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How to Update Your Project Management Skills

June 26, 2013

When I first took a project management course I had no idea that things would change. I naively thought that what I learned in those 5 days would be good enough to see me through my career as a project manager. I was wrong! We all have to update our skills, both in new project management techniques and also to ensure that we are growing professionally and being the best we can be.

What are you doing to keep your skills fresh? Here are 7 ways to update your project management skills.

1. Take a Course

The most obvious way to update your skills is to attend a training course. Many employers have an annual training budget, so ask your manager if you can attend a course this year. Be specific, as you may have more success getting them to agree if you present them with a well-researched justification for the course you want to attend instead of just generally asking if you can have some training and expecting them to work out what course would be best for you.

Find out what courses run in your local area on topics that would enhance your skills. Research how much the course costs and when it runs, and be sure that your project schedule would allow you to be absent from work at that time. Think about the business benefit of you attending this training, such as the fact that you would have better technical skills, or have to rely less on the senior project managers in the team. Present all this to your manager and make it hard for them to say no!

Another alternative is to ask your manager to arrange in-house training for your entire team. This is particularly useful if you want to upskill a group of people, for example building skills in your project management software. This can be more cost-effective than each individual attending an external course.

2. Read Industry Magazines

You may live and breathe project management in your day job, but you are also part of another industry – the one that you work in. That could be healthcare, utilities, the public sector, financial services or any other.

What do you know about that? When I started working in insurance I took some basic qualifications from the Chartered Insurance Institute. I didn’t really need to know all that stuff, but it gave me more confidence when I was working with underwriters on projects.

I understood their jargon and what was important to them. Industry magazines are good way to get inside the head of your colleagues and find out what is important to your business without having to take exams.

3. Browse the Web

There is bound to be a great website relevant to your project, industry or career stage. Check out some project management blogs, community sites and online magazines. Join relevant discussion groups on LinkedIn, and follow industry commentators on Twitter. The internet has a whole host of useful information from YouTube tutorials on every aspect of software project management skills to scholarly articles on advanced project management topics. Book some time in your diary each week to browse your favorite sites.

4. Get a Mentor

Join your company’s mentoring scheme. You can learn a lot from your mentor if you choose the right person. You may find that a mentor is picked out for you under an official corporate scheme, but if you don’t get on with them feel free to ask to be assigned to someone else.

Make the most of your time with your mentor. Prepare for your mentoring sessions by coming up with a list of questions or areas where you would like their advice. This could be anything from how to deal with a difficult stakeholder to some technical expertise on the best way to put together a project schedule.

5. Be a Mentor

If you already have some experience in project management, you can volunteer to be a mentor. You can also learn a lot this way, especially about yourself and how you relate to others. Being a mentor can help develop your interpersonal skills and teach you about patience and the best way to communicate.

Plan for your time with your mentoring partner and you’ll be surprised at how much you can learn from each other.

6. Work Shadow

Work shadowing is where you follow another employee around for the day. You could spend a day at the call center learning about customer service to improve your knowledge of the challenges facing your customers. You could shadow a senior manager to learn more about the company’s corporate strategy. Or you could simply ask your manager if you could go with them to a couple of relevant meetings so you gain some exposure to decision makers and watch and learn how they work.

While it is useful to spend time with your peers and those in other departments, it is also good to seek out people who have the sort of job you aspire to. Spending the day (or even a few hours) with them will help you see what skills you need to develop in order to get that promotion.

7. Read Books

The internet is a marvelous thing, but don’t discount reading books too. Books can go into much greater depth on a topic. The act of reading on paper or on an e-reader also means you will focus better on the material – it is too easy to get distracted by adverts or links when you surf the web.

There are a huge number of project management books available, covering topics from soft skills to budgeting and everything in between. Buying books can be expensive, so club together with some colleagues to start a sharing circle, and swap books between you. You could also ask around in the company as there may be individuals who already have relevant books that they could lend you. Your Project Management Office or Human Resources team may also have an existing library of books that you could borrow, so make some enquiries before you start to order new books yourself.

Growing your skills and building your abilities as a project manager is your responsibility. Hopefully you can see from this list that it isn’t difficult to do and that you have plenty of opportunities to develop your project management skills in all areas. However you prefer to work and learn, there is a way that will suit you. So get cracking!