I vividly remember me doing my PMP certification exam in 2005. At that time, I was in Infosys and we were setting up the Enterprise Solutions practice for Infosys in Hyderabad. It was a new campus and we were all lateral hires, trying to do our 1st projects for Enterprise Solutions Group in Infosys. It soon becomes the fastest growing group for Infosys and is one of the largest revenue making group in Infosys now.
Infosys for the 1st time had organized a PMP certification workshop in Hyderabad and had selected 15 Senior Project Managers & Practice Managers to be part of the training. I happened to be one of the privileged group and that’s was my 1st tryst with PMP Certification training. Infosys had also photographed the batch and given everyone the photo frame of the 1st training in Hyderabad campus and for the Enterprise Solutions group.
The 4 days of training was amazing and it introduced me to a whole new world of project management. There could be so many things I could differently, I thought, and value adds to my clients and customers. Project Management became one of my interesting topics to explore and I decided to do more in this space of project management.
In Infosys, we got challenging assignments in a faster-growing group and we were given large accounts and projects to handle, a much bigger responsibility than our shoes can fill. And I love this kind of challenging assignments else I get bored quickly.
In Infosys, post the training, I became aware a lot more things on the projects scenario – introduced to why risks are important and started doing projects in a little more structured way. The project managers in Infosys at that time were not pure project managers (I do not imagine any different now as well) but we were supposed to have domain knowledge of an area say CRM, technical understanding – so project management was just one of the many things.
My next stop was Microsoft India and I was recruited to incubate the Microsoft Dynamics (CRM + AX) practice for Microsoft Consulting division in Microsoft India. Here the role demanded that you should have depth in your role than the breadth – quite unlike Infosys. So, if you are assigned a Program or a Project Manager, you are expected to be a “Pro” in the role and you are discouraged to do any other roles.
I had no option but to go into depth of project management and here I used my PMP knowledge quite effectively. I recall that we got one of the biggest government projects in AX (ERP) and I happened to be the project manager. The contract negotiations delayed this project and I used this opportunity to develop a 1500 line project plan which was quite new for a lot of people at that time. One of the things I learned there was, the more details you put, the fewer people go through it J. Alternatively, I am alone in control of a lot of data and intricacies of the project and me, therefore, had a lot of control on the project. This reflected in my conservations with the customers and once the customer started trusting you, your own managers and skip managers make you the “go to” man. Overall, this increased my confidence in handling the project tremendously and one thing led to another, and I got new opportunities in project management space, even with the corporate HQ in Seattle, USA.
If I have to pick up one simple thing from my experience and which I tell all my participants of ProThoughts workshops, PMP Certification increased my confidence to handle the projects manifold. And this opened up the space of project management for me and also landed me great opportunities and great exposure. This ultimately led to ProThoughts where I love what I do. We are creating a new space – a new category of Project Management, giving a new dimension, a value-add which a Project Manager brings to the table. I interact with many project managers in a month and it is fantastic to see the impact we are creating by building ProThoughts. PMP Certification would be one of the building blocks of this journey.
Any learning unless applied becomes just awareness, but after implication becomes enriched experience.
And I firmly believe that if you want to build your career in Project Management space, you need to undergo formal training in Project Management and experience how doing a project management in a structured way with its own strategies tools and techniques can transform your projects and yourself.
At ProThoughts, we believe that certification is just a by-product when you start applying the project management best practices in the real world. And that is my and ProThoughts endeavor – to change the way we do projects and succeed in your projects.
Happy Reading!
I would love to hear your comments and would love to interact with you.
