2003. Studying management can help put you on the path to success. positions, but her career took off after she learned about project management and began practicing it. Before she left MTS, she was an IT project manager supervising 40 IT professionals and a portfolio of corporate-level projects. Evidence points to project management skills being valued by enterprises of all types and sizes—corporate leaders such as Lands End, Avon, Microsoft and IBM already embrace the power of project management. In a recent survey of more than 100 senior-level project management practitioners conducted by the Center for Business Practices, more than 94 percent of respondents said that implementing project management initiatives added value to their organizations. Across the board, organizations cited significant improvements in financial measures, customer measures, project/ process measures, and learning and growth measures because of sound project management practices. “You may never know what’s coming next in the business world,” said Mark Gould, a direector at Boston University’s Corporate Education Center, which offers an array of popular project management courses. “But if you develop project management skills, you'll be ready for anything, regardless of your background. You'll position yourself as a person who gets things done—the ‘go-to’ person for business results.” In addition to Boston University, PMI teams with other universities, colleges, training centers and consultants from around the world to deliver the coursework that leads to the globally recognized Project Management Professional (PMP)certification. Anyone curious about the specific skills needed to become more project management savvy can go to the PMI Web site and check out certification information at www.pmi.org/prod/groups/public/d ocuments/info/PDC_Certifications Program.as. The site offers sample questions from the PMPcertification exam and guidance about getting started downthe road to becoming a professional project manager. Whether you choose project management as a dedicated career path or to develop a solid foundation of project management skills to complement your existing job responsibilities, your career and your future could be better for your decision. For more information about developing project management skills, call the Project Management Institute at 610-356-4600 and ask for the Certification Department or visit www.pmi.org.
