What is the Best Project Management Certification (2026)?

What is the best project management certification in 2026?

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Project management examples

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These project management examples cover a range of industries and situations, showing you what effective project management looks like and highlighting some common project management pitfalls to avoid in your own project management career.

Essential project management skills

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19 Feb 2026 Learn the essential project management skills you need to succeed at delivering projects. Read this handy guide to develop these key capabilities and become a better project leader.

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APMG’s Agile PM

MSP qualifications can help you get into a programme management role.

ITSM managerial roles

The wonderful thing about an IT service management career is the excellent career progression. After gaining experience in one of the previously mentioned ITSM jobs, you can develop your career further within ITSM by specializing or moving into a managerial position.For example, Service Desk Technicians commonly move into Service Desk Manager roles, and IT Project Support normally step up into IT Project Manager roles. These are the logical next steps. However, some Service Desk Technicians choose to specialize and become an Application Support Specialist. Going down this path opens up ITSM career opportunities in cyber resilience and security.

Let’s take a closer look at the ITSM jobs you can progress into.

Service Desk Manager

Average salary: £45,000 per year

This is a common next job after being a Service Desk Technician. It involves daily management of the service desk team and ensuring customers leave satisfied. The Service Desk Manager achieves this by coaching and motivating their team, and ensuring effective processes are in place. They may also be involved in client management. ITIL and RESILIA qualifications can help you enter this role.

How you can progress

After this job, you can enter an IT Change Manager, IT Operations Manager or Service Level Manager role.

IT Change Manager

People performing this role will manage, track and control changes to the software, hardware or IT system. They earn on average £55,000 per year according to JobsWatch. They authorize numerous small changes and ensure they are implemented properly, whilst large changes are normally discussed with the Change Advisory Board. The IT Change Manager is also responsible for establishing baselines and tracking revisions, understanding who changed what, and when.

This role requires superb organisation and management skills. ITIL qualifications will help you enter the role, and you will also need experience using configuration management tools. After this role, you can specialize and become either a Release Manager or IT Configuration Manager. These two ITSM jobs delve deeper into IT infrastructure change, looking at the management of releases and configurations.

IT Operations ManagersAre responsible for leading the service desk and IT infrastructure teams, to ensure services and technologies are functioning properly. They monitor software/hardware and develop processes to ensure problems are solved quickly[12]

. They typically earn around £60,000 per year. ITIL qualifications are very helpful for this role, and RESILIA can help with boosting cyber resilience skills. You can progress and become a Business Relationship Manager or Chief Information Officer – two very senior ITSM roles.

Service Level ManagersThis is another high salaried position, with earnings of around £60,000 per year. Service Level Managers are effective communicators, responsible for designing and negotiating services that align with a customer’s service level targets. These services get outlined in contracts called Service Level Agreements (SLAs). They also monitor and analyse service levels. Again,

ITIL qualifications

will help you enter this role. After this role, you can become a Business Relationship Manager or Supplier Relationship Manager – two roles that also focus on the business and people side of ITSM.

IT Project ManagerAverage salary: £25,000 to £70,000 per year[13]

This is the next logical ITSM job after gaining experience in IT Project Support or as an IT Architect. You’ll need to be an effective communicator and leader, as you’ll be responsible for leading, planning and managing IT projects. ITIL certification would benefit anyone entering this role, as would

Agile PM

Lead and plan programmes of change involving IT. This involves managing the risks, budgets, priorities and quality of multiple

. It is therefore a top level ITSM job, due to the amount of experience and skill required. They earn on average £75,000 per year. Gaining the

MSP

qualification, along with ITIL certification

, would benefit those interested in entering this role.

Business Relationship Managers

Earn on average around £50,000 a year and could be considered senior sales staff. They build relationships between the organisation and customers, making sure IT services meet the needs of the customer. They understand the IT services offered, and how they can help the customer. It is a role requiring good people skills and the ability to build trust. ITIL certification will help you enter this ITSM role, especially in terms of service strategy and improvement. The next step after this job would be a Supplier Relationship Manager.

Application Support Specialist

Developing your project management career

ITIL certification

How you can progress

Give us a callAfter these roles, you can enter the cyber security ITSM career path. The next step would be as a Security Analyst.

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