Back in 2006 Elizabeth Harrin made the discovery that project management was a boy’s world. All of the trade journals and conferences she attended were male dominated in their world view.
“The project management world was lacking a female perspective,” she says at her blog, A Girl’s Guide to Project Management. “Today, things are better. Conference organizers tell me that they go to lengths to attract female speakers. Editors have more balanced editorial panels.
“However, it isn’t their fault that they have to make a special effort: it’s ours. If we want women to have a more active role in promoting project management as a 21st century profession we need to get out there and do something about it.”
Harrin is a “career project and program manager with a decade of experience in healthcare and financial services, including two spent working in Paris, France. I’m the author of Social Media for Project Managers, Customer-Centric Project Management and Shortcuts To Success: Project Management in the Real World (now in its second edition),” according to her bio.
Harrin reports, “A Girl’s Guide to Project Management is an award-winning blog. It won the Project Management category of the Computer Weekly IT Blog Awards in 2008, 2009 and 2010. In 2010 I was also named Computer Weekly’s Blogger of the Year and in 2011 I was named Computer Weekly’s IT Professional Blogger of the Year.”
So, what does a girl cover in the project management world? Her site, which is well laid out, offers a handy section called, “First Visit? Start Here.” It directs readers to blog posts entitled:
- 6 Things I didn’t know about being a project manager;
- The Leadership Attitude;
- How do you deal with a bad day at work?;
- 10 Tips to overcome Imposter Syndrome;
- Inside PRINCE2; and.
- How do you define project success?
Even though Harrin says she started her blog because “there wasn’t enough stuff about shoes, chocolate and crafts for my liking,” her site is gender neutral in a lot of its advice. “6 things I didn’t know about being a project manager” is one example. In it, she relates how she didn’t know:
- It would always be different (“and that’s a massive benefit”);
- The technology would change (“back in 2000 I thought I was learning MS Project and that would be enough”);
- There is no need to specialize (but ” If you want to specialize in a particular type of project management or an industry, you can”)
- there is a complete vocabulary to learn (“I didn’t realize how much language specific to my job I would pick up”
- It is a life skill (“You can use a project plan for pretty much anything”)
- No one would understand my job (“And that’s not just family and friends”)
Moms (and dads) will also enjoy Harrin’s perspective on being a parent and a project manager and the way she intersperses her project management and parenting skills in a section of her blog called, “The Parent Project,” including this observation, ” One thing so far has been particularly project-like: Jack was born on his due date, one of around 5% of babies each year who arrive exactly on time. Needless to say, my colleagues think it is hilarious that I managed to deliver this particular project bang on the final milestone.” Leave it to a project manager to know the statistical odds of delivering a baby on time.
Like all good bloggers, Herrin realizes she is not the be-all and end-all in her topic area. She also invites guest commentators to speak out on their areas of expertise. One such recent post was on the topic of “3 Challenges for Project Success.” It contains information from a project manager survey that works whatever your gender.
