Levon currently works at Digitain as a product manager. He is an experienced project manager with a business management background with no prior tech experience. Levon’s first experience as an IT project manager was at Rockbite Games Armenia. We have talked about tutoring, project management and the project manager profession in general. He believes that persistence and clear motivation makes a person a good professional in general and particularly in Project and Product management.
Why did you decide to teach future professionals in Armenia? What are the problems in the industry you think should be addressed?
I was playing with the thought of teaching for a very very long time because I noticed that I enjoy teaching people different things, and overall I enjoy the process of teaching. I have noticed that by teaching, I learn much better. The timing was perfect as well, because from two different ACA tutors I was advised to try to teach and share my knowledge.
Also, the situation may be different now, but at the time I decided to teach the product/project management courses were critically different and covered two polar sides of the profession; very academic and very high level scrum and agile courses. There were and still are excellent tutors, but there were no practical courses that give you enough to go and work as a project/product manager right after the course.
And it is inspiring to listen to stories of students that had no experience in project management but found a job after the course.
From your experience as a tutor as well: what are the stereotypes that entry-level project managers can have regarding the profession.
- The first thing is that the newcomers think that project/product management itself is very complicated, but that’s not true.
It is just a very well organized common sense. If you think hard enough and good enough about this, you can come up with whole agile on your own, for example, it is intuitive: if you are changing the requirements, the management should be more flexible, etc.
- The second stereotype is that if you learn the theory well enough, you will be able to start your career as a product/project manager and be good at it, the reality is different.
I had the same stereotype about the profession, I have even passed the PMP test very successfully, and during the year after it, I did all the possible classical mistakes that one can make. Knowledge comes with experience. Theoretical knowledge is a prerequisite, but that’s not enough.
What is the funniest experience you remember when tutoring at ACA?
As a part of my course, I give my students a small game I wrote, it’s about a Hindu god Ganesha, and the main task is to create a specific requirements for that game, and this particular task is one of the funniest, as it always gives a space to students to be creative. One time they recreated the game, changed the theme from the Indian culture to Armenian, and named the game after Vardan Mamikonyan. We had so much fun that day.
What are the benefits of tutoring at ACA?
I can tell you about the benefits from the perspective of my course. First of all, the main advantage is that knowledge is not a dead knowledge; it is not something written by someone, in some old book. There is no need for that as students can always find that information by themselves. I try to pass my own experience. I share the problems I faced, the challenges I had, and the unacceptable practices I saw. When talking with other ACA tutors as well, I can say that the main benefit is that knowledge is real-life knowledge. When students graduate from the course and find jobs, they will be familiar with real-life projects and challenges, which is not possible after learning only the theory.
Please give one piece of advice for people who think to change their career to tech, and particularly to project management.
The person should know the reason, be honest with herself/himself why they choose the profession and the sphere. Is the problem with your current career? Is it the money? Or is it something he/she likes in the new job? In all cases, one should be completely honest when answering these questions. In Armenia, there is a tendency that people go to IT because they have heard that it is fun and cool, but they don’t consider the fact that it is hard work first and foremost, takes huge responsibility, commitment hence hell a lot of stress. If the motivation is not clear for the person or is not clear enough, then it will be harder. Rejections and hardships meet a lot along the way, so if one is prepared and has motivation, the least is manageable and easy to overcome.
Enrollment for the “Introduction to Project Management” course is currently open:
