By Sharon Beery

Sharon Beery is a Senior Project Manager at L-3 Communications and earned her master's degree in project management from UW-Platteville in 2006.

Wondering where your online degree in PM can take you? Once you get it, do you think companies will see your MSPM on your resume and forever banish you to a world of developing WBS’s, analyzing government CPR’s, dealing with clients and keeping your staff motivated? (Mind you “banishing” may be a little harsh!) Well, fear not graduates or graduates-to-be. The world is not confined to managing projects at a remote on-site location void of corporate HQ contact. Wait a minute; that may not be a bad idea…but I digress. Your options are vast and here is just one of them.

Corporate PM Training

The economy is bad. We all know that. Individuals and corporations are cutting back on their expenses. Those of us that have earned degrees via distance education appreciate the flexibility—and quality—an online education can provide. Many corporations are also seeing the value in this delivery method as a discriminator from their competitors to lure the finest project managers to their team. Corporate training departments are realizing online education can

• Keep their costs in line
• Provide current industry information to managers and other disciplines working in remote locations
• Provide information about processes and procedures unique to their organization to those working in remote locations

Enter project management corporate course development and delivery as a career path.

HR can handle much of the regular corporate process training, but they need someone strong in PM to effectively write a course or an online “brown-bag” to address the required PM skills. That’s where you can come in. You have the knowledge and the experience to write a session and train online. How can I jump to that conclusion?

Because you

• Know what works and what doesn’t work well in training cyberspace
• Know project management topics
• Recall which training styles you liked, and didn’t like, from your online professors
• Can write and organize materials in a logical manner (at least you better be able to do that by the time you graduate!)
• Have good communication skills and can effectively explain PM techniques to others in your field and mentor upcoming team leads

Why not expand that into course development?

Think about it. You can utilize all your newly acquired project management education and pass along sound project management principles to corporate America. You can direct how corporate project managers operate. Now, does that give you a sense of power or what?!