The Professional Project Manager

The purpose of this blog is to introduce you to some concepts that you will find useful for developing project management practitioner competency. I will introduce you to the concepts of competency and capability, and will also introduce you to some of the more widely known competency models, and take you through defined steps for building your own competency assessment tool.

The expected outcomes are that you will have an awareness of what project management competence is and why it is important for project and strategic success; you will also understand the difference between some of the more popular models for defining and assessing competence, and you will have some basic tools to begin developing or improving your own project management competency assessment tool. 

Defining Competence

Let’s begin by defining exactly what competence is. The Project Management Institute (PMI), in the third edition of the Project Manager Competency Development Framework (PMCDF) publication, defines competence as “the demonstrated ability to perform activities within a project environment that lead to expected outcomes based on define and accepted standards”. 

This definition is a little bit broad and after reading it you may still be wondering what exactly competence is, and exactly how is competence different from capability. Let’s begin by defining what a capability is. A capability is a description of how an expected task should be carried out. For example, you could require a project manager to have the capability to drive a car. Now you can go ahead and describe exactly how you want the car driven but without a description of the competence you won’t know how well somebody drives the car. Are they a learner or a world class rally driver?

Obviously, using this example there are many levels of competence when it comes to carrying out this particular task, driving a car. So, for particular roles you may want different levels of competence to be displayed for different capabilities. This is particularly important when you want senior project managers to demonstrate higher levels of competence of a particular capability than junior level project managers.  

Why is Practitioner Competence Important?

Before proceeding it is important to discuss why exactly that assessing and defining project manager competence is important. We must start by reminding ourselves the projects are not delivered by processes, tools, methods or techniques. Instead projects are delivered by competent individuals. Furthermore, they are delivered by groups of individuals working as teams. So, it is the personnel that deliver the project, and the more competent the personnel are the higher the chances of success are for the project. Developing practitioner competency is a critical part of project success, as it is individuals that deliver projects not processes, tools or techniques.

As such, appropriate competency assessment and development ensures that each individual working on the project has the right skills, experience, aptitude, and attitude to appropriately and effectively contribute to project success. 

In addition to identifying different levels of competence for different levels of practitioners there are a number of organizational benefits from having a well-developed and tailored competency development framework for practitioners. These benefits include the following:

• A reduction in staff turnover due to an increase in staff morale because they feel supported in their professional development, and they are being allocated to projects which they can manage.
• Increased competency in your project management practitioners which leads to increase in the success of projects and ultimately this leads to organisational strategic success.
• A well developed and regularly applied project management practitioner competency framework will also make the organisation attractive to new staff and make recruiting easier.
• A competency framework can also provide a rational basis for rewards, promotions, transfers and succession planning.
• And finally, an organisation can use its individual competency assessments and build these up to ensure that organisation wide it has the correct spread of experience and skills, and can plan for any forecast shortages or excess skills in the future.

There are also a number of individual practitioner benefits from having a defined project management practitioner competency development framework. These include: 

• Having a defined career path and job description,
• Visible and defined developmental goals,
• Increased confidence at completing assigned tasks
• Organisational support for ongoing professional and personal development for the individual practitioner.

Having a practitioner competency framework is also an integral part of organizational project management maturity. The research is very clear in this area, that higher levels of organizational project management maturity are a clear indicator of greater project success. Therefore, committing to fleshing out all aspects of your organizational project management maturity including practitioner competency is a way to ensure greater project success.

Competency Assessment Models

What all models for competency assessment have in common is that they seek to assess, develop and continuously improve practitioner capability and competence. Regardless of which model that you’ll end up using you will find that they start by addressing at least the following two questions:

• What is usually done in this occupation, profession, or role by competent performers?
• What standard of performance is usually considered acceptable to infer competence?

The three most widely used competency models for project management practitioners are:

1. The Project Manager Competency Development Framework (PMCDF) from the Project Management Institute. Version 3 of this document takes into account portfolio, program and project management competencies. Furthermore, it also aligns with the talent triangle from the Project Management Institute.

2. Another competency framework is from the International Project Management Association (IPMA). The IPMA provides a competence baseline for the project management practitioner and it is called the eye of competence. It separates the competencies into either behavioural competencies, technical competencies or contextual competencies.

3. The third and final model is from the global alliance on project performance standards or GAPPS. This can be viewed and downloaded for free from http://globalpmstandards.org/ 

Note that there is currently an ISO standard under development, ISO 21510 Project manager competencies. This is a new release and still undergoing review.

Let’s take a closer look at the project manager competency development framework from PMI. 

It begins with three foundational elements of personal competencies, knowledge competencies and performance competencies. 

• Personal competence reflects how the project manager is expected to behave when performing activities within the project environment and reflects the attitudes core personality characteristics and other traits including their communication skills, management ability, their leadership ability and cognitive ability and effectiveness. Proof of personal competence is through observation and documentation and support of the competence.
• Knowledge competencies are a description of what the practitioner is expected to know in terms of professional knowledge.A closer look at the knowledge competencies reveals that it is up to the project manager to be able to demonstrate that they have a grasp of an understanding of appropriate professional knowledge proof of this can be via professional credentials such as the PMP or similar credential. The regularly updated role delineation study that defines the PMP exam outlines the tasks that a competent project manager should know.
• Performance competencies are what the practitioner can demonstrate that they can actually do in practice. A performance competence reflects how the project manager applies the knowledge they have to the actual management of a project. Proof of this is gained via observing the project manager in practice or by gathering documentation in support of their performance.

There are two additional elements to this model that allow you to tailor it and make it reflect your particular organisation and your industry. These two additional elements are organisational competencies and industry specific competencies and they are not defined at all within the model as they are left up to you to define.

As a side note Crystal Consulting has developed our own competency assessment tool which utilises all five aspects of this model.

Developing Your Own Model

When it comes to developing your own model don’t be put off by the apparent complexity of the models. While they may appear at first glance to be complex they are in fact quite simple, and often involve merely documenting what may be part of institutional knowledge or within the heads of experienced project management practitioners already. Elements of your own competency model will be easy to develop and some will be hard though. You may choose to buy or use consultancies for some of the more complicated elements of developing your own model.

Please keep in mind that your own competency model must reflect and help deliver your organisational strategy. Also, the more that you customise your own model leads to greater competitive advantage as is difficult for competitors to replicate it so put some effort into making accurately reflect both your organisation and your industry.

Take the time to align it with established project management standards and frameworks for legitimacy and access to credentials. There are many of these from the Project Management Institute, the International Project Management Association, the Australian Institute of Project Management, the Association for Project Management and also a rapidly developing set of ISO standards as well. You are certainly not left wanting when it comes to establish project management standards and frameworks. My advice would be to start by aligning it with the PMI Project Manager Competency Development Framework and to keep an eye on the ongoing development of the ISO standard covering the same topic.

You will probably find that the development of your project manager competency framework has to be done by your human resources or organisational development department, as it will be able to be used for recruitment, remuneration and reward programs within the organisation. If this is the case, and it probably will be the case, then make sure that your practitioners, and if you have a PMO, are actively involved in the development of the model, the ongoing auditing and use of the model, and also the improvement of the model.

We are a firm believer in the KISS principle (Keep It Seriously Simple) when it comes the development of your own tool. We have provided the following 10 steps for you to follow to develop your own tool:

1. Gather all of your existing job or position descriptions. Note where none exist as these will need to be developed in order to make your framework complete

2. Ensure that all of the current or developed job or position descriptions contain clear descriptions of expected capability, competency, education and experience.

3. Standardise these descriptions across the organisation. We say this because we have come across a number of organisations that have wildly different job descriptions for the same role. The situation only leads to confusion and a lack of clarity about who does what.

4. Once again, and just to reinforce the point, take note of any missing documentation as this will need to be fixed.

5. Translate those competencies, education, and experience into your own tool. It’s pretty simple to do this you can start by using a MS Excel spreadsheet to list all the competencies and then use additional columns to indicate which roles should have which level of those competencies.

6. Once you have put all the competencies down into a spreadsheet, indicate very clearly an expected level of competence for each role in the organisation. Please keep in mind that it is always useful to involve practitioners, the PMO, and your human resources department in this.

7. Once you have the tool developed begin to assess individual practitioners against the various benchmarks of competence you have established. Note any discrepancies between what is expected of a practitioner and what they are able to demonstrate or be observed doing.

8. Using the information that you have gathered go on to develop individual professional development plans to ensure that everybody reaches the required level.

9. It’s a good rule of thumb to base all professional development on the 70:20:10 rule. This rule says that 70% of professional development should come from being assigned challenging assignments, 20% professional development should come from mentoring and coaching, and the final 10% of professional development should come from formal education and training.

10. Remember to review individual progress, reassess competency and adjust professional development plans accordingly.

There are some final points that I’d like to make. The first of these is that competency assessment is not a one-off activity. Instead it is an ongoing endeavour that starts at recruitment and is completed at regular intervals throughout an employee’s engagement with the organisation. You will use your competency framework during the recruitment process to ensure that you get the right people on board. You will then usual competency framework to take junior practitioners and turn them into senior practitioners. Your framework can also provide senior practitioners with clear guidance on where their career is heading as well.

I want to reiterate that:

• we know that organizations achieve their strategic goals with successful projects,
• that competent and capable practitioners produce high performing competent and capable project teams,
• that competent and capable project teams deliver successful projects
• therefore practitioner and organizational project management competency as a key contributor to organisational success and competency development is not a cost it is an investment in organisational success.

If you have any questions about the information in this blog, please do not hesitate to contact me. I am always happy to chat about any aspect of the profession of project management.

Sean Whitaker

In the same way that project management practitioners can be described as beginner, intermediate or advanced, organizations can also be described as having low, medium, or high levels of project management. These levels of project management reflect the level of organizational project management maturity (OPMM).  Knowing the level of OPMM your organisation is currently at, and also knowing where it should be is essential to help you reach your organisational goals and strategy through better delivery of portfolios, programmes, and projects.

An OPMM assessment will look at all aspects of the way you run portfolios, programmes and projects within the organisation including:

• Organisational Governance
• Management controls
•  
• Finance and cost estimating
• Planning and Execution
• Scheduling and time estimating
• Stakeholder management and communications
•  
• Lessons learned and information management
•  
• Risk management
• Quality management
• Practitioner capability development

A good assessment will look at all the processes and practices you have, evidence of them being used (or not), and also interview users and key stakeholders either in a workshop or face to face interviews. Once the evidence gathering is completed they can provide scores for individual business units, an organisational score (usually 0-5), benchmarking against others in the industry and a set of prioritized (and achievable) recommendations to move you towards your goal.

A good OPMM assessment provides a benchmark for your future efforts. It lets you know that you are progressing in the right areas. Without it you simply don’t know how well you are doing with your improvement efforts. It’s a good idea to commit to regular OPMM assessments every 18-24 months to check how you are progressing, and to reprioritize recommendations.

Don’t assume that all organizations must be at the top level of maturity, it’s important to consider that the level of OPMM that is desirable for any organisation is directly related to the size, cost, length, complexity and industry of the projects being undertaken. Organizations undertaking highly complex, long term, expensive projects should aim to have a higher level of project management maturity, while organizations and small businesses routinely undertaking short, low cost, low complexity projects may be perfectly suited to a lesser level of project management maturity.

Using an external consultant to assess your level of project management maturity and make recommendations has a number of benefits:

• A good consultant will make sure that your recommendations are achievable, affordable and appropriate.
• You get access to their wider experience with many organisations and their insights into best practice
• The report will be independent and objective

There are several good commercial models available in the market and the benefit of using one of these is that it allows you to more easily benchmark your organisation against others in their database.

I am experienced in using the P3M3, OPM3, HSI 4Q model and bespoke OPMM assessment models and if you have any questions about any aspect of organizational project management maturity please do not hesitate to contact me.

If you have any questions, comments or feedback please feel free to email me.

Here are my rapid fire suggestions for some of the most common issues a project manager will face:

Poor planning and estimating – Start with a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and then involve those people who are actually going to do the work

Poor change control – document everything

Poor scope definition – only do what is fully defined

Poor communication – try and see through the others person eyes

Demanding customer – listen better, document everything

Stalled career – invest in training or experience for yourself

Surprises keep slowing down the project – take time to do a risk register

Lack of clarity about who does what – get everyone to contribute to and agree on a RACI chart

No time for project closure – include it in the project scope of works and allocate time and cost to it

Poor team morale – karaoke evening 😊

I am really interested to know your answers to these three questions about project management:

1. What one tip would you give to a new project manager?

2. What is the single largest contributing factor to project success?

3. What is the single largest contributing factor to project failure?

I often get asked by junior or novice project managers for any tips I can give them as they begin their careers in project management. I don’t always have time to think things through on the spot so I have taken the time to note my top 8 tips. I would love to hear what tips you would also give.

1. The first job you take may be the one that takes you to the job you want. I always see people entering the profession complain when they see job advertisements asking for a minimum of 3-5 years experience. There is a reason for this. You need to get some experience under your belt. You may have just come out of university with a project management degree or got an entry level certification but this doesn’t translate well to actual on the job in the real-world experience. Go and get that experience by taking a job as a project administrator. Then see point number 4 for quicker way to get the job you really want.
2. Always be honest. There may be times where you are pressured to bend the truth a little. Don’t do this. This may mean standing up to senior practitioners or demanding clients. If you are honest you will never need to remember what you said previously. Also, your personal and professional reputation depends on honesty. If you find yourself working for or with people who expect a little dishonesty you may be better off elsewhere.
3. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. This actually applies all through your career not just at the beginning. If you don’t know something, then ask someone who does. Mistakes, both small and large, happen because someone thought they would look stupid by asking a question. In fact, the opposite is true. We generally think that people who ask questions are smarter. So, go ahead and ask those questions.
4. The deep end is where the action happens. Don’t be afraid to put yourself forward for things that seem complex and out of your comfort zone. If you are as smart as you think you are you will rise to the challenge. If you don’t succeed, then take an optimistic view of it and realise that failure is a great teacher. Either way you will learn fast.
5. Keep gathering experience and qualifications. Don’t think that learning stops once you get your first job. You must always keep your knowledge up to date or you will get left behind in a fast-changing world. Keep up the professional development units, get that next credential, attend that conference (even better, present at the conference) and keep learning in order to get the most from your career.
6. Share your experiences. There will always be someone with less experience than you so don’t be afraid to mentor them. Don’t be afraid to share your experience with more senior people too. It may be the case that you have a unique viewpoint and experience that they don’t. Value yourself and your experience (just don’t over value it – see point 1).
7. Put in place good work habits. Good work habits are things like turning up on time to work and to meetings, acting professionally and respectfully at all times, being honest (see point 2) and expecting to get out of your career what you put in. Do these things on day one of your career and every day after and you will soon have them locked in place.
8. Start getting to know people. You can call it networking if you want but that word is probably better suited to describing how computers are linked together, not people. Introduce yourself to people and listen to what they have to say. If they ask about you then share a little about yourself. Follow up occasionally with an email or a coffee invitation. Over the years these relationships will be extremely valuable to you on a personal and professional level.

So that’s what I think are 8 important tips for novice or junior project managers. What did I miss?