Through out my educational and professional life I had the opportunities to manage various kinds of projects. I have learned from my educational background that, project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project objectives to meet stakeholder needs and expectations. I have taken the following educational courses to prepare me as a successful project manager:
- Project management in Visual Basic
- Practical Project in Oracle 7
- Systems Analysis and Design
- Business Analysis and Design
- Business Communications
- Human Resources Management
- Information Systems Project
- Entrepreneurship
All these educational courses have prepared me in the following ways:
- I am agile. Traditional project management methodologies are proving to be very rigid and strict compared to today’s dynamic work environments. From my experience I have noticed these kind of rigid methodologies can work against IT departments. As a result being dynamic and prepared to be adaptive to whatever today or tomorrow brings is a necessary quality required in project managements.
- I do not Micromanage. I am not a control freak. I research and evaluate different ways of achieving the project goal then provide my team members with clear ideas as to what needs to be done. As long as the work is done within predefined outlines, I consider it a success. This also boosts morals for other team members because they get to exercise their own ideas within that particular area of the project.
- I am always improving my project management practices through my educations and professional experiences. Technology is always evolving. In the same way our way of doing things must adapt to ever changing work places to meet business needs. Communication is a key aspect of this improvement.
- Ongoing planning. Planning is the single most important activity in any kind of project management whether it is a class project or it is a work project. I am detail oriented in planning and also encourage my team members to participate in planning developments.
- Open Communication. This is a vital aspect especially when there are external entities involved. I communicate and also learn to effectively communicate with everyone in any projects I am involved in. This cuts through waiting games and significantly reduces the risk of mistakes, saving everyone time and money.
- I can do it cheaper, better, faster - that is the attitude I want to harbor in project team members. To achieve this sometimes knowing the members at a personal level elevates the chances of successful delivery of a service or product.
Some of my examples are: hotel management software deployment, deployment of Lotus Domino clients, capital renewal project, deployment of computer servers, and various class projects.