Project Manager Roles & Qualifications

[MrEarl]

Hello,

I was wondering, why have Project Management roles become so popular of late ?

Everywhere I turn, there seems to be a requirement for Project Management in I.T. and Financial Services, for example and often these are permanent roles, not just short term assignments as one might expect.

Also, has anyone got a view on which qualifications might be best, if considering trying to get a job in Project Management ?

 

[ainefitz]

PMP is the main one that is recognized globally. It costs about 1k I think to take the course and exam, I did it a few years ago

 

[thedaddyman]

PMP would be the main qualification but in itself is not worth much unless you have some sort of qualification or significant experience in IT or Business. As to why?, from my experience a lot of companies put off investment/upgrades in the bad times due to cost, now they either have more confidence to go ahead and make the investment or are finding that systems are going out of support due to age and that they have no option but to do so.

 

[Leo]

You need 5 years PM experience to apply to do the PMP certification, you need an employer or other PMI member to certify that you have that experience and submit some paperwork to back it up. Certainly possible to spoof it, but they do investigate some submissions. I know of one case where the applicant and the person who had backed them were disqualified.

Some of the popularity is down to changes in how IT work is being carried out in the major multinationals, particularly the US based ones where they'll leverage the time zone and language here to coordinate and manage IT project teams where a lot of the design/architecture level work will be done between the US and here, while a lot of the development or QA work gets done in India, China, etc.

The majority of IT PMs I know (myself included) have an underlying tech degree and experience in other related roles before moving into project management. But that's certainly not the only route into it. Some of the bigger organisations will have PMOs (project management office) where they'll perform oversight of portfolios of projects and they don't always require industry specific experience.