Not really.  The project manager's job is to figure out what's supposed to be happening, based on stakeholder-approved expectations, and then insure that it does.  Or convince everybody that what is actually happening is close enough.  One of the toughest tasks a project manager has is to keep the project within scope.  That means that s/he makes sure that everything planned for the project gets done - on time and on budget.  And that other things don't slip into the project where they don't belong.

As the manager of your career project, your initial task is to outline its scope, right?  Nope, first you need to have a vision.

Vision Vs Scope

Did you develop a vision statement for your career, as I suggested in January?  If not, get to it now.  The vision statement is the articulation of your hopes and dreams.  It needs to be more than "I want to make $75,000 by my second year out of school" or "I want to have Steve Ballmer's job someday."  In your vision statement, you get to set the bar for your future.

This can be a pretty frightening prospect.  Or it can be energizing.  Mostly, it's both. You get to challenge yourself to reach out and create stretch goals.  But then you have to figure out how you're going to achieve them.  You get the pleasure of dreaming big, but the accountability for making those dreams real.

It's really important to write the vision statement down, not just play with it in your head.  The effective project manager knows that "if it isn't written, it didn't happen."  After you've put it down on paper or on your hard drive, you're responsible for it.  It should become the commitment to yourself that you need to have, if you want a career and not a series of jobs.

Take some time to draft the vision statement.  Don't race through it just to get it over with.  Write it down and look at it.  If you feel brave, have someone else look at it.  Think about what it means, not just what it says.  When you're happy with it, it's time to move on to defining the scope for your immediate career project.

Scope it Out

Scope is a fence and fences are useful.  They keep stuff in and they keep stuff out.  Good project managers spend enough time defining scope so that they can be assured of success.  This means that they set appropriate expectations, assure themselves of sufficient resources, define the critical path for achieving milestones and plan to deal with predictable risks.

Yes, you can do this for your career project.  It just takes a little work.  Scope for your project is to define and achieve the first step toward your vision.  Remember, scope needs to be SMART

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Results-Oriented
• Time-Oriented

So your project scope statement doesn't look like this:

It looks like:

You can see how the second scope statement is SMART compared with the first one.

Now you write one for yourself.  Don't rush through this task either.  Take enough time to plan the right first step toward the vision. This means assessing where you are now as well as where you want to go in your next position.  What skills you want to master, what you'll need to learn to get there, what kind of industry you belong in.

If you're having trouble moving from vision to scope or getting scope to stay within reason, you need to remind yourself about versioning or phased development.

One Step at a Time

Project management practice shows us that trying to cram every feature and function into a development project will virtually guarantee failure.  A more effective approach is to stage development into a series of small, specific projects which can be more easily controlled.  This works for your career as well.

Don't expect that you'll be able to get a major growth job with a hot company, a big jump in salary, fabulous perks, stock options, and unlimited training opportunities.  At least not all at once.  The proper career project management approach is to identify one of these as your primary target, with one or two others as "nice-to-haves."  This is the basis for your scope.  Not everything, just a couple of things.  The others you leave for the next career project.  And the one after that. 

As you move through each project and the next stage of your career, you're liable to find that your vision will evolve.  It probably won't turn 180 degrees (though you can never tell), but it will change.  Breaking your career down into a series of steps/projects will allow you to plan out your progress and exercise a little more influence over your destiny. 

Packing all of your objectives into a single project raises the ante.  You may get very lucky and score big.  But you're just as likely (if not more so) not to get everything you want.  Technically, this isn't failure.  But as every technology project manager knows, fewer than 30% of all projects succeed completely.  Ambitious goals are good; greed isn't.

One more caveat.  Don't define your career project too narrowly either.  Baby steps do permit more control.  But you'll need a whole lot more of them to cover much ground.  Be cautious, not chicken.

Project: Your Career; Next!

Congratulations, you've just completed the first phase of your first career project.  Only three more to go.  You start with Visualizing your project objectives.  The second phase is Planning - planning the steps you're going to take to make your vision a reality.  The third phase is Executing - following through with the steps you've planned.  The last phase is Finalizing - actually obtaining the right next position and planning for your next career project.

You might be familiar with some other naming conventions, like Microsoft Solutions Framework's Envisioning, Planning, Developing, and Stabilizing.  Or with PMI's phase names.  It doesn't really matter what you call each phase.  It's only important that you recognize that each phase has a particular purpose and the end of each phase is clearly marked by the completion of a measurable milestone.  We'll outline these milestones next month.

More

My phase names are pretty lame.  Send me your suggestions - I'm a big fan of alliteration. If I really like yours, I'll personally shepherd you through your first Career Project off-line.  I reserve the right to cite your details publicly (though I'll make sure to change names/details to protect the innocent.) Is anyone out there game?  Write to me at jamie@jobcircle.com. Later.

Enjoy this article?  Read more of JobCircle.com's Career Coach articles.

Jamie Fabian spent more than 15 years as a human resources executive before changing careers to become a senior project manager for a growing IT consulting company.  Now in management consulting for a large Pharma company, Jamie would like to be seen as a hybrid of Tom Peters, Tom Jackson, and Tom Wolfe, but spends too much time working, driving carpool and watching mindless TV to write more than this column.  You can contact Jamie with questions and comments at jamie@jobcircle.com.