When I started in IT there was a project management methodology available in government called Spectrum. It was a room full of ring binders with a template and instructions for every facet of project management from business case writing to benefit realization post-delivery. You started on page 1 of folder 1 and worked your way to the bitter end. Problem was it was scaled for large projects and it didn’t take long for the smart project managers to work out just what parts were applicable to the job at hand.
Since then we’ve seen Prince2 and PMBOK, and project managers scrambled to become Prince2 certified, but what hasn’t changed is that most good projects managers have a strong set of skills, most of which cannot be learned. They can take a methodology and align it to the business outcomes that need to be achieved.
More recently, the project manager job title has changed with a shift to Agile practices. We’ve seen role descriptions such as Initiative Lead, Workstream Lead, and my personal favourite Release Train Engineer all requesting the skills most akin to project management. The agile methodology has come along and changed the game. Now the majority of project management roles we’re seeing are looking for someone with previous Agile or SAFe experience.