Navigating Your Project Management Journey: Insights from Google's Certification
Hello, aspiring Project Managers! In this article, I will be sharing my new certification journey completing Google's Project Management Certification 6 module course. Along with offering guidance, insights and personal thoughts to help you decide if this course is for you.
Touching on topics such as project management fundamentals, project planning, agile methodology, and team building skills. The course is aimed at equipping students with real-world skills to help you grow in your careers.
And as someone who wanted to start my own project management career path, I needed a course that was designed in a video format, self paced in which most importantly offered hands on experience. I know many, like myself learn best when they actually get to work on the material they’ve learned.
So, who should take this course?
Whether you’re aspiring to break into project management or currently hold the title, Business Analyst, Consultant or team lead, this course is a great way to spice up your professional toolkit.
Note: In each section, you’ll find highlighted what you’ll learn in each module, and how the material can benefit your career.
Module 1: Foundations of Project Management
What you'll learn
Introduction to Project Management: Basics of project management, including definitions, importance, and real-world applications.
Role of a Project Manager: Insights into what project managers do, the skills they need, and how they contribute to achieving organizational goals. Most importantly it covers how to be an effective project manager, in which Google brings on a few guest speakers to share their experiences as Project Managers.
Project Management Processes: Overview of the project lifecycle, including initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, controlling, and closing projects. Hands on experience: You’ll also complete a stakeholder analysis and utilize RACI charts to define and communicate project team member responsibilities. This helps a lot to start identifying your key players and stakeholders.
Tools and Techniques: Introduction to commonly used project management tools and techniques for effective project planning and execution. This gives you a great introduction to commonly used tools such as Asana, Monday.com, Confluence and JIRA to help be organized, so you can successfully manage and lead your team.
How it can be beneficial to your career
Even though I’ve had experience as a project manager at previous roles, this offered a solid understanding of the importance of being an effective leader from truly understanding stakeholder needs, to leading your own team. The course also taught that each project is unique, with its own quirks and characters, requiring not just a one-size-fits-all approach but a tailor-made strategy to lead teams towards success. If anything it's teaches you to be adaptable, and strategic working with the various people on a project.
Module 2: Project Initiation: Starting a Successful Project
Short Overview: This course will show you how to set a project up for success in the first phase of the project life cycle: the project initiation phase. You’ll learn how to define and manage project goals, deliverables, scope, and success criteria.
What you’ll learn:
Understand the significance of the project initiation phase of the project life cycle.
Define and create measurable project goals and deliverables.
Define project scope and differentiate among tasks that are in-scope and out-of-scope.
Utilize RACI charts to define and communicate project team member responsibilities
Understand which project management tools are best to utilize to meet your projects needs
How it can be beneficial to your career
I’ve started many projects before, and sometimes felt like I could have done this better or that better and now I feel like I know all the crucial parts to starting a project and making it successful.
‘Gather your party before venturing forward towards your adventure’-is a better way to frame it.
After taking the course, you’ll feel confident utilizing helpful tools such as stakeholder analysis grids, project charters and setting clear project roles and goals for you and your team. It gave me and my team a lot more confidence and understanding of how to succeed as one.
Module 3: Project Planning: Putting It All Together
Short Overview: Focuses on the critical phase of project planning, detailing how to develop a project plan that aligns with business goals and objectives. You’ll also learn about milestones, and how to measure them along the project.
What It Offers:
Developing a Project Plan: Steps to create a comprehensive project plan, including scope, timelines, resources, and budget.
Risk Management: Techniques for identifying potential risks, assessing their impact, and devising mitigation strategies.
Stakeholder Management: Strategies for identifying and engaging stakeholders, understanding their needs, and managing their expectations.
Communication Plans: How to create effective communication plans to ensure information is shared timely and accurately with all stakeholders.
How it can be beneficial to your career
Here, I figured out how to lay out everything we'd need for the project—like mapping out the project and stakeholder journey, from start to finish, with all the stops we might encounter and detours marked to prepare my team for road blockers we may face. It’s also helped me identify my teams strengths in terms of who would be best to resort to or lead in X situation or Y need.
This module also highlighted how tailoring our approach to each project and team isn't just smart; it's crucial. It turned out to be way more than just planning—it was about building the roadmap everyone needed to follow, no matter where the project took us.
How it can be beneficial to your career
This chapter really hones in on leadership skills, project execution and teaching effective communication strategies for managing team dynamics and stakeholder expectations. By learning more about these skills you become adept at adapting to changes and proactively managing risks, making you a highly resilient and flexible leader in any professional setting. This module has really helped to understand how to tackle complex challenges with confidence.
Module 4: Project Execution: Running the Project
Highlighted Learning Sections:
Create a project charter
Drafting emails
Identifying project tasks and putting them in order with milestones
Identifying and creating time estimates for a project plan
How it can be beneficial to your career
Running the Project, can significantly enhance your career by equipping you with essential project management skills. By learning to create a project charter, you'll be able to define project scope, objectives, and responsibilities clearly, which is crucial for project success. Additionally, drafting effective communications and developing a structured project plan with task identification, sequencing, milestones, and time estimates will improve your ability to lead projects efficiently and meet deadlines, making you a valuable asset to any team.
Module 5: Agile Project Management
Short Overview: It covers Scrum's principles, roles, and events, how to manage product backlogs, implement Agile delivery strategies, and effectively introduce and coach Agile teams within an organization.
Highlighted Learning Sections:
Dive into Agile approach
Build and manage a Product Backlog and perform Backlog Refinement.
Implement Agile’s delivery strategies and define a value roadmap.
Learn tips to teach an agile team and help them overcome challenges.
Note: There’s a lot of team focus in this module, and how to successfully implement different methods of working together.
How it can be beneficial to your career
As a a consultant, business analyst and current/ future project manager, learning more on Agile and Scrum through this course helps enhance your problem solving skills to be able to work in dynamic work environments. This is an attractive skill as a candidate to have, as it helps you lead teams more effectively, contributing to your career growth and opportunities in the project management field.
Module 6: Capstone-Applying Project Management in the Real World
Short Overview: This capstone project allows learners to apply their knowledge and skills to a real-world project, simulating the role of a project manager.
What It Offers:
Real-World Application: Opportunity to apply project management theories and practices to a practical scenario, simulating real-world challenges and solutions.
Comprehensive Project Execution: From planning to closure, manage all aspects of a project, including dealing with changes, controlling quality, and delivering project outcomes.
Feedback and Reflection: Receive feedback on your project management approach and reflect on your learning and areas for improvement.
How it can be beneficial to your career
Completing the capstone project management module from Google can significantly benefit your career by demonstrating your practical knowledge and hands-on skills in managing real-world projects. It serves as a tangible showcase of your ability to apply project management theories and methodologies, such as Agile and Scrum, in solving complex problems and leading projects to success.
Tip of Advice: Remember, anybody can take this course, but applying it into your everyday, at work, personal projects or volunteer projects is what will make you become an amazing project manager. So try to find ways you can create RACI charts or create new and fun ways to host sprint retrospectives-there’s so many things you can do! But now future project manager, I leave the rest to you.
Create Your Road to Success
Whatever your role may be, it's important to remember that we can always improve ourselves and new learn ways to accomplish things. This is why i personally enrolled in the course. And after 4 years of consulting with both federal and commercial projects, one project is never the same. From stakeholders, team members or project objectives, as the world changes so do projects that’s why learning new skills to help you and your team navigate these changes are so important.
After completing this course, I go to work everyday feeling more confident leading client meetings, meeting stakeholder request, creating business charts, and learned the importance of asking more meaningful questions to help my clients.
So, to all aspiring project management adventurers out there, the Google Project Management Certification awaits. I hope this breakdown was helpful to exploring what you could learn and achieve from this course. Good luck!
