Benefits of Project Management Skills

When you show off a certificate proving you have completed a Project Management Training you prove several things and all of these confirm your credibility and worthiness to take on difficult projects for your company or small business.

Qualities Honed By Project Management Training

Everybody can be a manager, but not all managers have a certificate to show that they have completed a Project Management Training. If you are handling small projects for your boss, no matter how small or big it is, you are showing you manager potential. This potential goes to waste when the boss decides to choose a manager because the boss will get someone with formal training credentials as a guarantee of ability.

But if you have the certification even if you did not get a degree on management, your boss will gladly promote you to a supervisory level. Essentially, you already have the basic qualities of a smart manager; you are observant, analytical, creative, think quick on your feet, and you can get people moving as a team and most significant of all, you have the certificate of training.

A certificate on Project Management Training assures your employer that you have:

• enhanced your risk management
• improved written and verbal communication skills
• the skill to effectively manage project timeline within cost
• improved procurement skills
• improved monitoring and documentation skills
• learned the legal aspects affecting project implementation

However, the training is available only for those who have five years of work related experience. Knowing this, you should keep track of your experiences and have a logbook of your projects if you are eyeing a Project Management Training in the future.

Training Courses

Companies that have the funds to send their employees to boot camp can request for a training program tailor-fitted to the company's profile and requirements. If the training is an individual effort, training will involve self-assessment tests to figure out how and where the training should start. The company's profile will be a useful input for the training to help the individual achieve project managerial skills when working on:

• Project scope
• Project budget
• Project timeline
• Project resources

There are several courses offered and the lessons vary little from one institution to another. A reputable online provider for Project Management Training will provide a user manual, a training manual for each knowledge area, audio and video learning aids, crib sheets explaining examination questions, provide practice tests and an exam that "duplicates" the real examination. Online support and support for the examination application should be part of the package deal.

 

Time of Reckoning

Passing the exam is the biggest and last hurdle. But once accomplished, you have an edge over others who have yet to take the training and pass the test. Once a full-pledge passer, you can expect better compensation. Project managers are well-compensated for their responsibilities. They receive an average pay of an annual $70,000 to $80,000 in the United States.

Apart from the compensation, project managers have the opportunities and perks accorded to supervisors and the possible upward career move. If you work towards professional management training, this will take time but eventually you will be receiving better pay and projects that are more challenging. That's the biggest advantage you have with a Project Management Training.

Industry Example: Grant Thornton's research on importance of soft skills for finance professionals ...

Grant Thornton LLP, one of the six global accounting organizations, released a new report titled The Evolving Accounting Talent profile: CFO strategies for attracting, training and retaining experienced accounting and finance professionals.  

While you might expect that a dynamic regulatory framework and international standards might present the biggest challenge for today’s CFOs, soft-skills deficiency was identified as a more pressing issue.The study involved surveying more than 500 finance executives and holding one-on-one discussions with 32 CFOs representing a range of industries and company sizes. It’s also important to note that the study highlights “seasoned professionals” – those with at least a BS degree and 10 years of experience.

Challenges in Recruiting Qualified Talent

Talent recruitment in any domain is a challenge.  Here is how the CFOs saw the difficulties that they face in recruiting experienced accounting talent:

It should be noted that the study does identify a difference in responses between public and private firms.  The private firms rated workload/lifestyle at their foremost concern.

The Soft Skills

It’s not surprising that dynamic workplace needs are driving the demand for these skills. Open-ended responses uncovered the following needs:

  

Some interesting quotes from study participants:

“Our people can’t just focus on accounting principles. They need to broaden their experience and background knowledge to understand the business application of these principles. Many times, you need critical thinking and business judgment in order to translate data and effectively communicate it.” CFO, public media company, $5B revenues

“People in marketing and production are more persuasive than those in accounting – they manage more staff and deal with management more frequently.  With less exposure, you don’t have the same opportunity to develop communication skills, and if you aren’t persuasive, you can’t convince management to take up your recommendations based on your review of financials.” CFO, public commercial service company, $100M-$500M revenues

“It is easy to find someone who can do something that you have asked him or her to do. But it is difficult to find someone with a long-term vision – someone with an awareness of the big picture who sees the issues strategically.” CFO, public industrials company, $5B+ revenues

How to Address Training

The economy continues to challenge training budgets at firms as they continue to slash or eliminate them entirely.  With reduced staff and increased workloads, the Grant Thorton study highlights the difficulty CFOs face in creating training opportunities for their staff across all areas of development.  Once again, soft skills present the biggest challenge.

One-on-one interactions and mentoring (as opposed to classroom training) were often identified as efforts undertaken by the CFOs to bridge the soft-skills gap.   In addition, external programs such as Censeo Corporation’s TalentSIM leadership development tool are frequently utilized as a cost-effective alternative to more costly assessment centers.

Turnover?

Most will agree that as the economy improves, voluntary turnover will increase. Some surveys indicate as many as 23% of accounting professionals plan to look for new opportunities…CFOs better have good retention strategies in place. While the survey cited training and development as the third-most important turnover driver (poor work/life balance and limited potential for advancement were number one and two) , CFOs recommend the need to engage employees in individual discussions and to create development plans based on career aspirations.

“One-on-one meetings have been the most successful method to close skill gaps – these meetings allow us to explore an employee’s needs and gain a clear vision of his or her workplace issues. With this information, we can formulate a development plan and implement it successfully.” – CFO, private technology services company, $100M revenues

Resources

• Business Finance, “The Leadership Skill Continuum,” Jeffrey C. Thomson, November 30, 2009:

• Access the complete report by Grant Thornton for free here.

Harvard University research on soft skills

Harvard University research

Harvard University research shows that the most successful people in the world attribute 87.5 % of their success to their SOFT SKILLS and only 12.5 % of their success to their HARD SKILLS(Domain Skills like Engineering, Medicine, Science and all of other traditional education we spend `decades in acquiring!)

Career in Software Testing!

Dear readers!

The given information throws light to what Software Testing is all about and career in the field.

Meaning:
 
Software testing is an investigation conducted to provide stakeholders with information about the quality of the product and it’s functioning. Test techniques include the process of executing a programme or application with the intent of finding software bugs. From mobile phones to cameras, software testers examine a range of digital products for bugs and design flaws. They swing into action after the software is designed or coded.

TESTING TIMES
 
Cloud-based applications are becoming the trend of the software market. As a result, the testing market is also cloud-based. Companies such as IBM, CSS Corp, etc. have started cloud-based testing, which is likely to reduce the cost and timing of testing the application. Further, companies are investing significantly in building competence in various specialised testing services such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) testing, web-based application testing, service oriented architectures (SOA) testing, software-as-a-service (SAAS) testing, wireless and mobile technologies testing etc. “As the domain of software application development is increasing significantly, so is the need for testing specialised applications,” says the report.

POSITIVE INDUSTRY OUTLOOK
 
“Indian companies aim for quality rather than quantity which attracts other countries to outsource major amount of work to the Indian IT sector,” says Manoj Nair, principal software engineer at TESCO HSC in Bangalore. With companies on a cost-cut drive globally, the scenario is likely to be favourable for testers in India. “This is because they do not want to spend much on testing and India offers them the opportunity to recruit testers in bulk at very low prices compared to what it would have been abroad,” says Sahil Ahuja, a software developer who has worked in a renowned investment bank and is presently doing his MBA at the IIMC.

“With more intricate programming languages and coding schemes, software testing is becoming more critical. A large number of IT companies have dedicated approximately 20 per cent of their total workforce to software testing and larger companies plan to increase their software testing workforce even further. Indian companies are getting outsourced software testing assignments,” says career counsellor Jayanti Ghose.
 
JOBS AT HAND
 
Companies that recruit testers would include IT companies apart from investment banks, consultancy firms, retailers, airlines and networking sites among others. “Testing is now seen as an excellent corporate job with a well-defined career path. For example, if one is a test analyst, he or she could easily move up to become a QA team lead, senior test engineer, and eventually test manager. The options currently available are many,” feels Nilanjan Basu an ME who works with a leading IT M NC.

BASIC REQUISITES
 

“A BE/ B Tech CS/ IT or any stream, or M CA would be advisable. Indian Testing Board (ITB), approved by the International Software Testing Qualifications Board (ISTQB) also conducts ISTQB- certified tester examinations (www.istqb.in),” says Ghose. A BSc with more than 60 per cent aggregate can also apply.

“In testing, we've Manual and Automation testing. People are mainly recruited for manual testing, for which the company will look for good analytical skills, basic programming knowledge, problem solving skills and good communication skills. But for automation, people need a good knowledge of the platforms they are going to work with. Platforms in the sense software languages like C, JAVA, C#, VB etc,” says Vijaya Kumar, Engineer- QC, NDS Services Pay-TV Technology Pvt Ltd, Bangalore

NICHE SKILL SETS
 

There is an increasing demand for niche testing skills. There is currently a general lack of skills in the area of test automation and scripting. Also on demand are highly technical skill sets, such as the ability to review and manage automation tools, produce test automation frameworks and figure out how to leverage reusable on-demand components. Similarly, there is and always will be a consistent demand for good performance testers who are able to analyse test performance results, offer tuning suggestion techniques, and determine bottlenecks. “Persons with skill sets, including HP QuickTest Professional, IBM Rational Functional Tester, Rational robot, HP WinRunner and as well as tools like Microsoft Application Center Test (ACT) and HP LoadRunner are in great demand,” adds Basu.

 
REMUNERATION
 
“Freshers could earn anything between Rs 3.5 lakh - Rs 11 lakh per annum depending upon the company (a core technology company pays higher) and also the college one has graduated from,” adds Ahuja. The starting salary depends on many factors, like company, city, educational qualifications etc. An experienced tester could earn upto Rs 15 lakh per annum

Reference: The Economic Times