You’re a software developer looking to make a career change. What’s the best way to become a project manager?

Can be a big shift between a software engineer and a project manager. Are you organized already? Do you naturally derive steps to get to the end of a project? Do you enjoy stakeholder and manager interaction? Look for leadership roles. Can you ask your manager for more team lead responsibilities? Can you help onboard new people, interns, or organize offshore activities? Agile provides a way to segue into project leadership. Have you taken Agile LinkedIn learning courses? Do you know what a great Scrum Master does? Add to your leadership portfolio by taking on more planning, retrospective, and scrum roles. It's all a journey, good luck!

As developer who transitioned to a TPM role there are several areas to focus on. Observe your current PM. Pay attention to how they facilitate ceremonies, address conflicts, report progress, etc. Volunteer to lead ceremonies, retros are a good start. I typically ask my dev teams if anyone wants to run retros as a learning opportunity. Really understand your project, not just how, but what, why, and when. Finally focus on giving updates, estimates, etc. with all of the info you would if you were PM/TPM. Also, be mindful of your interactions with other team members, try to really learn how to best communicate and collaborate with them. When you are comfortable, discuss your career transition with your manager.

Experience as a software developer or other roles can be a good background or not. Think about why you want to change the career path into project manager. The learning through your history is way important regardless of success or failure. I think failure is better for the career change in my opinion. First of all, people can learn lots of things through failure not success if you can start over. Second, you can be tightly coupled with your success experience and which can be an obstacle for the growth as a PM. So please list up all your skills and think about the relation with your goals as a PM.

I agree with this assessment step and as part of that I suggest that you ask yourself why you want to be a project manager. What skills are you hoping to learn, what aspects do you think will bring you closer to your motivations and aspirations? I also recommend as part of the assessment that you reach out to a few project managers and interview them about their roles. What does their work day entail? What aspects do they most enjoy, and what are those things they enjoy least? If you can, be sure to speak with someone who has transitioned from a software engineer role as well and find out how they transitioned and what their experience was like.

Basic knowledge is absolutely required to be a good PM in a long term. I recommend the course to get a PMP certification from PMP organization. It does have very essential knowledge, and the certificate itself is useful to catch a PM job opportunity for sure.

If your company has documented methods and procedures for project management, you can review that from the perspective of the project managers’ role. This may help you focus your learning and certification tasks. This is also a good time to reach out to the hiring manager for project managers in your org and find out what skills they require for project managers. Ask for a copy of the job description. Let them know you are interested in that path and ask about what next steps they might recommend for you.

Project Manager is actually someone handling complexity, diversity, flexibility especially in agile culture based software life cycle project. You need to challenge more complex project as possible. Kind of global project composed of internationally distributed engineers, infrastructure or customers is attractive chance to show your anxiety for the growth. People normally are afraid of being PM for that kind of project. However, it really needs an project manager and you just can go ahead to support all other members in the project.

Here it’s important to let your manager as well as other relevant managers in your org (or even outside) possibly including your HR rep know about your goals, interests, and skills you’ve acquired so that they can be thinking of you when opportunities come up. Networking is often key to getting the right opportunities to develop your skills.

Your history in your resume or CV letter should have those kind of intensive experience as a PM. Here is a key three bullets which is different to that of normal sw engineers. 1. bird-eye view: PM should have insights in overall rather than delivering specific output. Wide understanding is critically required ability as a project manager. 2. servant leadership: PM should support all other members for the success of the project. There's no rule which limits the responsibility or ownership of project manager. You can trigger anything for the success of the project, you should focus on getting the support from the member or giving the change for the collaboration between them. 3. Interaction with key stakeholders including c-levels

At this point it’s important to understand that the role of a project manager can vary largely from one org to another. Some of the functions of project management may be fulfilled by other roles such as functional managers or product managers. It would be beneficial to network with project managers at the companies you are targeting to understand how project management is executed in their org and the various related roles. This can also be an opportunity to let them know about you and your interests.