Becoming My Own Project Manager

Working in healthcare, specifically in an Operating Room, means that work organization is considerably different from what is found at an enterprise level. On a day-to-day basis, tasks are organized around patient care according to surgical procedures, quality assurance, and safety practices.

In order to fill in the gaps regarding project-based work (the prevalent work organization approach in the technology sector), two months ago, in June 2026, I completed a project management (PM) course.

Far from aspiring to pursue this kind of role professionally, I felt the need to get acquainted with the different PM approaches, procedures, and commonly used terms. Although I’ve always worked as part of teams in my previous roles, it was time for me to learn how project teams are built and how work is managed.

As I’m investing in building a strong foundation regarding technical skills, I also want to learn how to become a valuable project team member.

From Theory to Practice

I enrolled in a practical course promoted by a certified Portuguese company specialized in e-learning. It covered predictive (classical), adaptive, and hybrid approaches, comparing PMBOK ¹ Guide versions 6 and 7.

The course required 24 deliverables, submitted for evaluation and feedback from the trainer. One assignment stood out: defining deliverables and acceptance criteria for a project of choice. I decided on a partial migration of a private hospital’s clinical records management system to a secure cloud.

I took the opportunity to adapt the course’s curriculum to my current technical focus on DevOps, researching how this type of migration is planned and executed. It ended up becoming the most enjoyable assignment to complete.

Managing My Career Change

Besides designing projects and producing the supporting documents and instruments required by the course assignments, one of my goals was to take advantage of this methodology and apply it to my current project: pivoting from OR Nurse to DevOps.

Becoming your own project manager can be a good way to keep yourself accountable and on track with your goals. It might not be that appealing for someone who has had less favorable experiences with project work, which is understandable.

Starting out by defining the project’s scope and goals, as well as performing a detailed financial analysis allowed me to make informed decisions from the beginning. Tracking work and deliverables, adjusting to change, defining milestones as the project advances, and managing communication are some of the takeaways from the PM course that I’m applying to my career change project.

While this is just one approach to aid in pursuing a personal objective, it’s been working well, allowing me to maintain focus on my learning goals, minimize distractions, and deal with uncertainty in a constructive way.