Bridging the PM Competency Gap: A Dynamic Approach to Improving Capability and Project Success - Hardcover

Loredana Abramo (author) & Rich Maltzman (author)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 160427140X ISBN 13: 9781604271409

Publisher: J. Ross Publishing, 2017

Synopsis

Rapidly evolving technologies, global business interdependencies, and changes to project management (PM) processes and tools demand that new PM competencies be continuously developed and adequately applied to achieve successful results. Despite the many advances in the PM discipline, significant competency gaps exist within even the most successful companies. This book provides the proven strategic approaches needed to grow and evolve your project managers' competency over time, in step with the needs of your business, and supplies practical examples of competency models and how to deploy them.

About this title

About the Author

Loredana Abramo, PMP, has over 25 years of experience in deploying telecommunication networks in the US, Japan, Singapore, and Australia, filling such roles as Project Managers' Competency Development Leader for Emerging Technologies, Deputy Director of the PMO, Lead Engineer, Technical Deputy, and Business Operations Manager. She is a published author, who also translated Peter Taylor's The Lazy Project Manager into Italian, and is an international speaker that has delivered numerous presentations at PMI, IEEE, and IPMA global events in North America, Australia, Malaysia, and Italy. Loredana has a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering and is board certified as a Professional Engineer. She has a Convergence Technologies Professional accreditation from the Telecommunications Industry Association and a Certificate in Advanced Project Management from De Paul University. Loredana is a Member of PMI and a Senior Member of IEEE. She is currently based in Naperville, IL, USA.

Rich Maltzman, PMP, has been an engineer and PMO leader for almost 40 years. His international project work has been diverse, including the integration of two large PMOs of merging multi-national corporations. As a second but intertwined career, Rich has also focused on consulting and teaching at several universities in the US and China. Mr. Maltzman is a published author of numerous articles, PMP courseware and three books, and is a recipient of the distinguished PMI David I. Cleland Project Management Literature Award. Rich is an international speaker that has delivered presentations at PMI and IPMA conferences in North America, Africa, The Netherlands, Costa Rica, Mexico, Italy, and Malaysia. His educational background includes a BSEE from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and an MSIE from Purdue University. In addition, Rich has certifications from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, and INSEAD of France.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Bridging the PM Competency Gap

A Dynamic Approach to Improving Capability and Project Success

By Loredana Abramo, Rich Maltzman

J. Ross Publishing, Inc.

Copyright © 2017 Loredana Abramo and Rich Maltzman
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-60427-140-9

Contents

Preface, 
Foreword, 
Prologue, 
Acknowledgments, 
About the Authors, 
WAV, 
Introduction, 
Chapter 1 Problem Statement: In Other Words, The Gap, 
Chapter 2 Wanted: Bespoke Strategic Approach, 
Chapter 3 Know Thy Audience, 
Chapter 4 Options, 
Chapter 5 Planning Your Bridges, 
Chapter 6 Time to Deliver!, 
Chapter 7 Indicators of Success — How Do You Know if Your Bridge Is Built and Working?, 
Chapter 8 The Feedback Loop and Improving the Bridge, 
Chapter 9 Leveraging Expert Judgment, 
Appendix 1 Selected References and Useful Links, 
Appendix 2 A Competency Survey of 250 Project Managers, 
Appendix 3 Details of the 4-D Approach Applied to PM Competency, 
Appendix 4 Case Study: Philips Excellence Project Management, 

CHAPTER 1

Problem Statement: In Other Words, The Gap

Project managers are accountable for the delivery of business objectives. Rapidly evolving technologies, a set of ever-changing customer requirements, and increasing global business interdependencies all demand that project management (PM) competencies are adequately improved to enable delivery of successful project outcomes. At the same time, the PM discipline as well as related tools, credentials, methodologies, and processes is undergoing some substantial transformations.

Let's approach this issue as we would approach a project. The first and most important step in a project is identifying and expressing the need for the project in the form of a project charter. The charter provides a brief business case, which describes the need for investment — the need for change in the first place. It is a source of authority for the project manager and, equally important, it lets all stakeholders know what the project is all about and what success looks like, so that the project team will know what it means to be done. Remember: a project exists only because some sort of change is being made. A project exists only because the status quo is just not good enough. In effect, every project is about a gap. More accurately, every project is about filling that gap and achieving an important outcome. As to the gap, it could literally be filling a gap, for example, building a bridge over a ravine, or, more likely, it could be more sublime; for example, a new app to match adoptive pet parents with pets who need adoption, which is bridging a very different sort of gap, in that case — anemotional one. Here we apply the very same foundational idea of gap-filling to the initiative to improve PM competency and the resulting success of projects. To do so, we need to describe the current situation and the shortfalls we see as longtime proponents of PM excellence and continuous improvement. So, what is this PM competency gap? We express this gap as a problem statement:

A project manager's level of competency is often not equal to the new and dynamic challenges encountered in his/her profession.

As a result, we see ineffective use of tools and technology, and insufficient communication and engagement in project teams, which leads to suboptimal delivery of business objectives.

Considering how fast the landscape of platforms, methodologies, and team dynamics is changing around us, it is not surprising that PM courses attended just a few years ago are now obsolete, and that even the soft skills learned during the last training courses are no longer working for us. If we try to maintain our PM competencies by using the traditional approach of courses and tests, we find ourselves and our project managers unable to keep up with this rapidly changing environment. The project managers' ability to deliver business outcomes is thus severely impacted, and that is a major threat to any organization.

The answers we will explore in the next chapters are centered around the concept of establishing a continuous learning environment, self-propelled and adaptable, therefore able to evolve with our projects and profession. To leverage an eminent, state-of-the-art approach to this improvement methodology and solid PM best practices, we recommend following these steps:

1. Define the problem: we start with a problem statement and we will continue to explore the compelling reasons behind the need to fill this gap in Chapter 1.

2. Assess your project manager's competency and identify your PM competency gaps: you need to be able to baseline the current status as well as measure progress. We will discuss this phase and the related strategic approaches you can plan in Chapter

3. Study your PM community and its specific traits: whatever competency development bridges you decide to build, they must be based on who will be using them. There is no one-size-fits-all approach that will work for any group of project managers. We will discuss this aspect in Chapter 3.

4. Choose and implement the most suitable improvement options for your goals and audience: we will share what we and other respected colleagues have learned that have worked for many years in this field. We will describe possible implementation choices, planning possibilities, and execution alternatives in Chapters 4, 5, and 6.

5. Monitor progress and continue to improve while implementing your plans and assessing progress which has a beginning and an end with specific deliverables and timelines: you need to consider how to continuously find opportunities to move beyond your current competency levels. We will address these last (but not least!) aspects in Chapters 7 and 8.

THE VALUE OF PM AS A DISCIPLINE

A prerequisite to building competence in your PM staff is the recognition that PM is indeed a discipline of its own. As a testament to this concept, observe the growth of PM in the academic world.

According to a database maintained by the Project Management Institute (PMI) Academic Programs Group, the number of PM-related degrees has grown from two Bachelor's degrees and nine Master's degrees in 1995 — which frankly does not seem that long ago — to 206 Bachelor's degrees and 710 Master's degrees in 2015. There are now 100 times more Bachelor's degrees and 80 times more Master's degrees in the past 20 years, as illustrated in Figures 1.1a–d.

Before you go writing off these statistics as being just an academic exercise, remember that colleges and universities are also businesses, and they're offering these degrees not because they choose to follow that academic path: they are offering these options because of real demand for PM competency! Just as in the world of academia, the acknowledgment of project management as a distinct discipline in an organization is the first, necessary step in the development of a wide array of learning options specifically for the project manager population, rather than directing PM to general management or sales courseware. Managing projects is very different than managing an organization. Projects take place in different environments since they have their own challenges, constraints, and communications requirements. While we recognize that projects and general (operations) management share some attributes, projects are different enough (uniqueness, time-limited, PM framework) to deserve their own curricula.

DEFINING PM COMPETENCY

What does PM competency mean? And what competencies should be developed in project managers? Is there guidance from research or industry associations? With regards to the definition of PM competency, we rely as a starting point on the definition from PMI that relates to the Talent Triangle, shown in Figure 1.2:

"The ideal skill set — the PMI Talent Triangle — is a combination of technical, leadership, and strategic and business management expertise. To stay relevant and competitive, you must develop these employer-demanded skills."

Combining this with the standard dictionary definition — the ability to do something successfully or efficiently — we get our preferred definition:

PM competency is the ability to successfully and efficiently manage projects with a combination of technical, leadership, strategic, and business management expertise.

The primary rationale for the Talent Triangle — the main driver for the existence of the three sides, all three sides — is that when PMI interviewed thousands of CEOs and other C-level leaders at all sorts of companies all over the world, the senior managers were not looking for better scheduling, or better budgeting, or even risk identification, analysis, and management. They still think those things are important, of course. However, what they indicated that they were struggling with, in terms of capability and talent, was the more human side of our discipline — dealing with ambiguity and change, interaction with people, influencing stakeholders, and negotiating. They were looking for a better balance between the technical PM skills and the increasingly important human interaction, leadership, and strategic skills. Let's look at each of the sides of the Talent Triangle.

Technical PM

PMI's Pulse of the Profession report (PMI, 2013) showed that for 66% of surveyed organizations, project managers with the appropriate technical skills were very hard to find. (See also: Pulse of the Profession In-Depth Report: The Competitive Advantage of Effective Talent Management, 2013.) The root cause, however, is not a simple lack of project managers, but rather the fact that the project managers in the organization often simply don't possess the necessary technical PM knowledge.

What is this technical side? The term technical PM can best be understood if you think of the technician project manager, that is, one who is an expert in the science of PM — applying methods and tools, such as the Gantt chart, earned value management, RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed) matrices, and so forth. This is distinguished from the technical components of the practice area; so, for a construction project manager, the focus of the technical side of the triangle is not on new carbon composite building materials, but rather the technical components of planning for, assessing the risk involved with, and scheduling the assembly of those composite building materials.

Required competencies in the technical side of the triangle include (but are not limited to):

• Techniques for requirements analysis and definition

• Project planning and controlling

• Risk management

• Scope management

PMI advises that the competencies in the technical side of the Talent Triangle can best be learned via seminars, webinars, online trainings, etc., due to the structured nature of this type of knowledge. In contrast, the elements which must be learned on the leadership side are developing and fine-tuning the soft skills of the project manager and likely requires training experiences which have an experiential element.

Leadership

Another Pulse of the Profession survey (Navigating Complexity, 2013) showed that 71% of organizations indicated that they considered leadership skills and talent most important for long-term success, and 75% of survey respondents considered leadership as very important for the successful management of complex projects.

Consciously naming and designating leadership as its own area of competence emphasizes that the successful management of projects not only requires technical/methodical knowledge, but also leadership skills. As the project level becomes more complex, project leadership skills become — perhaps exponentially — even more important.

Leadership is the sum of soft skills as well as the ability to demonstrate referent power. This side of the triangle is about the ability to lead and develop a team and to demonstrate the use of appropriate behavior in dealing with the various stakeholders in wildly differing situations over time.

While a project manager with expertise in the technical PM area can plan and execute the project, his expertise in the field of leadership will help in dealing with the handling of the various stakeholders in the project. It involves inspiring, leading, and serving the project team — helping them stay focused on the project's end goal and understanding the benefits that the project will realize for its clients, for the organization, and for the team members themselves.

Leadership talents include (but are not limited to):

• Negotiations

• Conflict management

• Motivation of employees

• Feedback techniques

• Ability to influence stakeholders

• Active listening

• Team development

• Emotional intelligence

• Change intelligence

Strategic and Business Management

PMI's research (PMI, 2013) has revealed that organizations which have their talent aligned with strategy have a 72% success rate in their projects (meeting original business goals) versus 58% when this connection is misaligned. That's a 14% increase in success rates and literally billions of dollars of difference (to say nothing of the morale, brand, and other hard-to-measure attributes). This explains the rationale for PMI to include a side of the triangle dedicated to this focus.

Strategic and business management competency is focused on the connection between the project and the business environment in which it lives, including the organization's internal environment (the mission, vision, values, and strategy of the organization) as well as its external environment (customers, suppliers, competitors, and regulatory agencies).

This means specifically that project managers implement and execute their projects according to the strategy of the company, as well as acting with an entrepreneurial spirit and having knowledge of the industry they are working in.

These include (but are not limited to):

• Entrepreneurial activity

• Marketing and law

• PESTEL (political, economical, social, technological, environmental, legal) and SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis

• Strategic planning and alignment of multiple projects

• Contract management

• Management of complexity

(Competitive Advantage of Effective Talent Management — http://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/pdf/learning/ thought-leadership/pulse/talent-management.pdf)

One of the more interesting findings in our research on the Talent Triangle was that 90% of companies surveyed stated that the technical and strategic/business skills are teachable (PwC and PMI, November, 2014), but not so for the leadership skills. That is precisely why we put so much stress in this book on alternate ways of assessing and improving leadership skills, rather than relying on traditional classroom training as a way to improve capability on this side of the triangle.

DEVELOPING PM COMPETENCY

Project managers, those who have been in this profession for many years, are a tremendous benefit to any organization. They possess general PM experience, know the organization's methodology very well, and understand the best approach to manage a difficult delivery. But does this experience always benefit the organization? Sometimes, being good at something leads to confidence, and often that same confidence that helps resolve issues also blinds us to shortcomings related to advances in methodology, soft skills, and technology.

Maintaining an open mind and a willingness to learn becomes a critical skill, in and of itself, for the whole community (catching up with the latest version of the PMBOK® Guide, learning about Agile, or how to use a new desktop sharing tool, etc.) and can make the difference between a good enough project manager and an outstanding one — one which can serve as a differentiator for an organization.

One of the most important themes of the project manager's day-to- day work is advancing data into information, into knowledge, and into wisdom. In the PMBOK® Guide, this is presented as transforming work performance data into work performance information and work performance reports, but it is the same principle. Over the years, the authors have seen time and time again that one of the underlying functions of a successful project manager is to clarify, unify, and show the significance of apparently unrelated facts (data) to the more contextual intelligence (information) as the basis for quality decision making (knowledge). Let's look at a model often referenced to understand this process: the data, information, knowledge, and wisdom (DIKW) model illustrated in Figure 1.3. For more information on this model and its author, see Appendix 1.

Data is raw. It simply exists and has no significance beyond its existence (in and of itself). It can exist in any form — usable or not. In computer parlance, a spreadsheet generally starts out by holding data. For a project manager, this could be a list of experts, which could be related to the project or not.

Information is data that has been given meaning by way of relational connection. This meaning can be useful, but does not have to be. In computer parlance, a relational database correlates information across the data stored within its tables. A project manager uses a stakeholder register for his or her project, and that's information.

Knowledge is the appropriate collection of information, such that its intent is to be useful. Knowledge is a deterministic process. When someone memorizes information (as less-aspiring test-bound students often do), then they have amassed knowledge. This knowledge has useful meaning to them, but it does not provide, by itself, an integration which would allow development of further knowledge. In computer parlance, most of the applications we use (modeling, simulation, etc.) exercise some type of stored knowledge. The sustainable capability to combine information such as templates, organizational roles, and prior experience into a stakeholder register is relying on the project manager's knowledge.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Bridging the PM Competency Gap by Loredana Abramo, Rich Maltzman. Copyright © 2017 Loredana Abramo and Rich Maltzman. Excerpted by permission of J. Ross Publishing, Inc..
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Edition details

• Publisher: J. Ross Publishing
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 160427140X
• ISBN 13: 9781604271409
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 294