Project management has been around since the dawn of time. Imagine trying to figure out the best way to build a fire for the very first time or how to catch a dinosaur without getting hurt! Humans have always found ways to improve how things are done. Think of ancient Greece and Rome, and imagine the artistic creations and the building of incredible architecture; in a lot of cases, people were creating better ways of doing battle and organizing their troops. All of those are projects.
In the industrial age, project management was applicable to building tall edifices, ships, and trains and utilizing new machinery to improve commerce and quality of life. Now, we are in the technological age and even though we are still building tall edifices, trains, planes, and automobiles, we are finding new types of projects that need their own best practices.
Many project management best practices have stood the test of time, such as scheduling, budgeting, resourcing, and determining what the result will be. The reason they have stood the test of time is because they work.
Our use of tools and best practices will need to be adapted so they work for technological projects, such as protecting your organization with cyber security, installing servers or software development, and help-desk management. There isn't a one-size-fits-all approach to project management in any industry, and most of the time our organizational processes and enterprise environment influence our projects the most.
But what if you had multiple tools and knowledge at your disposal to adapt and adjust as needed to meet the demands of your projects? What if you could adapt those best practices to conform to your organizational processes and industry? Then it wouldn't matter whether you were trying to catch dinosaurs, building the Colosseum, or building a data center. You could pick and choose what would work. That is the beauty of learning best practices. On top of that, if you can prove you know those best practices through certification, now you have some project management clout in your back pocket!
The CompTIA Project+ exam is designed for people like you: professional people who have set best practices based on their organization but are looking for a common language to use, those who need tools and best practices that have been proven over and over again to work but are adaptable to your environment.
Having one or multiple project management certifications shows your willingness to learn, try new things, and improve your organization's projects, which in turn provides value to the organization. Congratulations for taking the first step to career improvement!
Project management is in high demand globally. Project managers make anywhere from $70,000 to $150,000 based on their location and what types of projects they work on. Every organization has an IT department and even if you don't have a lot of experience yet, going into the career of project management without a lot of bad habits is greatly appreciated by organizations. So, don't worry if you're just starting out, because the CompTIA Project+ exam was designed for you.
Everything you will cover in this guide will prepare you for not just certification and passing an exam, but my hope is that it will also give you the tools you can use right away on your current or future projects.
You may see some things in this guide and on your exam that don't necessarily align with your organization's best practices or simply won't work in your current environment. That is totally okay! You will need that information to answer questions correctly on your exam, and maybe as you progress in your career you'll find a need for some of those skills.
