Road Map to PM

[khadiza tuz zohra]

Hello Atlassians,

I’m comfortable managing projects in Jira, including building dashboards and reports. Currently, I work with the UN Food Programme, where I develop monitoring tools for different projects and create data-driven visual reports.

However, my long-term goal is to transition into a Project or Program Manager role. I would really appreciate your guidance on how to move forward effectively.

Besides Project Management fundamentals and Jira skills, what additional courses or competencies do you think would strengthen my path toward becoming a PM?

Thanks a lot for your support!

[Justin Townsend]

Hello @khadiza tuz zohra,

Welcome to the group. The traditional role of a Project / Program Manager (IMO) also includes:

• planning / budgeting
• timeline / cost control
• regular reporting and management of expectations
• people (stakeholder) management

If you are working on large programs, like the UN Food Programme (I've no doubt), then you'd be working alongside other project / program managers. You'd need to be sure of dependencies between your project(s) and your colleagues; planning accordingly.

Starting simply:

• does your current work offer the chance to shadow existing PMs?
• can you manage someone else to deliver those visual reports, can you plan their work?
• figure out, explicitly, what type of person you are naturally, there are plenty of online tools to help you know your personality type. This is important because it makes you more self-aware about your effect on others. You will work with different personality types who respond to different motivations.
• spend time with your direct reports / colleagues, common understanding and respect go a long way in delivering work to time and budget :-)
• ask if there is a small program you can try, learning as you go?

There are many courses out there regarding project management, if you are intent on getting certification then PMI (https://www.pmi.org/) would be the de-facto standard, I'd say.

Avoid being pigeon-holed though, projects can be delivered in many different ways. It is important to understand how to use the different methods to good effect over time.

Most importantly, get deeply familiar with Jira and how Atlassian is evolving to help communicate broadly and effectively. I'd say:

• Know the REAL impact of the Jira workflow you intend to use
• Use as much of the "out-of-the-box" reporting as you can, argue that your stakeholders also adopt this approach
• Take advantage of subscriptions on "Shared Filters" and consider using Rovo / Automations to get regular, meaningful, updates sent to you about project progress.

These last ones you can start yourself, maybe demonstrating the initiative you're taking to your colleagues already.

Any other questions. Happy to help.

Justin

[Anwesha Pan]

Hey! @khadiza tuz zohra  👋

First off — what you're doing at the UN Food Programme sounds incredible. Building monitoring tools and data-driven reports is already PM work in disguise, you just don't have the title yet. 😄

A few practical suggestions:

• Get comfortable with Agile & Scrum if you aren't already — a CSM or PSM certification is lightweight but opens doors
• Learn Confluence deeply alongside Jira — PMs live in both, and knowing how to structure project documentation well is underrated. You can get Atlassian Confluence certified
• Explore stakeholder mapping and change management — especially coming from a UN/NGO background, this translates beautifully into the private sector
• Look into data storytelling — you already build visual reports, so learning to frame data as a narrative for leadership decisions will set you apart

Honestly, your background is a strength, not a gap. Managing projects in a complex, multi-stakeholder environment like the UN is harder than most corporate PM roles. Own that story when you make the move.

Rooting for you! 🚀

[Karl from Ricksoft]

I agree with @Justin and @Anwesha Pan  on the certification/stakeholder-management topic. I'll add the angle that actually got me into PM: coming from QA.

If any part of your monitoring/reporting work involves catching discrepancies before they become someone else's problem, you already have the instinct PMs need most which is spotting where things are quietly going wrong before they're visibly broken. QA and PM share the same core skill, just applied at different scopes: QA verifies whether a single piece of work is correct; PM verifies whether the whole program is on track. The habits transfer directly which is writing precise reproduction steps becomes writing precise risk/impact statements; tracking a bug through its lifecycle becomes tracking a dependency through its lifecycle.

Practical suggestion building on that: next time you build one of your monitoring reports, try annotating it not just with "what happened" but "what this predicts if it continues", that's the exact reframe from QA-thinking to PM-thinking, and it's a good way to demonstrate PM instincts before you have the title :)