CUCG welcomed PMP, Amy Buttiglieri to Clark!
From healthcare to engineering to consulting and even product development, project management can be applied to any field. Project management is the practice of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria at the specified time. For the 3rd workshop of the CUCG workshop series, students learned the process of scoping a project to completing one with PMP, Amy Buttiglieri.
About Amy Buttiglieri
Amy is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) in defense, medical device, software, and consumer products industries. She has over 20 years of experience in project management. Previously, she has worked at Boston Scientific, Hewlett-Packard, and SAP America, Inc. She holds a BA from Wake Forest University and an MBA from Boston College.
On top of her impressive projects and accomplishments, she has her own consulting business which provides business process analysis, project management and program management for new product development and software development. Some of clients includes: Raytheon, Boston Scientific, Fresenius Medical Care, and Southborough Medical Center.
Currently, she serves as the Director at Large for the PMI Central Massachusetts Chapter. We are very excited to welcome Amy to Clark!
Questions and Answers About Project Management
How do you prioritize tasks?
Tasks are prioritized against 2 criteria: urgency & impact.
Urgency can be as simple as knowing you need time to create the slides for your presentation at 1 o’clock, or as complex as determining whether an issue needs to be resolved before the next SteerCo Meeting.
Impact is the effect on people, time, money, and scope. We are always juggling priorities, and there’s always “too much” to get done. We use these together to determine task priority.
One of the biggest responsibilities of a Project Manager is to help the Project Team & Steering Committee prioritize. We not only set the larger schedule, but every day we balance the team’s work to move the project forward, and help the SteerCo understand which risks need to be mitigated…and when.
Example: We’re in the middle of testing. But training is coming up soon & we just hired a new Trainer. Do we stop everything and have a 2 day session on training? Do we ignore it until we’re finished testing? Or do we have a few hour-long meetings throughout testing so the Trainer can start working on her schedule? It depends on the urgency and impact. If training starts in 3 weeks and we have 15 classes to develop, it’s a high urgency. If we are behind in testing at the same time, we take a hard look at the impact. Training just a few people points us to a different solution than a project that affects every department as soon as the project goes Live.
What is the entry-level position of project management? I want to be a project manager, thus, what position should I apply after I graduate?
There are many paths to project management, but most of them start out with a base of knowledge in a functional area. You could join a PMO (Project Management Office) at a large organization and work on gathering metrics and setting policy, but that’s not typical.
Here are some common options:
Consulting Organizations. E.g. Accenture. These companies hire graduates and help them grow by putting them on a project team and focusing on 1 piece of a project, for example, leading 1 interface, or responsible for the quality documentation. Then they’ll grow in responsibility to leading a larger impact section, such as the Go-Live Mocks (practice launching to get the timing right and work the kinks out).
Large Companies. There are Graduate Programs at many organizations like Fresenius, which put the Grads on 6 month rotations throughout the company, to get a taste of Purchasing, Finance, Sales, etc. These are incredibly useful for experience and direction. The departments want the Grads because they are smart and dig right in to help solve problems and complete tasks. The Grads are always seen as “the best and the brightest” and sometimes stay on with the company that hired them.
Small Companies. If you have a skillset, you can go to a small company and start making an impact. For example, you can start as a documentation writer, and just grab more responsibility as it comes along – most small companies have too many tasks and too few people to do it all. And when someone leaves, you have opportunity. You may not become a titled Project Manager, but you will lead projects so the next company you work for will see the experience an hire you for a PM position.
How to win a project management position? How to stand out in an interview?
Think about what you’ve done to lead, organize, and follow-through. Even if you haven’t had a PM position before, you’ve probably organized a team and tasks to accomplish a goal. These examples will help show that you have the skillset necessary.
Additionally, Project Management is a mindset, not just a skillset. Knowing the phases of a project and how to use MS Project and Excel is a given. Once you talk about how you’ve used these in the past, you can talk about leading and managing – your approach to accomplishing a goal, how you work with a team, how you communicate. And what drives you – why do you want to be a PM or why you are passionate about project management.
Finally, think about what’s important to the person who is interviewing you. They want to hire someone who will help them move forward – they’re generally not thinking of your development. A Project Sponsor wants someone who will lead effectively and communicate with the Steering Committee, reduce risks, keep the schedule. A Team Member wants someone who will keep management off their back so they can get the work done, is approachable and dependable, and is looking out for the team’s interests.
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Thanks again, Amy!