- Your company doesn’t seem to understand the importance of structured project management.
- They don’t care.
- Your manager or department doesn’t see the value in providing ongoing training in project management.
- Your coworkers don’t care about best practices.
- It’s difficult to find mentors within your organization.
Lonely by m.o.d e via Flickr. I started blogging at pmStudent.com to see if anyone else was interested in project management as a formal discipline. Until then, I hadn’t heard of project management being a formal discipline. Most people who managed projects were either not involved in it as a primary job or did so with an operations mindset. It wasn’t about “plan the work, plan the work”, but rather “get it done when possible, in addition to your regular jobs.” None of them wanted the details of how to influence people that don’t report directly to you, the theories, practices, approaches to requirements, and scope definition discussed. What can you do when you feel alone and like no one cares? Find other Zealots One of the best things about being obsessed with a discipline is that there are many people who are just like you. This is what I mean. They may not be in your department, or even your company. If so, it’s time for you to branch out. There are many local project management groups waiting for you. If you live in a city or nearby, chances are that there is a local group consisting of project managers who meet at least once per month. If not, why not create one? You can use Meetup.com to meet people interested in project management. See the video I recorded on finding local project management organizations at https://SPOTO.com/getinvolved Go online! LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites can help you find people interested in project management. You could form a local group by simply meeting up at a coffee shop with the people you have made online. I don’t recommend meeting at someone else’s house (as that would be creepy if you don’t know them well). Keep the venue public. You can either start to show interest in project management within your department or organization, or you may become so connected and informed that it is easy to know which organization to go to when a chance presents itself.