Project management is an art; it is the art of managing projects successfully for the benefit of the customer.
Industry insider and SCS instructor Joanna Tivig shares her expert perspective on the art of project management:
I started my career as a project manager, working in a newly formed Project Management Office (PMO) for one of the largest banks in the GTA. The PMO rapidly became a center of excellence, where the most critical and high-risk projects were assigned to the best project managers in the organization. We were the ‘A’ team, and training was a key ingredient. Through professional training, we were learning the right knowledge to apply in a constantly challenging environment. It allowed us to make the adjustments necessary to achieve success.
Soon, we extended the training to the project teams as well as the leadership teams. We acknowledged the importance of aligning all levels of the organization to the principles of project management. That ensured everyone spoke the same language, targeted the same outcomes, and appreciated the effort that goes into managing projects.
As I advanced in my career and became a leader of a digital development team, my team was my priority. I wanted to give them the support and the tools necessary to be successful. Project management training was a big part of this strategy, and it inspired a desire for continuous learning and improvement. I only had to give my team the opportunity to take the courses, and they brought the rest: motivation, flexibility, and the transparency of a learning team. Clearly, I am big advocate of project management training!
Project management is an art; it is the art of managing projects successfully for the benefit of the customer. It is about doing things right. It is not coincidental that each project is unique, and therefore it needs to be managed in a unique way. It takes a lot of talent, passion, and skill to manage projects successfully. Everything is done with a purpose: to deliver an outcome that in the end has the right ingredients for the customer. Project Management Alliance conducted a survey in 2017 that shows project management training boosts the success of projects by 26%, while 67% of project managers believe that training improves project performance. This indicates that having the right training for your organization is the key to successful project implementations.
In today’s changing market, companies are facing a serious challenge: getting qualified people. Finding the right people to deliver the right things for your company is not an easy task. As an employer recruiting new talent, you demand prior experience, knowledge, attitude, availability, and differentiation. For that, you need to find a way to prioritize the ‘must-haves,’ and build the other skills another way. That’s what project management training is for. Good quality training is designed to teach a combination of hard and soft skills, to help people build the knowledge they need and apply it in real-life scenarios.
As a mandatory skill, project management needs to be continuously developed. New concepts are frequently introduced to facilitate the way we work as project managers while helping our project teams deliver better results. Whether it is Waterfall, Lean, or Agile, the way we are managing projects is constantly changing. We are asking for more flexibility, faster decision making, more continuous improvement through incremental experimentation, and better attention to the needs of the customer. All these new requirements are demanding different ways of working, new methods, and innovative processes.
During my last 10 years as an instructor at SCS, I’ve had the pleasure to watch learners transform themselves into better professionals by taking project management courses. Even after the course is complete, they still rave about how SCS helped them become successful in their careers, while applying the concepts they learned in real situations. This made me realize how impactful our job as instructors is, and how quality training can impact the professional lives of people in search of new knowledge.
Joanna Tivig facilitates Project Management and Agile Project Management in our Corporate Training Solutions. She is a senior leader with more than 10 years of experience delivering major projects, mostly in the financial services industry. Currently, Joanna is AVP, Digital Channels, at Investors Group, and previously held numerous senior leadership roles at Scotiabank, most recently Director of Development - B2E Mobile Solutions. She has strong change management skills, influencing organisations to implement new technologies that lead to high efficiency and productivity. Joanna has also acquired international business experience across different countries and industries in Europe, Latin America, Mexico, and the Caribbean.