There are some jobs where you spend your entire career in the same position. For the most part, these positions are in mining and manufacturing. In most other industries, people move about from position to position and from company to company. This is certainly true in project management. The very nature of project management is that you must move from project to project because projects have a specific beginning and ending, they are finite.

The question in project management is not whether will you move, but how you will move. There are essentially four conditions to move through in the world of project management.

It is reasonable and normal to spend some amount of time in condition 1 above, but you want to move as quickly as you can from condition 1 to 2 or 4. You may have to move through condition 3 to get to condition 4.

First, you must look at your company’s usual inventory of projects. Are they all at the same level or do the levels change? If they are all at the same level, that pretty much seals it. For all practical purposes, you will be working at that level at that company for the rest of your career. You will have traded your hardhat for a tie, but you are not much better off than the mine worker. If the projects change in size and nature, it’s a different story. In this case, you must vie for a better position.

We spent much of the first four parts of this book suggesting that you improve yourself so that you could improve your position in project management and in the company. If someone doesn’t move you, you need to move yourself. You do this by vying for higher positions in the company or by changing companies.

If other, higher positions are available in your company and you have increased your knowledge and performed well, you should be in position to be selected to lead other, higher projects. If you are not selected to lead other, higher projects, you need to know why. The amount of time you spend changing projects at the same level depends on three things. First, what is the duration of the project type you are working on? Some projects last for only a few months, while others last for several years. Second, what “mix” of project types does your company usually have—that is, how many short-duration projects does it have compared to how many long-duration projects? Third, how does your company reward the performance of project managers?

If other higher positions are not available and you have increased your knowledge and performed well, you need to seriously consider changing companies or at least divisions within your present company if jobs are available there. In any case, you need to make a move. The question is: Where and how do I move? Read on.