Mickail Lim

Master of Applied Management

Philippines

OPAIC master’s graduate Mickail Lim is making his mark in the ICT Project Management industry in New Zealand.

Mickail currently works as ICT Project Manager at Journey Digital, a software delivery studio based in Kingsland, Auckland.

“My job involves handling the project portfolios of private healthcare institutions in New Zealand and internationally. My responsibilities are mainly around project planning, resource forecasting and management, risk management, stakeholder management, and project control,” he says.

He has just accepted a new job offer from the Ministry of Justice as ICT Project Manager for their Digital Services Team.

“This poses a new challenge, since project governance and delivery environments will be different between the private and public sector,” he says.

“However, I am keen for this new chapter in my career as it gives me the opportunity to grow within a new role, discover new challenges, and give back to the community by improving the digital solutions in service of the public.”

Mickail says the competencies he learned during his master’s qualification have been extremely valuable to his career.  

“For instance, I have an inclination to be more data-driven in my approach and know how to responsibly use peer-reviewed sources to inform my decisions at work. Furthermore, I am more competent at processing and analysing data in projects and reports.”

He says his soft skills have improved as well, and he now uses management techniques that were not known to him before.

“The skills I learned in conducting a study and writing a thesis helped with my ability to fact-find, garner insights, and develop solutions. These are essential skills in my line of work and I never realised I needed them until I learned them through the master’s programme.” 

Mickail previously worked as an Operations Director for American software development and marketing businesses, running their satellite production offices in the Philippines.

In 2019 he decided to formalise his career in Operations and Project Management by pursuing a master’s degree. It made complete sense to do the degree in New Zealand because he’d fallen in love with the country on a visit earlier that year.

“My wife and I instantly fell in love with the country and the people. Apart from how New Zealand values and respects the environment, we were drawn by the culture and how it focused on quality of life and strong family foundations.”

“Ultimately, we chose Master of Applied Management with OPAIC as I found the competencies honed in this program matched that which I was looking to improve and OPAIC came well-recommended by my immigration advisor and friends.”

Mickail focused his studies on Project Management. He was the first person in Oceania to study the evolving roles of Project Managers in a software delivery environment that continues to evolve towards Agile delivery and Scrum as a framework.

He says the degree was hard work. His entire focus during this period was on his wife and son, the job he worked to support them, and his thesis.

“The sacrifice manifested through working on my thesis between 5am to 8am (then reporting at the office between 9am to 6pm) on weekdays and all day on weekends for over four months,” he says.

“I think it was all worth it though - I managed to capture over 600 samples for my study, and created high quality work getting an overall rating of A- for my thesis.”