Project managers face the unique challenge of bringing multiple aspects of a job together, from personnel to assets. Digital project management requires the same skills but over many more streams of data and work. As a digital project manager, you might have to handle DevOps teams, data integration, and a wealth of online marketing information. Digital transformation means the opportunities for digital project managers are increasing — if you have the right skills and qualifications.

OPIT’s BSc and MSc courses provide the right foundation for building your digital project management career. Let’s take a look at what you can expect from this career choice and the best pathways to success.

The Role of a Digital Project Manager

What does a digital project manager do? Their roles and responsibilities vary depending on the industry they’re in. For example, a project manager in a game development company will have different workflows to manage than their counterpart in manufacturing. However, many duties remain common.

Digital project managers ensure every member of the team is delegated the right task and knows exactly what to do. Typically, they’ll use project management software, including collaboration tools and time management solutions. These software platforms may also empower project managers to divide larger projects into smaller tasks and assign assets to each task appropriately.

Another key responsibility of project managers is to monitor the timeline of projects. They’ll have to consider how long tasks should take and how that impacts overall completion. This involves setting and tracking deadlines, plus dealing with obstacles such as absenteeism, technical glitches, or client requests. Since this requires a great deal of inter-team and intrateam collaboration, digital project managers must have excellent leadership skills.

Digitally focused professionals are most likely to find work in:

  • Digital marketing or advertising
  • Enterprise software implementation
  • Digital transformation projects
  • Web or mobile app development
  • SaaS (software as a service) development

As these factors are now embedded across multiple industries, digital project managers could find work in multiple fields. For example, many healthcare facilities are upgrading their patient data management systems to digital alternatives. Statistics show that globally, healthcare organizations are spending $1.3 trillion on digital transformation — a figure that’s continuing to grow. Digital project managers could find work helping implement electronic health records (EHR) and ensuring the smooth rollout of associated processes.

Digital Project Manager: A Typical Day

A digital project manager or PM will have their own daily routine:

  1. Start the day with a quick update from all team members — you might do this face-to-face or give a time slot for people to drop their updates in virtually. You’ll ensure all remote team members and contractors/freelancers are included.
  2. Check what tasks need to be completed today/this week and that you have all the required assets and personnel available. You might have to liaise with other teams or gain sign-off from change management professionals.
  3. Ensure someone has updated the client on the current progress of the project. You may have digital project management tools that provide automatic updates.
  4. Deal with obstacles and challenges as required. Listen to team members and ensure you remove as much friction from processes as possible. You may have to facilitate meetings between different areas of the business, or clients and project team leaders.
  5. Prioritize deliverables. As the digital PM, you get to decide what gets done first. Just remember to document the reasons. The board, client, or other stakeholders may need this data at some point.
  6. Utilize data from multiple streams to aid with prioritization and delegation. Digital project management requires knowledge of the skills and experience of team members. You must be able to share work fairly to avoid overburdening employees while considering their strengths.
  7. Resource management: you may have to liaise with HR, finance, or the client regarding allocating budgets and gaining relevant personnel and assets.
  8. Each day will also involve careful documentation of progress. Project managers are responsible for providing clear digital communication channels for all project stakeholders.

There may also be industry-specific daily responsibilities. To go back to the healthcare example, ensuring the security of data as per HIPAA requirements might fall under the scope of project management.

Skills Required for Digital Project Management

Whatever industry they work in, all digital project managers require the following skills:

  • Technical knowledge of various systems, apps, and software
  • Data analysis and pattern recognition
  • Data visualization
  • Excellent communication
  • Problem-solving
  • Leadership
  • Mediation
  • Time management

Project managers must be able to make tough calls. They’ll need to pivot when strategies aren’t working or reallocate team members at a moment’s notice.

OPIT’s courses help prepare prospective project managers for their role by nurturing these skills. The BSc and MSc courses in Digital Business both include segments on organizational behavior, project management, and quality analysis. By gaining both theory and hands-on practical work on these topics, students get the preparation they need for these demanding roles.

Career Path for Digital Project Managers

There are many paths to becoming a digital project manager, but they all require education and experience. As the PM has so much responsibility, most enterprises require applicants to have a BSc degree at the minimum. However, employers know that education only paints part of the picture. You might follow these steps to gain success in digital project management:

  1. Gain your qualification through an accredited education provider like OPIT.
  2. Seek internships to gain experience.
  3. Network and create contacts via conferences, webinars, and industry events.
  4. Research where opportunities exist and apply for roles that match your skills and career ambitions.
  5. Keep a document of everything you do and update your CV regularly.

Digital project managers are highly sought after in various sectors. Software developers with DevOps and DevSecOps teams often seek digital PMs to manage increasingly distributed systems and teams. Businesses looking to update their cybersecurity policy may hire project managers to ensure this gets done in a timely and efficient manner. Also, look for opportunities in industries undergoing dramatic digital transformation efforts. You might consider healthcare, finance, real estate, or agriculture. Sustainable digitalization is a hot topic in farming right now across Europe. Digital project managers passionate about environmental concerns might find job satisfaction in this industry.

Salaries for digital project managers range from €76K to €137K ($83K to $150K).

Your OPIT course can help open many career doors. We encourage internships and provide elective additional units that may align with your career goals. We also have a dedicated career services team to support students in realizing their dreams.

Challenges in Digital Project Management

A key aspect of gaining success in digital project management is recognizing and handling challenges:

  • Managing increasingly remote and disparate teams.
  • Providing team members with continuous education on rapidly evolving emerging technologies.
  • Scope creep — where client change requests cause project parameters to veer outside the originally agreed scope.

Digital project managers need excellent communication skills and the confidence to approach these challenges head-on. To prevent scope creep, for example, digital PMs must be able to say “No,” to clients. They have to set reasonable expectations while giving unwanted answers a positive spin. Alternatively, they may build a sliding cost into a project allowing clients to request more on a pay-as-you-go basis.

OPIT’s curriculum is highly focused on producing similar practical solutions. Every course involves getting hands-on so students are always trying out new things and learning what works in each situation.

OPIT’s Bachelor’s and Master’s in Digital Business

What can you expect as a learner on an OPIT course? The Bachelor’s Degree in Digital Business covers business fundamentals, project management, business strategy, and much more. It’s aimed at undergraduates looking to combine digital fluency with business acumen. This course costs €2,250 per term and is fully remote.

For graduates looking to learn advanced skills and further their careers, the Master’s Degree in Applied Digital Business is the next natural step. This course dives further into digital project management and digital transformation. Students learn about the interplay between digitalization and business, and are highly encouraged to pursue an internship with a trusted industry partner. The cost for this course is €6,750 and dedicated students can complete a fast-track option in just 12 months.

On all OPIT courses, you gain access to high-level academics and excellent student support. Our courses combine strong technical skills with the digital business know-how you need to hasten your journey along your chosen career trajectory.

Digital Project Managers are Vital for Business Success

As a digital project manager, you could be the difference between an organization surviving or thriving in its market. You’ll need excellent communication and leadership skills, bolstered by the technical knowledge and experience that comes from the right educational pathway.

If you’re excited to pursue a career in digital project management, take a look at OPIT’s course offerings. Our goal is to help you succeed, so get in touch if you need more information.

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Juggling Work and Study: Interview With OPIT Student Karina
OPIT - Open Institute of Technology
OPIT - Open Institute of Technology
Jun 5, 2025 6 min read

During the Open Institute of Technology’s (OPIT’s) 2025 Graduation Day, we conducted interviews with many recent graduates to understand why they chose OPIT, how they felt about the course, and what advice they might give to others considering studying at OPIT.

Karina is an experienced FinTech professional who is an experienced integration manager, ERP specialist, and business analyst. She was interested in learning AI applications to expand her career possibilities, and she chose OPIT’s MSc in Applied Data Science & AI.

In the interview, Karina discussed why she chose OPIT over other courses of study, the main challenges she faced when completing the course while working full-time, and the kind of support she received from OPIT and other students.

Why Study at OPIT?

Karina explained that she was interested in enhancing her AI skills to take advantage of a major emerging technology in the FinTech field. She said that she was looking for a course that was affordable and that she could manage alongside her current demanding job. Karina noted that she did not have the luxury to take time off to become a full-time student.

She was principally looking at courses in the United States and the United Kingdom. She found that comprehensive courses were expensive, costing upwards of $50,000, and did not always offer flexible study options. Meanwhile, flexible courses that she could complete while working offered excellent individual modules, but didn’t always add up to a coherent whole. This was something that set OPIT apart.

Karina admits that she was initially skeptical when she encountered OPIT because, at the time, it was still very new. OPIT only started offering courses in September 2023, so 2025 was the first cohort of graduates.

Nevertheless, Karina was interested in OPIT’s affordable study options and the flexibility of fully remote learning and part-time options. She said that when she looked into the course, she realized that it aligned very closely with what she was looking for.

In particular, Karina noted that she was always wary of further study because of the level of mathematics required in most computer science courses. She appreciated that OPIT’s course focused on understanding the underlying core principles and the potential applications, rather than the fine programming and mathematical details. This made the course more applicable to her professional life.

OPIT’s MSc in Applied Data Science & AI

The course Karina took was OPIT’s MSc in Applied Data Science & AI. It is a three- to four-term course (13 weeks), which can take between one and two years to complete, depending on the pace you choose and whether you choose the 90 or 120 ECTS option. As well as part-time, there are also regular and fast-track options.

The course is fully online and completed in English, with an accessible tuition fee of €2,250 per term, which is €6,750 for the 90 ECTS course and €9,000 for the 120 ECTS course. Payment plans are available as are scholarships, and discounts are available if you pay the full amount upfront.

It matches foundational tech modules with business application modules to build a strong foundation. It then ends with a term-long research project culminating in a thesis. Internships with industry partners are encouraged and facilitated by OPIT, or professionals can work on projects within their own companies.

Entry requirements include a bachelor’s degree or equivalency in any field, including non-tech fields, and English proficiency to a B2 level.

Faculty members include Pierluigi Casale, a former Data Science and AI Innovation Officer for the European Parliament and Principal Data Scientist at TomTom; Paco Awissi, former VP at PSL Group and an instructor at McGill University; and Marzi Bakhshandeh, a Senior Product Manager at ING.

Challenges and Support

Karina shared that her biggest challenge while studying at OPIT was time management and juggling the heavy learning schedule with her hectic job. She admitted that when balancing the two, there were times when her social life suffered, but it was doable. The key to her success was organization, time management, and the support of the rest of the cohort.

According to Karina, the cohort WhatsApp group was often a lifeline that helped keep her focused and optimistic during challenging times. Sharing challenges with others in the same boat and seeing the example of her peers often helped.

The OPIT Cohort

OPIT has a wide and varied cohort with over 300 students studying remotely from 78 countries around the world. Around 80% of OPIT’s students are already working professionals who are currently employed at top companies in a variety of industries. This includes global tech firms such as Accenture, Cisco, and Broadcom, FinTech companies like UBS, PwC, Deloitte, and the First Bank of Nigeria, and innovative startups and enterprises like Dynatrace, Leonardo, and the Pharo Foundation.

Study Methods

This cohort meets in OPIT’s online classrooms, powered by the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS). One of the world’s leading teaching and learning software, it acts as a virtual hub for all of OPIT’s academic activities, including live lectures and discussion boards. OPIT also uses the same portal to conduct continuous assessments and prepare students before final exams.

If you want to collaborate with other students, there is a collaboration tab where you can set up workrooms, and also an official Slack platform. Students tend to use WhatsApp for other informal communications.

If students need additional support, they can book an appointment with the course coordinator through Canvas to get advice on managing their workload and balancing their commitments. Students also get access to experienced career advisor Mike McCulloch, who can provide expert guidance.

A Supportive Environment

These services and resources create a supportive environment for OPIT students, which Karina says helped her throughout her course of study. Karina suggests organization and leaning into help from the community are the best ways to succeed when studying with OPIT.

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Leading in the Digital Age: Navigating Strategy in the Metaverse
OPIT - Open Institute of Technology
OPIT - Open Institute of Technology
Jun 5, 2025 5 min read

In April 2025, Professor Francesco Derchi from the Open Institute of Technology (OPIT) and Chair of OPIT’s Digital Business programs entered the online classroom to talk about the current state of the Metaverse and what companies can do to engage with this technological shift. As an expert in digital marketing, he is well-placed to talk about how brands can leverage the Metaverse to further company goals.

Current State of the Metaverse

Francesco started by exploring what the Metaverse is and the rocky history of its development. Although many associate the term Metaverse with Mark Zuckerberg’s 2021 announcement of Meta’s pivot toward a virtual immersive experience co-created by users, the concept actually existed long before. In his 1992 novel Snow Crash, author Neal Stephenson described a very similar concept, with people using avatars to seamlessly step out of the real world and into a highly connected virtual world.

Zuckerberg’s announcement was not even the start of real Metaverse-like experiences. Released in 2003, Second Life is a virtual world in which multiple users come together and engage through avatars. Participation in Second Life peaked at about one million active users in 2007. Similarly, Minecraft, released in 2011, is a virtual world where users can explore and build, and it offers multiplayer options.

What set Zuckerberg’s vision apart from these earlier iterations is that he imagined a much broader virtual world, with almost limitless creation and interaction possibilities. However, this proved much more difficult in practice.

Both Meta and Microsoft started investing significantly in the Metaverse at around the same time, with Microsoft completing its acquisition of Activision Blizzard – a gaming company that creates virtual world games such as World of Warcraft – in 2023 and working with Epic Games to bring Fortnite to their Xbox cloud gaming platform.

But limited adoption of new Metaverse technology saw both Meta and Microsoft announce major layoffs and cutbacks on their Metaverse investments.

Open Garden Metaverse

One of the major issues for the big Metaverse vision is that it requires an open-garden Metaverse. Matthew Ball defined this kind of Metaverse in his 2022 book:

“A massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communication, and payments.”

This vision requires an open Metaverse, a virtual world beyond any single company’s walled garden that allows interaction across platforms. With the current technology and state of the market, this is believed to be at least 10 years away.

With that in mind, Zuckerberg and Meta have pivoted away from expanding their Metaverse towards delivering devices such as AI glasses with augmented reality capabilities and virtual reality headsets.

Nevertheless, the Metaverse is still expanding today, but within walled garden contexts. Francesco pointed to Pokémon Go and Roblox as examples of Metaverse-esque words with enormous engagement and popularity.

Brands Engaging with the Metaverse: Nike Case Study

What does that mean for brands? Should they ignore the Metaverse until it becomes a more realistic proposition, or should they be establishing their Meta presence now?

Francesco used Nike’s successful approach to Meta engagement to show how brands can leverage the Metaverse today.

He pointed out that this was a strategic move from Nike to protect their brand. As a cultural phenomenon, people will naturally bring their affinity with Nike into the virtual space with them. If Nike doesn’t constantly monitor that presence, they can lose control of it. Rather than see this as a threat, Nike identified it as an opportunity. As people engage more online, their virtual appearance can become even more important than their physical appearance. Therefore, there is a space for Nike to occupy in this virtual world as a cultural icon.

Nike chose an ad hoc approach, going to users where they are and providing experiences within popular existing platforms.

As more than 1.5 million people play Fortnite every day, Nike started there, first selling a variety of virtual shoes that users can buy to kit out their avatars.

Roblox similarly has around 380 million monthly active users, so Nike entered the space and created NIKELAND, a purpose-built virtual area that offers a unique brand experience in the virtual world. For example, during NBA All-Star Week, LeBron James visited NIKELAND, where he coached and engaged with players. During the FIFA World Cup, NIKELAND let users claim two free soccer jerseys to show support for their favorite teams. According to statistics published at the end of 2023, in less than two years, NIKELAND had more than 34.9 million visitors, with over 13.4 billion hours of engagement and $185 million in NFT (non-fungible tokens or unique digital assets) sales.

Final Thoughts

Francesco concluded by discussing that while Nike has been successful in the Metaverse, this is not necessarily a success that will be simple for smaller brands to replicate. Nike was successful in the virtual world because they are a cultural phenomenon, and the Metaverse is a combination of technology and culture.

Therefore, brands today must decide how to engage with the current state of the Metaverse and prepare for its potential future expansion. Because existing Metaverses are walled gardens, brands also need to decide which Metaverses warrant investment or whether it is worth creating their own dedicated platforms. This all comes down to an appetite for risk.

Facing these types of challenges comes down to understanding the business potential of new technologies and making decisions based on risk and opportunity. OPIT’s BSc in Digital Business and MSc in Digital Business and Innovation help develop these skills, with Francesco also serving as program chair.

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