My Path into Project Management (Guest post by Katharine Schweitzer)

The following is a guest-post by Katharine Schweitzer, a former academic philosopher who recently transitioned to a non-academic career in project management, and who also kindly volunteered to be listed in my new Philosophers in Industry directory. Katherine's post seems to me a profoundly helpful step-by-step guide detailing the general kind of process that an effective transition from academia to non-academic industry can involve. I am very grateful to her for putting it together and encouraging me to share it here!:

By Katharine Schweitzer 

Many job descriptions include “project management” as a responsibility. Project management is also a profession. Learning about how to manage projects is useful in many domains of life.

The Project Management Institute defines a project as “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.” A project has a beginning and an end, is carried out for a purpose, and is comprised of a series of related activities. As a graduate student or a university professor, you have probably managed many projects, such as:

1. 1. Applying for a grant or fellowship
   2. Creating the curriculum for a class and teaching it
   3. Designing and carrying out a piece of independent research
   4. Supervising a student’s independent research project, such as an honors thesis or independent study
   5. Establishing and running a research lab
   6. Organizing a conference or a conference session
   7. Creating and publishing a website for a professional organization
   8. Chairing a search committee to hire a colleague
   9. Chairing a committee to create a component of your university’s core curriculum

Many of my friends and family are engineers, and project manager has become an option in the professional advancement of engineers after they prove that they are competent individual contributors. I learned about the profession of project management from my engineer friends. When they told me about their job responsibilities, I thought, “I would be great at that!” Managing projects involves being attentive to details, communicating clearly and concisely with people at all levels of the organization, and gauging the interpersonal dynamics of the team members who are carrying out the project work.

In summer 2018, I had no technical qualifications in engineering or IT, but I had plenty of project experience after five years of being a philosophy professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. For three years, I considered leaving academia. In June 2018, I communicated to my department chair that I intended to resign my position as a tenure-track professor, effective June 2019. In my final year as a professor, I created and executed a plan to start a non-academic job in project management in July 2019. Here’s how I did it. I hope that sharing my story will help others if they are considering a similar career pivot.

To demonstrate to future employers that I had project management skills, I took the Project Management Professional (PMP) exam. Many employers list this certification in job ads, and I learned so much as I prepared for the exam. It took me three months to earn the PMP, including completing the required hours of project management education. It cost me $835 to earn the PMP: $169 to join PMI, the organization that offers the credential, $197 for a 35-hour online class to earn the required education hours, $405 to take the exam, and $64 for study guides to help me pass the exam.

Earning the PMP

The prerequisites for applying to take the PMP exam include proving that one has 4,500 hours of experience leading and directing projects. Here are two examples from my application to take the PMP exam in which I demonstrated how I tabulated my project hours.

Example 1: [student’s name] MA thesis (100 hours)

Project Role: Project Leader

Description: The objective was for my master’s student to design and complete an original work of philosophy. My roles included subject matter expert and team manager.

Initiating the project: 5 hrs. I helped my student to define the initial scope of her thesis.

Planning the project: 20 hrs. I helped my student to define the activities, sequence them, and estimate their duration.

Executing the project: 30 hours. I tracked student progress and provided feedback on thesis drafts.

Controlling and monitoring the project: 40 hours. I ensured that the thesis (the project outcome) confirmed to quality standards.

Closing the project: 5 hrs. I finalized project activities when the thesis was accepted by all committee members.

 

Example 2: Bioethics class, spring 2018 (140 hours)

Project Role: Project Leader

Description: The objective was to teach students the skills and knowledge associated with bioethics. My roles included subject matter expert, course instructor, and team manager.

Initiating the project: 5 hours. The philosophy department identified four student learning outcomes. I aligned my curriculum with department strategic objectives.

Planning the project: 42 hours. I developed the syllabus and curriculum.

Executing the project: 48 hours. I lectured and facilitated learning.

Controlling and monitoring the project: 40 hours. I graded student work (the project outcome) and ensured that it conformed to quality standards.

Closing the project: 5 hours. I reviewed student evaluations and submitted a final report to my department chair.

If you have 4 years of work experience as an academic, it is likely that you can identify enough project hours. 40 hours a week for 30 weeks a year for 4 years is 4,800 hours, and only 4,500 are required to register for the PMP exam.

Earning Agile certifications

There are two main styles of project management: waterfall and Agile. The waterfall method is often used in projects where the requirements for the end result can be clearly identified at the beginning of the project. The waterfall method works particularly well on projects that are linear and that require the team to complete one phase before beginning the next phase. In contrast, the Agile method is best suited for business contexts that are unpredictable and in which teams must react quickly to new situations. Working on an Agile project involves completing work in “sprints” of up to 30 days. Many teams plan and carry out work in one-week increments. Because the end result is decomposed into small increments, it is easier to make changes to the product or project over the course of multiple sprints than it is in a waterfall project. An organization may use the waterfall method in some parts of the business and Agile in other parts of the business.

The Agile Manifesto was devised in February 2001, so Agile is a relatively new methodology. At one time, there was a sharp division between the waterfall and Agile philosophies of doing work. In 2020, the attitudes of opposition and antagonism have decreased among many project professionals. Advocates of each approach have become less interested in proving the ultimate superiority of their methodology. Some companies use a hybrid of waterfall and Agile, and PMI, which was formerly seen as a bastion of the waterfall method, acquired Discipline Agile in August 2019.

Because I wanted to be able to prove that I could also work in an Agile environment, after I passed the PMP, I earned two entry-level certifications that are specific to Agile project management in spring 2019. Earning the Professional Scrum Master I (PSM I) certification cost $150, and earning the Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) certification cost $995.

One can study online for the PSM exam and register to take the exam without having taken any formal coursework. The CSM exam can be taken after attending a two-day class. I was highly satisfied with the class, which felt to me like a year of business school, taught interactively, crammed into two days.

Getting My First and Second Project Management Jobs

The Project Management Institute has local chapters. If you are considering a career in project management, I recommend attending one of their events once the COVID-19 pandemic subsides. In June 2018, I attended my first educational dinner meeting hosted by my local PMI chapter. Once a month, the professional organization hosts a networking happy hour, followed by a 1-hour presentation on a topic related to project management, over dinner at a local restaurant. I attended almost every monthly meeting from June 2018 to June 2019. When I began looking for my first project management job in spring 2019, many fellow members of the organization advocated for me at their companies. I got my first job at a software development company through a fellow member of my local chapter. At that job, a colleague who subsequently moved to a different organization recruited me to his team.

At my first job at the software development company, my title was Business Analyst. We worked within a waterfall methodology, so my having the PMP was most important to my employer during the hiring process.

At my current job in the Business Intelligence department of a healthcare network, my title is Business Intelligence Analyst, and the department uses Scrum, one of the many Agile methodologies. My full-time responsibilities are to serve as the Scrum Master for two of the four teams in Business Intelligence. Here, having the CSM and PSM allowed me to demonstrate my competency in the interviewing process. But because my employer doesn’t have “Scrum Master” as a position title and thus the job could not be advertised as focusing on project management rather than on the standard work as a Business Intelligence Analyst, it was essential that the people in my network knew from LinkedIn and the local PMI chapter meetings that I held the Agile certifications.

My success in transitioning from academia to project management would not have been possible had I not earned the PMP and CSM and had I not networked actively within my local PMI chapter.

The Delights of Being a Scrum Master as a Former Philosophy Professor

Serving as a Scrum Master for my teams is particularly enjoyable for me as a philosopher and a former philosophy professor. Agile is a mindset that informs the team’s way of working. Respect, trust, collaboration, and honesty are Agile values, and as a philosopher, I care deeply about values. I love that helping my Scrum team to work together well is my central job responsibility.

A Scrum Master is a servant leader, and this approach to leadership fits well with my philosophy of education. Many educators, including myself, view their role as facilitating and supporting their students in achieving their learning goals. I viewed each class as my invitation to the students to think, challenge, and reflect on the subject matter. My goal was to create a learning environment in which my students and I collaborated on finding meaning in the topic. As a Scrum Master, I spend much of my workday pursuing the goal of helping my teams perform at a high level and co-creating an environment in which it is enjoyable to work.

If you have questions about pursuing a career in project management, please connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a message.

Comments

[Betty]

This is so helpfully concrete and inspiring, thank you!

I know it's not the point of this post, but I'd love to hear why you left academia and how your thoughts about it did and didn't change after you left. (Did the grass look greener, once you were off it--or did it look even browner?)

[interested]

I second Betty, on all counts.

[Katharine]

Thanks for reading and for your interest, Betty and interested. I've written a backwards-looking piece about my reasons for leaving that I shared with the members of my dissertation committee, but it's appx 2,500 words and currently too self-indulgent a document to submit as a post here.

The TL;DR version is 1) I wasn't excited by or good at my research after the dissertation, 2) I loved but was no longer being challenged by teaching and service after 5 years on the job, 3) I wanted to make more money, and 4) I wanted to learn how value-creating industries outside of academia worked and ascend to leadership positions beyond department chair / associate dean / dean.

In my 10 months since leaving academia, I have learned so much and now make more money than I did as an assistant professor. I am glad that I got to live my first career dream of being a philosophy professor, but I love what I am doing now. But also I have the good luck of being temperamentally happy and melioristic.

[Samuel Kampa]

Extremely helpful, Katharine! I agree that philosophers have latent project management skills and would be particularly good at implementing Agile methodology. (Side note: Out of necessity, startups like the one I work for are Agile.)

When you're an academic philosopher with teaching responsibilities, you're managing a lot of crap at once (to put it poetically), and you're quickly shifting gears in response to external events (e.g., the forced transition to online education during COVID-19). It hadn't occurred to me before, but I feel like I now understand why and how an academic philosopher would transition to project management.

I hope this is one of many detailed domain-specific transition guides in this alt-ac series.

[Alepersichetti]

Thank you so much! I think that it is a profession that I can enjoy as a backup. Dear Marcus, more posts like this are extremley useful. I encourage more of them on this format!

[Katharine]

I find it interesting that I had to fight a "scarcity mindset" before I sent my draft post to Marcus. Although I think of myself as usually having an "abundance mindset," in which I believe that there is enough good things to go around and I don't have to hoard good things for myself or limit other people's access to good things, I kept thinking: I worked very hard to figure out this path, no one created a guide for me, and I don't want y'all to enter the profession and steal my job opportunities.

Those thoughts are all sub-optimal for me to have for my own sake and for the sake of alt-ac pursuing readers. In fact, it's in my own self-interest to promote the profession of project management: the more organizational leaders recognize its value, the more job opportunities there will be for project managers and Agile practitioners, the more prestige there will be for the profession, and the higher salaries there will be for those of us who do the jobs well.

In short, if a scarcity mindset is holding anyone back from sharing their own guides to alt-ac success, consider the above argument against keeping to yourself the practical steps.

[stuck in nowhereland]

Super cool and helpful, Katharine! I'm glad to hear that you landed well.

Out of curiosity: did you find job opportunities in a variety of different locations that you could choose from, or were you restricted in ways similar to what one finds as an academic?

FWIW: Even as a 'successful' academic, I threaten to leave the profession every few years. Living in crap towns has been difficult on my family, and I'm seriously considering backup plans in which there might be some choice of location. (A more interesting job with decent pay and benefits wouldn't hurt, either.)

[Letitia Campbell]

Katharine, thanks so much for sharing some of the details of how you made this transition. I've been curious about this!

I am not currently looking at a transition out of academia, but I am interested in learning more about some of the project management methodologies that you describe here — like the agile approach, or 30-day sprints. I've experienced some of those indirectly working with IT teams in higher education, where some of the culture of software development shapes the team's work.

Can you recommend resources (books, websites, articles) that I might look at to get a basic introduction to some of these? Would you recommend taking one of these courses, even if I don't have an intention of taking the exams? In the longer run, that might be possible. In the more immediate term, I am thinking about how useful some of these might be for the significant redesign of my program that must happen this summer with our fall uncertainties in mind — so something I could access online would be great!

[B Nguyen]

Hi Katherine. Thanks so much for sharing and this article is very useful and inspiring for those who want to transform from non-PM job to the PM. I think getting Agile certificate is also very important for you to have success in the first two projects.

[Katharine]

My answer to stuck’s question about location: I knew going into my career transition that my family and I want to continue living where we are for at least the next five years. During my final year as a professor, we bought our dream house. Another reason why I left academia was so that would be able to earn a living in our current city even if I was not employed by the university.

So even though I don’t want or plan on moving in the near future, I am confident that it will now be easier for me to find a well-paying, enjoyable job outside of academia in another part of the US. I regularly looked on LinkedIn and other job sites during my active job search to explore what job titles interested me, and I found lots of them inside and outside of my local area. I’m not actively searching for a new job, but I browse the job postings once a week to see what qualifications are required and to make sure I have a plan for staying competitive in the market. It heartens me to see that there are still project management jobs advertised in major cities despite the COVID-19 economic slowdown.

Hi Letitia! https://www.scrum.org/ and https://www.scrumalliance.org/ cover the basic terminology well, and they draw from the freely accessible Scrum Guide: https://www.scrum.org/resources/scrum-guide

Here are two books that I have read and recommend highly: Gil Broza’s "Agile for Non-Software Teams" and Ryan Ripley's and Todd Miller's "Fixing Your Scrum: Practical Solutions to Common Scrum Problems.”

Here are the project management podcasts I enjoy:
Agile and Project Management - Drunken PM Radio – Dave Prior
Leading Agile SoundNotes – Dave Prior
Agile Uprising Podcast
Manage This – The Project Management Podcast – Velociteach
PM Point of View
Projectified – Project Management Institute

I wish you well on your learning, and I hope that you write a guest post in the fall to share what you have implemented!

[Mark Leonard]

Some other considerations:

I find certifications very useful to create a framework for learning new subject matter and understanding some of the challenges inherent in positions like project/scrum management. Other key factors are how you present your personal values and strive to continuously learn.

The right certifications can be vital to getting through the initial screening layers and landing an interview and many organizations may focus on the checkboxes of hiring. However, knowing Katharine in real life. I can attest that her ever present, demonstrable drive for self and team improvement, respect for others, and consistently positive outlook have contributed far more to the relative ease of the transition than the certifications could have achieved alone.

My recommendation is to find a way to develop and display your enthusiasm for whatever subject area you have chosen. Contacts, colleagues, and hiring managers will register those soft skills more readily than the certs. Look for organizations that value those attributes. May be quite a bit more difficult, but worth it.

[Katharine]

^ that's my manager, whose background is in psychology. Thank you, Mark, for being an advocate for me and a great leader in our organization.

I have found my colleagues in my non-academic jobs as equally helpful, interesting, and committed to doing a good job as my academic colleagues.

[Nikhil]

Hey Katharine, this is such an inspiring article. It's good for you to Choose the project management path for your career. One can choose between different project management methodologies such as"
1. Agile
2. Waterfall
3. Scrum
4. Kanban
5. Hybrid
You can gain some more insightful information on What is project management? and how it is beneficial for the project managers.

[Kandis Porter]

This is a great article, Katharine! Having experience in both waterfall and agile methodologies is like gold. I’m seeing many organizations move to a hybrid approach, taking the best of both worlds to best fit their culture and types of projects. Keep educating on the importance of PM...often times organizations don’t realize how much they need it until they have it. :)

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