I attended my first PMI-MN meeting last night and was impressed with how well the group was run. They had a nice orientation, information about passing the PMP certification and wonderful speaker from Medtronic.
The speaker’s topic was the difficulty in managing SAP R3 implementations throughout the world. I have to admit that I was not jealous when she described the 16 hour days that their PM’s were routinely going through for a long number of years. Culture differences in foreign countries, value-added taxes in far away places, and competing for resources with other Medronic projects made being a PM sound very challenging.
The group had a number of ambitious, yet unemployed, people in the group. It was the first time I stopped to think how many people I know that are extremely qualified at what they do yet are looking for work. Within my orientation group of 10 or so people, 6 had already taken and passed the PMP exam. Not all of those people were looking for work, but 3 of the 6 were.
Project Management is an area that many firms cut back on in the past 3 years due to running fewer projects but this critical discipline will be coming back in a big way as firms demand less give on scope, budget and timing of their projects.
