I
work in a small but quickly growing financial services company in Waterloo
which deals with big money. And these days, big money translates into
big projects. What is a lowly IT guy with little experience with project
management to do when he's asked to lead many of these projects? I thought
I should go back to school. That's exactly what I'm doing.
To me, it's important to continuously upgrade my skills and knowledge, both for my career and for my personal development. So, I've been looking at several options for continuing education. I have a degree in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo, so the obvious first place for me to consider was UW. I found that it has a good selection of courses, but just not what I was looking for. Other places were, in my opinion, way overpriced. Conestoga College offers courses that are relevant to me at a reasonable price.
So, in January 2005, I started my first two courses at Conestoga College : "Fundamentals of Project Management" and "Linux Networking & Security II" (courtesy of my employer). I had such a good experience that I decided to take two more courses the following term, one of which is "Project Introduction, Planning and Control"
The project management courses are giving me the tools to get better results with the projects at work. Project Management is a growing discipline of such value that I now intend on signing up for the Project Management part-time certificate program and get my Project Management Professional (PMP) designation.”
Joël Larose, Information Technologies