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The Benefits of Project Management Training

August 11, 2022/0 Comments/in Certifications, Main Blog, Project Management /by Tom Kennedy

Charting Your IT Certification Pathway

December 3, 2020/0 Comments/in Certifications, Main Blog /by Tom Kennedy

Creating a Plan Has Never Been Easier with Today’s Online Tools By Tom Kennedy “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” It’s a quote that has been used for countless business leadership presentations and sports stories. Nonetheless, these simple, but meaningful words from Benjamin Franklin are so relevant in today’s IT world. Last month, we […]

The Benefits of Project Management Training

August 11, 2022/0 Comments/in Certifications, Main Blog, Project Management /by Tom Kennedy

Charting Your IT Certification Pathway

December 3, 2020/0 Comments/in Certifications, Main Blog /by Tom Kennedy

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The Benefits of Project Management Training

August 11, 2022/0 Comments/in Certifications, Main Blog, Project Management /by Tom Kennedy

Project management is a critical skill in business. It’s no secret that projects lead to profits, but they also can be a source of frustration and stress (and high costs!) if they’re not managed well. Project management training helps you develop your skills as a project manager so that you can deliver on key business initiatives while reducing the risk of failure. Many professionals also see a competitive advantage in credentials such as Project Management Professional (PMP)® Certification and in becoming an Authorized Training Partner (ATP) as recognized by the Project Management Institute.

Why Project Management Are Essential

It’s important to note that project management skills are applicable in any industry and role. Whether you are an IT and communications professional, a website builder, a city planner, or a college professor, managing projects that meet team objectives on time and within budget will help you stand out in your field. Regardless of whether you’re managing a project of your own or someone else’s, these skills will help you deliver on key business initiatives. That’s because they can be applied to any project, no matter the size or scope.

Project Managers are in Demand

According to the PMI, the project management-oriented labor force in seven project-oriented sectors is expected to grow by 33 percent, or nearly 22 million new jobs between now and 2027.

That’s because the world is becoming increasingly complex and difficult to navigate. Businesses are facing an unprecedented level of pressure to deliver on key initiatives, while keeping costs low and quality high. Project management professionals are in demand because they help organizations achieve their goals by developing clear plans, managing schedules, assigning tasks, resolving conflicts and tracking progress. They can also help prevent mistakes that could cost time or money by identifying potential problems early on in a project’s life cycle.

Project managers often specialize in different areas like construction management or software development projects so they can better understand the unique challenges within each industry sector. For example: A project manager who specializes in construction may be familiar with how things like weather conditions or delays by inspectors can affect productivity, whereas another type of project manager might need additional training before working on such projects because it’s unfamiliar territory for them (and vice versa).

The Importance of PMP Certification

Project management training is a great way to get started in the project management field. The Project Management Professional (PMP) certification is one of the most widely accepted certifications for project managers, and it can help you stand out in a competitive job market. The PMP is also an excellent way to demonstrate your commitment to the field, making it easier for you to get better job opportunities and advance your career.

In addition to becoming certified as a PMP, there are many other professional designations available that can help you develop new skills while increasing your marketability. These include:

Learning about Project Management Helps You Manage Your Career

Project management training can help you better manage your career. Here’s how:

Learning about project management helps you understand how to work with other team members. If you’ve been on a team that has struggled with communication or cooperation, you know it’s hard to work together toward a common goal when everyone doesn’t know what they’re doing or why they’re doing it. The skills and knowledge gained in project management training will help improve the collaboration between co-workers, which leads to better results for the organization as a whole.
Learning about project management helps you understand how to manage your time and workload more effectively. It might sound obvious, but if no one is managing projects well enough to keep track of their progress from start until completion then there won’t be any benefit from them whatsoever! Not only should someone be able to see where things stand at any given moment but also be able to recognize when something needs fixing so that we can fix it before things go too far off track–and even better if we can do this before anyone else notices anything amiss because otherwise someone else might have already taken action without us noticing until everything’s already gone wrong somewhere else too far away from where we could reach outwards enough quickly enough…

Make an Impact on Important Business Initiatives

Pursuing project management training can develop your career and make an impact on important business initiatives. The demand for skilled project managers is growing, especially in both the private and public sectors. Project managers can also use their training to pursue other careers, such as business analyst or IT manager. In addition, pursuing project management training provides you with the skills needed to work in other areas of the field of business such as marketing, HR and finance.

We’re Here to Help!

We’ve highlighted various tools and techniques commonly used in facilitating project managers’ decisions. We know this can be a lot for one person to take on alone but remember: there is always help available!

The Project Management program at ComputerMinds is a structured, comprehensive course that follows the authorized training curriculum provided by PMI. The program is designed to teach students how to apply project management processes in predictive (traditional waterfall), adaptive (agile), or hybrid environments. Upon successfully completing the program, students should be able to manage projects by using their emotional intelligence toward engaging stakeholders, initiating, planning, executing, monitoring/controlling project process activities while staying in compliance with the appropriate regulations, policies, and procedures.

Project managers are always in demand. No matter what the industry, there will be a need for qualified professionals to plan and provision the work.

Charting Your IT Certification Pathway

December 3, 2020/0 Comments/in Certifications, Main Blog /by Tom Kennedy

Creating a Plan Has Never Been Easier with Today’s Online Tools

By Tom Kennedy

“Failing to plan is planning to fail.”

It’s a quote that has been used for countless business leadership presentations and sports stories. Nonetheless, these simple, but meaningful words from Benjamin Franklin are so relevant in today’s IT world.

Last month, we wrote about “Why Certifications Matter.” Today’s article speaks to the practical cybersecurity pathway you can map out based on where you’ve been, your natural talents and where you want to go. The good news is that there are many sophisticated online tools to help you create the right plan.

Determining your destination is a critical first step. Our advisors at ComputerMinds.Com recommend starting at CyberSeek. CyberSeek, whose mission it is to “help close the cybersecurity skills gap by providing detailed, actionable data about supply and demand in the cybersecurity job market,” is a joint project between the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE), The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), and Burning Glass Technologies. The site provides excellent tools for job seekers and current workers, students, and employers.

One of the first features visitors will notice is the ability to see a state-by-state cybersecurity demand and supply market view. The interactive heat map section allows you to drill down to the metro area level to see both the challenges and opportunities facing your local cybersecurity workforce. (Download cyberseek_infographic.)

Clicking on a state like Texas, for example, tells us that there are a total of 47,276 cybersecurity job openings in the state (using data from October 2019 through September 2020). We can also see that there were 78,636 estimated cybersecurity workers employed in the state during that same period. The top job titles requested by employers within the cybersecurity job market in Texas included:

Cyber Security Engineer
Cyber Security Analyst
Cyber Security Consultant
Software Developer / Engineer
Systems Engineer
Cyber Security Manager / Administrator
Network Engineer / Architect
Vulnerability Analyst / Penetration Tester
IT Auditor

Another box illustrates the ratio of current holders of common cybersecurity-related certifications to job openings for each certification. In the diagram below, for example, we see that demand (job openings) for Certified Information Security Professionals (CISSP) is outpacing certification holders by a significant margin.

Further, you can slice and dice your view of a state by public sector data and private sector data. The private sector data allows you to take a look at demand and supply in specific vertical markets, such as Educational Services, Financial Services, and Construction, as examples. The Educational Services private sector data in Texas, for instance, indicates a “very low” supply of cybersecurity workers relative to demand in a particular location.

Besides the “Interactive Map,” the other part of this valuable tool is the “Career Pathway” tab. From this location you can see that there are many opportunities for workers to start and advance their careers within cybersecurity. It illustrates jobs within cybersecurity, common transition opportunities between them, and detailed information about the salaries, credentials, and skills associated with each role. Hovering over an entry-level position like Cybersecurity Specialist / Technician, for example, yields current job openings and average salaries, plus logical pathways to mid-level positions as Cybersecurity Analyst, Cybersecurity Consultant, Penetration and Vulnerability Tester. Hovering on the mid-level positions then provides information and pathways to advanced-level positions.

Drilling down into an entry-level position like IT Auditor (see following screen shot), delivers information about total job openings, average salary, common job titles, education requirements and certification requirements.

All in all, CyberSeeks offers a great tool to envision your future in cybersecurity. In an uncertain world, it provides job seekers and current workers visibility into market demand for specific positions and transition pathways to your career objective.

“It’s a great resource to understand where you might want to go with your career,” says Prabath Boteju, founder of IT training company ComputerMinds.Com. “It helps educate job seekers and current workers with solid facts.”

“No matter where you’ve been with your career, it gives you a good tool to figure out how you might fit in with the cybersecurity world. Whether you’ve been a teacher or a project manager or a marketing manager, this is a great resource to help you transition into a cybersecurity role. You don’t necessarily have to have a history in IT to pivot into cybersecurity.”

Now that you know where you want to go, the question is how to map out the pathway to get there. The DoD Cyber Exchange website provides excellent guidance toward this end, whether you are interested in a career in the public sector, or with a business that contracts with the public sector. The site has a page dedicated to DoD Approved 8570 Baseline Certifications provides Information Assurance (IA) certifications to meet the US Department of Defense requirements we talked about in last month’s blog article. As discussed, the DoD has published a number of directives that set out the requirements of their workforce, and the workforce of contractors doing business with the DoD. The image below illustrates certifications required at three levels of the Information Assurance Technical (IAT) role.

Further down this page, a second table delineates the certification providers associated with each approved certification. Here’s a snapshot of this table:

“We use this as a guide with our students,” adds Boteju. “It comes down to what you are targeting, knowing where you want to go and then mapping out the certifications you need to get there. We use this list because it’s recognized by the federal government and recognized by the government contractors. It eliminates the guesswork.”

Often job seekers and current workers in the IT field do not think about what the logical path looks like to get to that next level. The tools described here are excellent resources to get started.

“We really want to understand where the student has been, their skills, and interests before prescribing a certification path,” notes Boteju. “It’s never too late to make a career transition or professional pivot, or to seek a promotion. However, planning is essential. We help our students focus on a plan that accounts for their natural skills, interests and experiences, plus has the right certification pathway to get them to where they want to go.”

If you have any questions or would like to get more information about ComputerMinds.Com, please give them a call at: (817) 944-7348 or (682) 259-8033, or check out the contact us portion of the website: https://computerminds.com/contact/

In an upcoming article related to this topic, we will lay out some of the important certification resources available to IT-career-minded students as they map out career pathways.

About ComputerMinds.Com

Based in the Dallas Fort Worth metro area, ComputerMinds.Com specializes in cybersecurity training, project management, and logistics and supply chain management, to prepare students for prosperous careers in these growing industries. ComputerMinds.Com offers a broad range of certifications and hands-on career training, including CompTIA and Microsoft IT courses.

Half Sized Blog Element (Single Author Style)

Half Sized Blog Element (Multi Author Style)

The Benefits of Project Management Training

Charting Your IT Certification Pathway

The Benefits of Project Management Training

Charting Your IT Certification Pathway

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

The Benefits of Project Management Training

Why Project Management Are Essential

Project Managers are in Demand

The Importance of PMP Certification

Learning about Project Management Helps You Manage Your Career

Make an Impact on Important Business Initiatives

We’re Here to Help!

Charting Your IT Certification Pathway

Creating a Plan Has Never Been Easier with Today’s Online Tools

Our Contact Information

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