Upskilling for a career in project management

As a working professional, Matthew Fernandes recently completed our Professional Project Management course. He tells us how he found the course supported him to balance work and study, and he now has his sights firmly set on building his career to be a leader in project management.

I was looking for formal project management training

I’ve worked across a number of roles that involved project management – stakeholder engagement, business case writing, requirements gathering, work breakdowns. But I’d never taken on formal training that tied all those skills together and built upon them.

The online course provided a flexible, focused way to achieve that and further my career development. 

I’d just wrapped up a fixed-term project as an Online Services Developer with the University of Otago Library redesigning the library’s subject guides, a repository of web resources that help students access the library. I had applied several project management techniques like scoping, communicating with stakeholders, and reviewing project performance. I felt like I could deepen and formalise my skills by doing project management study. 

Studying Professional Project Management gave me a chance to incorporate what I learnt into my work straight away

One of the aspects of this course that really helped me to balance work and study was the flexibility to incorporate the course learnings into my work. For example, after starting the course, I began another fixed-term project with the University of Waikato. I used elements from the course, like work breakdown structures and requirements registers, early on during the project. Doing this helped me progress through the course content while also enhancing my work. 

Additionally, the course leader and the facilitator were really engaged, communicative, and empathetic throughout the course, which was immensely helpful.

I was excited to learn more about financial management and forecasting

I found the process of managing and forecasting project spending really interesting. I’d had experience with budgets and performance monitoring before taking the course, but was excited to work on some more formal financial management and forecasting training. That is an area I intend to build on with further studies so that I can pursue project management and leadership roles in the future. 

I want to learn more and progress into managerial and leadership roles

My goal is to take the Advanced Professional Project Management course to learn more complex project and portfolio management skills. I’ve held a number of senior roles and led projects throughout my career, and hope to progress into managerial and leadership roles in the near future. I think further studies in professional project management will me achieve that goal. 

Thanks Matt for sharing your story with us! Join Matt and others in deepening your project management skills and knowledge with our online Advanced Professional Project Management course.