Why everyone needs project management skills

You’re not a project manager, so why do you need to learn project management? Project management skills are transferable to most jobs, and surprisingly, at most levels. So what could you learn that would apply to your job, or even your personal life, if you took a project management course?

You’d learn to:

• Understand who they key stakeholders are in your work – what they want, what they don’t want, and what will make them happy (this can change over time, by the way)

• Clearly outline what you will do, and what you will not do, so people will be happy with your end result

• Estimate time and effort for your tasks so you can create, and work to, a realistic timeline

• Negotiate what you can achieve, when you can achieve it by, and what will be the cost

• How to create a list of tasks, linked by the sequence they must be done in, to keep track of all activities and deliverables

• Report on your progress, to your stakeholders’ satisfaction

• Create simple documentation to help you keep on track

• Manage your work when things go wrong – create and present options to your stakeholders so they can choose the direction

• Learn how to apply the lessons you learn this time to the next job to continuously improve

Project management skills can be applied not only to your work, but even your personal life. Think about doing a renovation, landscape project, planning a trip or event, or even applying these skills to one of your volunteer activities.

Who knew project management could be so helpful? Well, we did, of course! We’ve been project managers for decades and teach over 20 project management related programs.