I’m looking for some advice on how to take my first steps towards a career in IT project management, starting from scratch. I guess I am trying to establish how feasible it is given my experience to date, and wanted to ask the community for their opinions here.
Firstly, a little about me. I graduated from university with a mechanical engineering degree and have worked for a large process engineering company for the last eight years. In that time I have worked up to project management (my job title is actually Project Engineer), where I design, supply and oversee commissioning of systems in the waste water industry. This involves the following:
- Customer specification review
- Technical design
- Supplier tenders
- Program management
- Budgetary control / customer invoicing
- Site management
- Risk assessment (at design and construction phases).
- Production of technical documentation and manuals.
Given the attributes above a generic across industries, how feasible is it that I could go across into IT, specially the gaming industry, and what would I need to make up any shortfall in qualifications and/or experience?
To date my IT experience is somewhat limited. I have worked through several online courses to receive an overview on various programming languages, such as Javascript and HTML, and will continue to learn other languages. I realise this may or may not be of use and will not go into the kind of depth required to use professionally, however I would like to get an appreciation for the amount of coding that goes into a project and the resourcing issues this creates. Besides, I find it fun and relatively easy to do in my time outside of my day job.
I understand that my queries may come across as a little naive and I am under no illusions that it would be easy to transfer. So any advice on how to do this would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!