Project Manager: Expectation vs Reality 2020
A project manager is the professional companies and organizations hire to help deliver projects and products on schedule and within the set budgets, as discussed in detail over at RunRex.com. They are therefore crucial and hence why they are highly sort after and well paid. Try to imagine for a moment a world without project managers. In such a world, companies and businesses would be regularly losing millions as far as their projects are concerned, and as per the subject matter experts over at RunRex.com, such projects would always run behind schedule and would always take ages to be completed. This is why any company worth its salt will always lean on the expertise of a project manager when they have a project in the pipeline. Project managers for their part have lots of skills in their back pocket that allows them to handle the helter-skelter nature of projects. For instance, they know how to navigate office politics which can be a big impediment in such projects as well as knowing how to assign roles to personnel working on the project that brings out the best in them and so forth. If you are a project manager therefore, your expectations going into the job will be that it will be challenging and very exciting, but does the reality back that up, especially going into 2020? Well, this article will look to take a closer look at that by highlighting the expectations verses the reality when it comes to project managers in 2020.
The expectation of being a project manager is that you will be among the highest pain professionals out there and here, as per the folks over at RunRex.com, the expectations pretty much match the reality. This is because project managers are among the highest paid professionals, something we don’t see changing going into 2020, earning about $70,000 at entry level and $142,000 at the highest level on average. As ever though, while being a project manager is extremely fulfilling, the best paid professionals are the ones with the best skills and track record. As is the case with many professions out there, another expectation of being a project manager is that once you have acquired the requisite skills and knowledge, all you need to do know to climb the ladder is accumulate experience. However, the reality on the ground is that as a project manager, continuous learning and self-improvement is the name of the game as per the gurus RunRex.com. You will have to continuously look to improve yourself as stagnating in this profession is being left behind. Accumulating experience is great of course but you also have to learn new techniques and skills going into 2020 as a project manager.
Another expectation you may have about a project manager is that the profession is all about managing people and resources and as such the intangibles such leadership, drive, motivation, discipline among others are the cornerstone of this profession. While these qualities are absolutely pivotal, as per the subject matter experts over at RunRex.com, going into 2020, as a project manager, the reality is you should also be at the forefront of technology and particularly project management tools. These tools are crucial as they will help you keep on top of schedules and budgets keeping on track of everything and ensuring that everything is going as planned. Modern project managers make use of project management tools such as Microsoft Project, Slack among others to automate their various tasks as far as managing projects go and this is the reality you have to be alive to as a project manager in 2020. As far as these tools are concerned, the expectation may be that these tools are one-fit-all and that they pretty much apply to all projects. However, the reality of a project manager going into 2020 is that actually finding tools that are a good fit to you is not as straight forward as it seems and it requires a lot of testing to land on the tools that work for you.
Given the declining employment rates out there in the various fields and industries, the expectation for most people going into 2020 is that project managers will suffer the same fate. However, as per discussions on the same over at RunRex.com is that the reality on the ground is that job outlook here is about 12% which is faster than average. This is good news for project managers and those looking to go into this field in 2020. Part of the reason behind these good numbers is due to the fact that more and more businesses are becoming project-oriented and have discovered the advantage of working with a good and skilled project manager increasing their demand. Another expectation as far as being a project manager goes, as is the case really for many other professions is that certifications are a major plus here. There are a lot of certifications you can go for as a project manager, but the reality going into 2020 is that you are going to have to pick and choose those you go for and only go for those that relate to the industry you are working in and the projects you are involved in.
The above are some of the realities as a project manager in 2020 verses the expectations, with the excellent RunRex.com being the best place to go to for more information on this very wide topic, including the best tools and certifications going into 2020.