The "Accidental Project Manager" ... Are You One?

[Mike]

I interact with lots of newcomers to project management (PM) either as attendees in my workshops and as visitors to my website (www.michaelgreer.com). Unfortunately, I find a lot of them are feeling pressure to become certified, mostly as a PMP (project mgt. professional) from the Project Mgt. Institute (PMI) and sometimes from the European PRINCE2 certification. Frankly, I sometimes feel sorry for these folks and a little irritated on their behalf that they can't simply enjoy their new PM responsibilities and have fun learning their new PM skills. After "feeling their pain" for years, I decided to write an article defending their right to NOT become certified! And I published it at my website:
http://www.michaelgreer.com/accidental-PM.htm
So... are you an accidental project manager? Do you feel pressure to become certified? What are the issues you face? ... the problems you need to solve to become more effective? Let's talk.

[Mike]

Thanks, Archie, for sharing that story! It sounds like you were thrown into PM and learned how to swim! If you are interested in comparing the kind of PM stuff you did to survive with the "formal" kinds of PM processes advocated by the professional PM types, you might want to check out this performance-based tool I derived from PMBOK (Project Mgt. Body of Knowledge): 20 Key Project Manager Actions and Results

As a former Instructional Designer, I approached this whole PMBOK thing with the attitude of "Show me the required skills, already! Enough with the endless concepts and theories!" That led to the 20 Key PM Actions and ultimately my book and workshop.

Also, here's a link to some Bonus tools hidden away behind my web pages that you might find useful:
http://www.michaelgreer.com/bonus.htm
In particular, you might want to compare your project plan template & deliverables with the generic one "Sample Phased Work Breakdown Structure." And, now that you're back to managing training, maybe you can combine your PM and your training development role. If you do, you can find some stuff related to ID Project Management (my 1st foray into PM!) at this URL:
http://www.michaelgreer.com/handouts-id-pm.htm

Anyway, Archie, I really wish you well! And if you get assigned another big project and want someone to brainstorm with, let me know! (P.S. - Sorry it's taken so long to respond [enter excuse here ;-) ])

[Archie]

I work as the training manager for a BPO handling client/product specific training. I've been doing this for quite some time and at the start of the year, the company was opening a new site, and they identified me as the project manager to head up the launch. Before that, i had almost no idea about anything project management related. I had to start from scratch, and do all my own research on how to go about the entire thing. after getting a few helpful directions from previous PMs, and a project plan template (no, unfortunately i wasn't given any PM tools such as MS project :( ) i finally had a better idea on how to actually be a PM, albeit very vague and ad-hoc for the most part. Long story short, i learned the hard way, making the mistakes and finding the solutions real time, most often on my own. One of the biggest fallouts of the project was that it petered out after the site launch, and the follow up tasks and post mortem were not completely done. So now, reverting back to my Training Manager role, i've gained expereince and insight into PM in general that i can never put a price tag on. Something i hope to get a chance on practicing again.