What career advice would you give a project manager?
First you have to understand that nothing is ever done on time. When you are assigned a project both the time-line / schedule and the budget will be wishful thinking - and both will have been proposed by people with no understanding of the actual work that will be required to complete the project. There is a project management 'joke' that goes: "The firest 90% of a project takes up the first 90% of the time and the remaining 10% of the project takes up the second 90% of the time." I promise you that something unforseen will go wrong with every single project you manage, so build in yourself time (and budget) to fix that unforseen problem as soon as you can. So the most important skill you can develop will be the ability to say "No" without upsetting the people who are backing the project. The second most important aspect of being a project manager is to develop a good working relationship with the person in charge of the fiscal office - they are the one you are going to be begging for more money. (And you will always be begging for more monry.) Third most important skill? The ability to take criticism and not become defensive. Most of the time the people screaming invective at you are not angry with you as a person; they are angry at you as a representative of the company or at you as the messager who carries bad news. Develop a respectful working relationship with your team - the quality of their work directly affects how you will be perceived. If they screw-up, *YOU* will take the blame. Treat them well and they will give you their best efforts - treat them poorly and their work will suffer, resulting in missed deadlines and unpleasant surprises. Most importantly, respect their knowledge - in general, if your team says that something can not be done, it can't be done. Your job then becomes passing the bad news along (and accepting the backlash) AND finding some alternative that will be possible and will satisfy the demands of the original project. (I'm not suggesting that you coddle an incompetent worker, but if your team is doing the job, treat them well because you want to keep them.) That is all I can think of right now, but that is only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. There