Should I get a Master’s Degree in Project Management?

Should I get a Master’s Degree in Project Management? I’ve gotten that question a lot from both project managers and undergraduate students who are interested in getting into a project management career. I happen to have a lot of expertise that is relevant to that question:

• Some years ago I was an Adjunct Professor at Boston University. At that time, I was involved in helping them develop a strategy to update their Master’s in Project Management program to make it more consistent with Agile.
• I have published 3-4 books on Agile Project Management and my latest book is used as a graduate level textbook in several university project management programs.

What’s the Value of a Master’s Degree in Project Management?

In some career fields, a master’s degree is almost essential to get a job. Psychology is an example of such a career field – you would have a hard time getting a job as a practicing psychologist with only a bachelor’s degree. That is not the case in project management.

• A master’s degree in project management definitely has value for an experienced project manager who wants to develop more advanced project management skills; and that’s exactly the goal my latest book is designed to support.
• However, it probably is very questionable for anyone who has no project management experience to think that getting a master’s degree in project management is going to position him/her to get a senior-level project management role without any real-world experience.

There are two major sets of skills that a project manager needs to have:

1. Knowledge of project management principles and practices (both traditional plan-driven project management and Agile). This type of knowledge is best developed through practical training and real-world experience rather than an academic degree.
2. Knowledge of a domain to apply it to (for example, business, software development, construction, etc.)

A project manager who only knows #1 above and has limited knowledge of a domain to apply it to is just a high-level administrator. Applying those skills in the real-world requires some knowledge of a domain to apply those skills to. In today’s world, a “general purpose project manager” has limited value compared to someone who also has strong domain knowledge of an area to apply that knowledge to. For that reason, if you’re going to get a master’s degree in conjunction with being a project manager, it may be best to focus that degree on area #2 above (a domain to apply your project management skills to).

The Impact of Agile

There’s a big challenge that many universities face because the project management profession is going through some very radical and significant changes as a result of the influence of Agile. The changes I proposed to Boston University some years ago never really got off the ground at that time because:

• It is so difficult for any university to make the radical changes in their curriculum that may be required
• The future direction of project management is still evolving and even PMI hasn’t developed a clearly-defined and well-integrated Agile Project Management approach

Why Is This So Difficult?

The experience I had working with Boston University gave me a lot of insight into university graduate-level project management programs. The key problem that all universities like Boston University are wrestling with is that the changes that are related to Agile are so significant that they cause us to rethink what “project management” is:

• In today’s world, traditional plan-driven project management approaches that have been in place since the 1950’s and 1960’s don’t work well in projects with a high level of uncertainty and that is becoming increasingly common in some areas such as software development
• Another factor is that an excessive emphasis on planning and control can stifle the creativity and innovation that is needed to develop leading-edge, highly-competitive products

In today’s world, a new approach based on value-driven project management is needed that blends a traditional plan-driven project management approach with Agile in the right proportions to fit a given situation.

What’s Been Done to Date

PMI and major universities with project management programs have been struggling to adapt to these changes that demand a more flexible and adaptive project management approach and progress has been somewhat slow:

• For a long time, Agile wasn’t even recognized as a legitimate form of project management
• In 2013, PMI introduced the PMI-ACP certification which recognized the importance of Agile but Agile and traditional plan-driven project management were still treated as separate and independent domains of knowledge with little or no integration between the two
• In the years since then, PMBOK v6 and v7 have incorporated more references to Agile. That has been a step in the right direction, but it barely scratches the surface of what needs to be done to develop a well-integrated approach to project management that blends both Agile and traditional plan-driven project management in a value-driven project management approach.
• PMI clearly plans to continue moving in this direction, but it’s a huge challenge and progress has been slow.
• Many universities that offer project management programs have not updated their curriculum to reflect this important transition.

Primary Things to Consider

I think that there are two primary considerations that anyone should consider in making a decision to get a master’s degree in project management:

1. The Impact of Agile

The project management profession is going through huge changes right now as a result of the influence of Agile and many universities have not updated their curriculum to reflect that. Even PMI is still struggling to figure out how to develop a well-integrated approach to project management that fully embraces both Agile and traditional plan-driven project management. Check out these articles for more on that: What’s the Future of Project Management and What’s the Impact of Agile?

The key point is this:

You cannot ignore the impact of Agile. Any project manager who only knows how to do traditional plan-driven project management and attempts to force-fit all projects to that approach will have a very limited future in many areas such as software development. For that reason, if you get a master’s degree in project management from a university that is based only on traditional plan-driven project management and does not reflect the impact of Agile, that master’s degree may be quickly out-of-date in the near future.

2. The Value of Real-world Experience

A master’s degree in project management without any real-world experience has limited value. Successful project management is heavily based on practical, real-world experience which is learned through the “School of Hard Knocks” rather than academic theory:

• A project manager who hasn’t been burned at least once or twice by a project going south is typically considered naïve and would be difficult to trust for a large, complex project that is critical tot he success of a business
• A project manager who has never successfully completed a major project is very inexperienced regardless of what academic degrees that he/she may have

The key point is:

You should not expect to automatically and easily get a job just because you have a master’s degree in project management if you have no real-world experience.

Overall Summary

I have nothing against master’s degree programs. I have two of them myself (an MSEE and an MBA). I even decided to go beyond my MBA and get a Certificate in Advanced Management. Graduate programs can provide a lot of high-level insight but some people may tend to load up on academic degrees thinking that the academic degree itself will guaranty a higher-level job. I believe that graduate-level degrees are very worthwhile but no graduate degree should be an end-in-itself. In most professional areas, a graduate degree should supplement and enhance whatever practical, real-world experience you have. That’s particularly imporant in project management where pracitcal, real-world experience is so important.