Becoming a Professional Project Manager - The Scope and the Time Management

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Becoming a Professional Project Manager - The Scope and the Time Management

A Project Manager (PM) is a person who takes charge of a project from its concept to the point of delivery of work (teamwork.com, 2021). This paper will peek into the various aspects of Becoming a Professional Project Manager. It will discuss about the reason why I choose to become a project manager, the scope statement, the time management related to becoming the Project Manager and lastly, it would discuss if crashing the schedule speed up the process of becoming a Project Manager without compromising on the scope. 

Why I choose to become a professional Project Manager?

I choose to become a Professional Project Manager as I find myself intrigued, skilled, knowledgeable, and hardworking. As Project Management is the art of completing a project as per the required specifications with the application of knowledge, skills, techniques, and tools (Wrike.com, n.d.), I believe I have all these skills-sets to becoming a good project manager. As a project manager, I would make predictable planning of the project, adhere to the budgets, schedule, and scope guidelines as well as I would resolve the roadblocks to the projects with quick and easy actions (Wrike.com, n.d.). Simply put, I have the skills to plan, execute, monitor, control and lead the projects (Wrike.com, n.d.). I can thus, become a good project manager.  

Becoming a professional PM, scope statement

A project scope statement is a written document used as a base for making project decisions down the line (Wrike.com, n.d.). It delineates what all tasks are to be done or what is there in the scope of the project. Simply put, it defines and controls what is inclusive and what is not inclusive of the project (Wrike.com, n.d.). For my project of becoming a Professional Project Manager, the project scope entails managing all the stakeholders to meet all the deliverables in the set timeline (Landau, 2019). As indicated, my project scope justifies the 5 Ws - What, Why, When, Where, and Who of becoming a Professional Project Manager.

Managing the time to becoming a PM

Time Management to becoming a Project Manager is one of the key components of the scope of the project. It means utilizing the time allocated for the project to meet the deliverables and concluding all the work before or by the set timeline (DiFranza, 2019). To become a professional project manager, I should have a well-defined scope of the project plan that should be engaging and well communicated across various stakeholders. There should be a proper Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), which is a guide to defining work and relate to meeting specific objectives of the project (DiFranza, 2019). Lastly, I would set my objective of becoming a PM as my key goal and set an agenda prior to actualizing the work towards achieving that goal. 

Can crashing the schedule speed up the process of becoming a Project Manager without compromising on its scope?

The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) defines crashing as a type of compression of the schedule, that may include overtime and paying for the expedited activity of completing or delivering the goods or service as a technique of schedule crashing (PMBOK, p. 156). “Crashing the schedule” or “making it happen” may have associated risks as it cannot be foretold that undertaking risk would actually be helpful or hurtful (Project-Management.com, 2018). Crashing the schedule to becoming a professional project manger is thus, a risky decision as the success of the decision would depend upon the fact if the task were in the critical path or there are appropriate resources available to achieve the goal (Project-Management.com, 2018). In my opinion, unless and until the likelihood of success of the task is not there, going ahead with crashing the schedule to becoming a project manager is not a viable decision. After all, there are no short-cuts to becoming a professional Project Manager. 

References

DiFranza, A. (2019) 5 Time Management Strategies for Project Managers. Northeastern.edu.

Available at https://www.northeastern.edu/graduate/blog/time-management-project-management/

Landau (2019) Project Scope Statement: Include These 7 Things. Projectmanager.com. 

Available at https://www.projectmanager.com/blog/project-scope-statement

Project-management.com (2021) Crashing in Project Management: A Comprehensive Guide. 

[online]. Available at https://project-management.com/crashing-in-project-management-a-comprehensive-guide/

Teamwork.com (2021) How to become a project manager: the 2021 guide. [online]. Available at

https://www.teamwork.com/project-management-guide/how-to-become-a-project-manager/

Wrike.com (n.d.) Project Management Guide. FAQ. [online]. Available at

https://www.wrike.com/project-management-guide/faq/what-is-scope-in-project-management/