A Simple Stakeholder-based Competency Framework to Reach Success

Nicolas De Dobbeleer, M.Sc., PMP, is the managing director of The Project Gold Mine, a consulting company focusing on organizational performance that is based in Belgium.

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While doing some research for a workshop I organized for project managers, I asked myself, which among the many competencies required of a project manager are the ones that really make the difference? During a time of ever-increasing productivity needs, training should be extremely focused to ensure high return on investment. It seems important, therefore, to focus on a few key competencies rather than an all-encompassing set of competencies that are needed in different situations.

I first reviewed several interesting papers, including:

• The article in two parts from the late Rita Mulcahy, “Traits of a Successful PM” and
• The article by Jeff Hodgkinson, Gary Hamilton, and Gareth Byatt, “Most Important Traits to Achieve Success.”

I tried to determine whether we could link these competencies to critical success factors in project management, by using the Project Implementation Profile by Jeffrey Pinto and Dennis Slevin. I realized it is not easy to narrow them down and decided to develop a model to structure the approach. I would like to share my conclusions in this article.

One approach is to consider the following question: To whom do which competencies make a difference? Stakeholders have different needs that must be fulfilled for the project to be considered a success.

 In order to keep the model simple, I have …

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