raining always sounds like a fine and
noble idea. Yet at most companies, the focus is
on getting the job done. Perennially under
pressure to deliver, most project managers are
hard-pressed to find the time to even think
about picking up new skills or knowledge. The
danger, of course, is that a stagnant skill set
means they might not be ready to take on
more complex projects. That’s no good for
the project manager or the company they’re
working for.
In the search for hyper-efficiency, it only
makes sense to view projects as a classroom of
sorts. Project managers can learn and do at the
same time—and it doesn’t have to cost much.
On-the-job training can be just what it
takes to groom project managers for projects
of greater scale. Take Evelyn Chin, currently a
program manager at software company
Borland Singapore Pte. Ltd, Singapore. As a
>TIP
Before project managers pursue on-the-job training,
they should do a little introspection. “Look at your
current skills and find your weak areas,” says Bill Badger,
PMP, enterprise solutions project manager at CPS Energy, San
Antonio, Texas, USA. “If it’s risk management, for example, find
an article on the subject and study it. Find someone in your
organization or in your local PMI chapter who is known for
their risk-management skills. Ask them to read the article and
discuss it with you. Ask them for more books on the subject.”
technical lead for HP Asia-Pacific, she started
working on a project to integrate the company’s
product catalog with that of computer supplier
Compaq, which HP had recently acquired.
“Although I was the technical lead, the
project manager encouraged me to develop
my project management skills by managing
the tasks and deliverables with the external
vendor,” Ms. Chin explains. “As I moved on to
other HP projects, I was able to observe and
learn from other project managers. This led to
managing small- to medium-size projects of
varying complexity, from conception to post-implementation.”
Senior project manager Alejandro Aramburu,
PMP, also took advantage of on-the-job training
to build his skills. Mr. Aramburu currently
works for IT network provider NEC in
Buenos Aires, Argentina, but back in 2002,
he was a project coordinator for a systems
integration program for the San Luis province.
He recalls sitting in on weekly progress
meetings with the customer, watching how
the project manager in charge of the program
managed expectations and drove each
meeting’s objectives.
“The process for the meetings was to prepare
for it in advance, thinking about the topics that
would be discussed,” explains Mr. Aramburu.
“My senior project manager would tell me his
key points and the key goals he wanted to
achieve. At the end of the meeting, we would
meet alone and discuss the right and wrong
things about the meeting, the way the project
manager had conducted the meeting and the
lessons that we had learned.”
In-depth instruction of this nature isn’t
always easy to come by, however. Mr. Aramburu
acknowledges that the time constraints on
project managers—both the trainees and the
instructors—affects the amount of development
that can be gleaned from any particular phase
of a project.
Help From Above
For on-the-job training to truly work, it usually
takes a a senior person ready and willing to
lead the way.
“In my opinion, the best way project
managers receive on-the-job training is
