The market for project management talent is hot — workers with project management experience and skills are in high demand as businesses shift to become more project-oriented.
While COVID-19 did have a big impact on the workforce, hiring for project management roles improved in 37 countries in the last few months of 2020.
If you’re interested in a project management role, this article is a great introduction to exactly what qualifies as project management experience, the essential soft skills, and how to enrich your work experience in the field.
What is project management experience?
Project management is first-hand involvement in initiating, planning, executing, controlling, monitoring, and handing over a project.
So, even if you don’t have the title “Project Manager” on your resume, if you’ve spent time planning, leading, directing, and managing projects — you have project management experience.
In a broad sense, a project manager is an ace at taking a project from start to finish. They are responsible for everything that leads to completing a project on time, on budget, and within the planned scope, in addition to problem-solving along the way.
They also typically have some experience with project management software like monday.com. It’s an excellent sandbox of sorts for those who want to organize and practice efficient project management work because the easy-to-use and interactive Work OS makes it easy to plan and coordinate projects from ideation to handover.
monday.com’s project board, for example, provides you with a step-by-step project framework. It breaks down every phase of a project into deliverable tasks or activities while allowing for room to record and track the costs associated with the execution of a project.
For more information on how monday.com can give you essential project management experience, check out this YouTube video:
What qualifies as project management experience?
What counts as project management experience depends on the experience level, the registering body, or the job you’re looking to apply for.
Suppose you want to take a project management job, you’ll need an agile project management certification with its own requirements.
The Project Management Institute is the most widely accepted source of project management professional (PMP) certification. To get its PMP certification, at least 4,500 hours of experience in managing projects is required.
If you want a Certified Associate in Project Management degree, you need a minimum of 1,500 hours of experience in leading a project and 35 hours of project management training.
Certification is just the first step. You’ll also need experience in the relevant areas of project management. Let’s dive into the essential duties that count as project management experience.
1. Planning
Planning defines the full scope of a project. The project manager creates a blueprint that will guide the entire project, clarifying its scope, necessary resources, anticipated timeframe, communication strategy, and more.
monday.com makes planning easy and convenient because it breaks down the planning phase of a project into simple, color-coded steps that are easy to follow, as shown below.
You can also assign tasks to individuals on your team.
monday.com lets project managers assign timelines to activities allocated to individual team members.
2. Leading
Project managers need to exemplify various leadership traits, interpersonal skills, and communication skills to guide their teams through project procedures.
There’s a lot that goes into leadership, including team management.
monday.com features a workload view that shows PMs how their teams’ work is divided. The window also tells you who’s over or under capacity, so that you can assign new tasks appropriately.
Color codes are used to gauge progress on different customers’ projects. With this, you can tell at a glimpse how far you are from achieving success every day, week, and month.
3. Execution
Once everything is planned and distributed amongst the team, the work begins.
The plans are tracked and monitored by the project manager to ensure that the project remains within scope.
Many project activities either recur or follow similar patterns. For such tasks, monday.com gives you options and tips to set up in such a way that you don’t have to use new groups or board structures when the tasks recur. This makes the execution of such tasks easy and effortless.
As you work on a project, you may need supporting tasks in your workflow for easy execution — monday.com has a provision for that, too.
The software allows you to create subitems on your board for a deeper and clearer structure.
4. Time management
Project managers have to be excellent timekeepers because it’s their responsibility to keep team members on their toes and activities on schedule. When challenges arise, they resolve them fast and communicate with all affected stakeholders.
For easy and convenient time management, monday.com provides PMs with a timeline view window.
The timeline view is a representation of timeframes for all your projects. With this visual representation, you can tell at a glance how much time your team has to complete a project.
You can also put small timelines next to tasks in the table view, which can be viewed in the image below.
For more information on monday.com’s timeline view, check out this YouTube video:
5. Budget
Budgeting is a key PM skill that determines how far your project can go. If financial issues arise, they find solutions that ensure projects remain within the proposed financial scope.
monday.com has a budget tracker that you can use to monitor how much money you allocate to different activities. This prevents scope creep and impulse expenditures.
6. Documentation
Project managers keep a record of every activity that’s related to the projects they lead, using tools that collect data and relay status reports.
monday.com’s dashboard makes documentation almost automatic by providing you with multiple tools. It displays all documented information in one place.
Here’s an example of an employee satisfaction board built using monday.com’s dashboard feature. It has color-coded graphs and pie charts representing the employees’ cultural needs, teamwork, opinions, and goals.
The above dashboard shows a sales leaderboard, which automatically collects and documents data like deals closed and progress made by each salesperson.
7. Maintenance
Maintenance is another important project management experience that entails tracking and enabling all project activities in line with the project plan.
It includes troubleshooting and sustenance to improve your chances for success.
How do you get project management experience?
The easiest way to get PM experience is by finding a way to serve in a project management role, even without a title or certification.The following are ways you can serve in a project leadership capacity and get valuable project management experience:
- Volunteering to manage small projects for your company: whenever you can, volunteer to manage different projects for different organizations — it’s not all for nothing.
- Shadowing with a mentor: in their careers, mentors have probably made mistakes that you can learn from.
- Invest in some quality project management courses: some courses are built to expose students to important industry knowledge and experience, and also provide openings for students to network with PMOs who can help them land jobs.
- Project management events and webinars: like courses, you can register for approved official project management events and webinars that can lead to certification.
- PMP certification: we mentioned this before, but to reiterate, there are many types of PMP certifications, depending on your education level and experience.
Use monday.com to start managing project management skills
monday.com is the Work OS that you need to build your project management skills successfully.
The platform is a visual interface where you can conveniently plan, organize, and keep track of your team’s work in one place.
monday.com gives you several project management views to choose from. You can accurately track progress and assign tasks based on priorities, in a way that works for you specifically.
It’s also possible to automate processes on monday.com. This eliminates a percentage of manual work from project management and makes your life much easier.
monday.com is compatible with a variety of project management tools. When you install the Work OS, you can integrate it with tools you already use, transfer your data, and continue working with limited interruption.
monday.com’s user-friendly templates don’t require any technical knowledge to set up and get started.
You don’t need to be a project manager to get project management experience
Contrary to what many people think, you don’t need to have the title “Project Manager” on your resume to get project management experience. Many people manage projects every day without thinking of themselves as project managers.
Those looking to improve their processes and gain project management skills with ease can start their exploration with monday.com.
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