Competency Focus: Project Management

What is Project Management?
”Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements. It’s the practice of planning, organizing, and executing the tasks needed to turn a brilliant idea into a tangible product, service, or deliverable” (PMI, 2024).
Whether one holds the title or not, most individuals who work in a project-based role may be considered project managers. To be a project manager is to manage multiple stakeholders, timelines, ideas, and processes and marrying them together to meet the deliverable.
The main difference between a project manager and a middle-manager, is that project managers focus on the execution and lifestyle of a project over focusing on the productivity of people only. Having the ability to juggle multiple tasks to complete an overall project is a skill of its own!

How Project Management Influences my Leadership Success
Project management has influenced by leaderships success greatly- with the coursework and ideas that I have absorbed during my time at ASU, I have fundamentally changed the way I interact and delegate as a leader. I find myself employing the use of project management ideas during the projects that I manage. For example, I find myself using task organizers like Asana to help my friends plan their wedding, Google Sheets to track my financial service leads, and other forms of organizational softwares to keep my thoughts and tasks organized. I would have never have known how to optimize these software services effectively had I not taken project management courses.

Why is it Important for Professors to Teach Project Management Skills?
No matter the major, the fundamentals of project management should be taught to all students who intend to work in a field where they have.. projects. Across every field that deals with complicated tasks, an understanding of project management fundamentals is often the key to running successful projects and organizations.
Professors should especially continue to teach this competency to Organizational Leadership majors because of the intertwining between the major and Project Management as a major itself. Again, in any organization that has projects, there must be a leader. Professors should continue to set these students up for success in the professional world through teaching project management fundamentals.

Personal Growth & Development at Arizona State University
When I was a high school student, I took on many leadership roles in both school clubs and after-school jobs. As someone who has always enjoyed delegating tasks and leading others, I definitely managed these organizations blindly.
When I arrived at ASU and began taking Organizational Leadership/Project Management courses, I noticed an immediate shift in how I presented myself as a leader in both my campus organizations and my professional life. I have had the ability to make real changes and define my leadership style, understand how leaders could interact with correspondents effectively.

Personal Artifact: My First Learning & Development Training Guide
One of my proudest pieces of work throughout my college career has been the development of my first training guideline for Trader Joe’s. While this was not actually published within the store, several key elements and training recommendations were used to create a better environment within the store. This showcased my development as a project manager, because I was juggling several deliverables, guides, and measuring effectiveness of outcomes and training recommendations over the course of a semester. The final document was delivered as a part of my COM 453 (Training and Development) final, but was also used in part to develop the learning and development of my own Trader Joe’s store.

Reference:

Project Management Institute. (2024). What Is Project Management, Approaches, and PMI. Pmi.org. https://www.pmi.org/about/what-is-project-management