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Project Management is part of Your Military DNA!

Career Exploration

For years you have performed duties as an Action Officer, Training NCO, Operations Officer, Planner, Commander, and Platoon Sergeant. Do you know how closely these jobs relate to commercial project management? Do you know the roots of modern day project management are tightly interwoven with the military? Are you aware that by virtue of having served in the military, project management is part of your makeup..... your history...... your DNA?

The construction of the Panama Canal was one of the first major, modern military project management efforts. After several years of frustration, President Roosevelt selected the Army Corps of Engineers to finish the canal work and appointed Major George Washington Goethals as Chief Engineer in February 1907. Major Goethals used techniques on this project, which eventually became part of modern project management. Goethals would establish the first Work Breakdown Structures (WBS) in history by dividing up the division of labor and duties.

In 1917, General William Crozier, United States Army, Chief of Ordnance, hired an American Mechanical Engineer Henry Gantt who developed the now famous Gantt Chart, in an effort to prepare the U.S. for mobilization and deployment into the First World War.

The D-Day Invasion in 1944 was a massive project with a multitude of plans, sequels and branches within a plan. General Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, stated that D-Day was "A project so unique as to be classed by many scoffers as completely fantastic. It was a plan to construct artificial harbors on the coast of Normandy.”

The Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) was invented in 1958 for the U.S. Navy's Polaris mobile submarine launched ballistic missile project during the cold war. This first PERT analyzed the tasks and identified the minimum time to complete the Polaris Project.

So... Action Officer, Training NCO, Company Commander, Platoon Sergeant are all military positions that equate to project manager in the civilian world. Therefore, project management is a high-value, target rich environment to consider during your transition. Understanding the terminology and how to relate your acquired military skills to the project management profession should be your focus.

So what's in your future? Have you ever thought about becoming a project manager after the military? After all, it's in your blood!

Wishing you a lucrative transition!

~ Jay Hicks
[http://Gr8Transitions4U.com]

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