Hello Reader, I get messages fairly regularly from people who are part-way through the Google Project Management Certificate and have started wondering whether it's actually going to lead anywhere. Which is a very reasonable thing to wonder, and I'd rather give you an honest answer than a cheerful one. The short version is that it can genuinely open doors, particularly if you're moving into project management from another field or you're in the early stages of your career and need something...

Hello Reader, One of the things nobody really prepares you for in project management is how isolating it can be, not in a dramatic way, just in the ordinary day-to-day sense of having problems you can't fully articulate to your team, questions you can't ask your stakeholders, and situations where the textbook answer is technically correct but completely useless in the actual context you're dealing with. Most project managers don't have a peer group. You might have colleagues, but they're busy...

Hello Reader, Most project managers don’t actually manage “their” team. We manage people who report to someone else. Welcome to matrix life! If you’ve ever tried to: Negotiate resource availability Handle conflicting priorities Run a meeting that doesn’t derail Get alignment without formal authority …you know the plan is only half the job. Most of what I seem to spend my days doing is negotiating, trying to get the right people to show up, slotting my work around other people's priorities...