Now a project manager...tommorow what?

This is again from one "geek-coffee" event yesterday. As we are now in the career phase where we are leading/managing projects, the question "What to do after this?" becomes very relevant - what is our next target position?

For some maybe nothing - a career in project management can be a life-long adventure, and one that is very highly respected. But for others, in this case everybody at the table, by my opinion, it is a very difficult question to answer. For we are in our early thirtees, technically experienced but lacking real management experience. And we are willing to learn...just to find the right company and the right position to enable us to do this is not easy or simple. I believe there are two approaches - general discussion or personal question. To the second one - you either know or don't know - and the one way to realize whether you know or not is to ask yourself the basic question "What do I really want to do" and then align next steps to those goals. Being honest with oneself in answering this question can be difficult. We are influenced by good pay/prestige that can come with following an easier development path that we may not be as passionate about.

If you work in large company with developed processes your next step might be to visit your local HR representative and ask for their progression plan for you. But for Croatia that level of personal development planning is probably a decade away for most companies. In times when most companies struggle for survival in times of "crisis" ( although I would say bad strategic long-term management, but that's another subject ), most people are happy to have a pay check at the end ot the month. That is bad for everyone - companies, employees and the profession itself.

But if you are lucky enough to work in a company that actually cares about people and personal development, somebody in your "chain of command" should have a vision of your development. Sometimes it is a formal process, with requirements to achieve the next position/pay level ( along with incremental skills/experience/education ), sometimes just an agreement in the form "do this to get that". Whatever the way it works in your enviroment, your development plan is your responsibility but your HR department and/or boss are responsible for supporting this effort. If you do not feel they supply you with enough information to develop a robust development plan, talk to them, if possible. Showing interest in your career development is a very positive business trait.

It is much easier, for instance in annual performance reviews, to talk about training needs versus creating/discussing a development plan. Do the development plan first before discussing training for the coming year. Make it a critical on-going personal career document that is updated. A development plan does not have to be a huge undertaking - write it on a file or a personal notebook ( yes, those paper-ones still exist :) ) - just do it. Start small and build from there. Committing to maintaining a development plan can be a great time saver in the long run. For instance, you can cut/paste development plan info during annual performance review preparation - there is in one company in Croatia I know of ( and only one :( ) where HR people will not even talk to employees on the annual review unless they first share their current development plan.

So now we come back to the original question - "What next for a project manager". If we ask this as a general question, I would say that we have to seriously focus on involvement in activities that effectively increase experience/knowledge about overall business operations. I would put special attention on learning more about the integration points across various business functions. For example, if one's project manager work is focused in IT, understand the touch points with other functional project managers, say in Finance. Understand the small incremental differences between these roles. Use HR to review progression plans for these other business functional roles ( if they exist ). Being able to identify what these small responsibility gaps are means less effort on one's part to transition into these other roles. Obviously, it should take less effort to progress following the normal project management career path ( especially one defined by company ) - for instance: project manager -> senior project manager -> business analyst -> program manager -> ... What is the development thread for this sequence? It is gaining more knowledge about overall business operations and learning how to integrate cross functional projects/programs to deliver successful overall business systems/processes. Development should involve key activities that help speed up learning overall business interrelationships. Doing this will bring recognition and rewards and will open up many more advancement possibilities and other business opportunities.