Know Your Project Management Career Development Critical Success Factors

Rosemary Hossenlopp, MBA PMP © 2007 All Rights Reserved

We all want to be experts in our project management field. What gets us recognized?

Success Factors Make Your Success Happen
Success factors are key activities you need to do to make your future happen. Success factors are things that must happen for career advancement to occur. These drive your career development activities. You must make time in your schedule for these activities.

Success Factors are sort of like differentiators but are more specific. So go back to your notes from yesterday and get really, really detailed about what it will take to be recognized by your peers and loved by your boss.

Success Factors are simple. They’re memorable. They’re contagious. And . . . they should make you shake in your shoes as they may seem so out of reach to you in your current career path.

Maybe your differentiator is being an expert in Agile. But the next great question is what will being an expert do for your organization or yourself? Will it allow you to evangelize Agile development practices across the organization? Then ask, what will the change in development practices get your company? It could be faster delivery of value to the customers, or fast-time-to-market (FTTM) that beats the competition.

        Differentiator: Example Agile Expert
        Why Your Boss Loves you: Gets you to market quicker.

Here are success factors that help you become an Agile Expert or are a sign you are there:
• Publish your first book
• Speak at PMI dinners
• Blog (shameless plug I know)
• Improve requirements practices on all your projects
• Attend training events and seminars
• Increase your billable rate by 25% per year.

Get promoted is tempting to list as a success factor but is a poor choice. The better question is what will getting promoted do for you? Wanting to be promoted may just bring out the shark in you and put you in conflict with others.

Your success factors will be different. What are they? Enter your success factors in the comments section below.

Next we talk about how you can make it happen through excellent execution of your plans.