30 Something Student

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Well last night I had my first class at DeVry. The class is taught by a professor that has a PhD in Project management and 30 years experience which includes 20 years of PM experience in the Air Force – pretty impressive. He is a good professor in that he tries to mix real life experience into the class while teaching from the book.

The couple of things that I took away from the class last night is what a Project Manager is on a high level. To sum it up he is a coach that gets different people with different strengths and pulls them together as a team to meet a common goal. Project Managers typically mange projects that have a defined beginning and end as opposed to an ongoing process.

Being a PM is not always easy though. My Professor made a good analogy of the difficulties that come with being PM by asking who a sports team they got rid of when the team was not winning? Was it the star player that is a jerk and does not get a long with the other players or the coach? It is the coach of course. The rewards of getting that jerk player working with the rest of the team is very rewarding though.

Other notes on the class was that we were going to be put in 2 person teams and would have to come up with our own project plan. This is going to be extremely helpful for me as I need to be able to do that at work.

The other thing is that the office got the book wrong on the paperwork and so I bought and received the wrong book along with about half of the rest of the class. The book I bought from Amazon is back in the mail to them and I have ordered the right book from the school book store. Therefore I am officially 3 chapters behind in reading at this point. The Professor is being understanding though thank God.

All-in-all this course looks like it is going to be useful for me where I am right now in my job and that is important to me (even if I don’t get reimbursed by my company for it).

Technorati: DeVry, School, Classes, Project Management