Tagged with competences

Review Individual Competence Baseline – Reference Guide ICB4 for PMO

This new IPMA standard defines the competences for the individuals working in PMO. All the competences are aligned with the IPMA ICB that is used by all the project, programme or portfolio managers in their everyday activities.

A PMO has three main activities:

  • Design – the creation, establishment and maintenance of standards, processes, procedures, and tools that define how work should be done inside.
  • Perform – performing administrative and specialist support work.
  • Monitoring and reporting – this may involve recording and reporting on the progress of work but also ensuring that agreed arrangements are met. 

Within all three main activities, the PMO worker also has an advisory role towards their manager and other stakeholders.

Essentially, there are four positions of a PMO recognized: within ‘management by projects’: as a knowledge centre (permanent), within a portfolio (permanent), programme (temporary) and project (temporary).

this reference guide describes the various competency elements for a PMO employee or PMO manager in line with the ICB4 competence elements perspective, people and practice.

The perspective competence elements are strategy, governance, structures and processes, compliance, standards and regulations, power and interest and culture and values.

The people competence elements are self-reflection, and self-management, personal integrity and reliability, personal communication, relationships and commitment, leadership, teamwork, conflict and crisis, resourcefulness, negotiation, and results orientation.

The practice competence elements are project design, requirements and objectives, scope, time, organisation and information, quality, finance, resources, procurement, plan and control, risk and opportunity, stakeholders, and change and transformation.

For each competence element we get the purpose, description, knowledge, skills and abilities and related key competence indicators (measures). The ICB4 offers also a definition of the competence element, related competence elements and for each key competence indicator a description.

Conclusion.

At this moment I see a revival of portfolio management and the PMO to offer that service. As stated, this reference guide describes the various competency elements for a PMO employee or PMO manager. In describing these, this Reference Guide refers to projects. This can be read, according to this guide, as project, programme and portfolio. I find this confusing. I can see that a temporary project office supports a project manager, and the competencies of the project office (or PMO) employee differ from those of a project manager. The ICB4 doesn’t cover these competencies. However, the ICB4 already includes the competencies needed for portfolio management. What does this mean? Can a PMO employee not be a portfolio manager or portfolio analyst? Besides the missing sub-paragraphs, I see in the description of the competence element a reference to the PMO, but descriptions of key competence indicators are lacking, and here I would expect differences between project, programme, or portfolio PMO employees and the PMO manager. How do we position this guide with respect to portfolio management in comparison with the ICB4?

The ICB4 guide describes the competencies of project, programme, and portfolio managers. What roles does this guide describe? Competencies of a Head of PMO running many programmes and projects and offering portfolio management and Center of Excellence services are completely different from those of a PMO employee supporting a project manager. A PMO employee supporting a programme manager is different from one supporting a project manager or a knowledge center or Center of Excellence employee. I could see that a guide offering competencies of a PMO manager or different roles of PMO employees could add value, but with this guide, I am completely lost.

The Individual Competence Baseline – Reference Guide ICB4 for PMO can be found here: https://shop.ipma.world/shop/ipma-standards/e-books-ipma-standards/ipma-reference-guide-icb4-for-pmo-ebook/?v=796834e7a283

Book review: The Dead Presidents’ Guide to Project Management. Essential lessons for project managers and sponsors

presJim Johnson wrote the book The Dead Presidents’ Guide to Project Management. Essential lessons for project managers and sponsors.

It considers 38 brief lessons from George Washington to Ronald Reagan.

The president of the United States must be a good project manager as well as a good project sponsor.

  • Good project manager: uses domain knowledge, skills, tools and techniques, is a servant-leader, must have skills to influence, to work enthousiastically, is goal oriented, must have good connections, is a good negotiater, delivers bad news early and bravely, provides solutions and is truthful;
  • Good project sponsor: must inspire people, is enthusiastic, must have imagination, must have clarity of purpose, can effectively distribute decision power, and understands the process of government and influence to get anything done.

For every president we get an illustration by Kayla Johnson, a three page introduction and lesson focussing on specific competences you need as a project manager or project sponsor and a quote.

E.g. Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He used an iterative process and methodology when building his home Monticello. He was not afraid to tear something down and enforced change management. His apprach was to develop new features in small, unobtrusive increments. When did we say that agile started?

I summarized the quotes in attached figure including pictures of all dead presidents (download: dead presidents).

Dia1

Transparency by the Project Manager

4e0325a51bf24Last week I visited the exhibition In search of meaning (Museum De Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands). One of the statues was from the British sculptor Antony Gormley. This artist created many statues and the picture shows one of my favorites (was not on the exhibition).

This is what I call transparency. And transparency is something that becomes more and more important in the world of projects. At last I would say.

I see the following reasons for more transparency:

  • Senior managers want to have more successful projects and want to know what is really happening;
  • External stakeholders like the DNB or AFM want to know the real status of change initiatives;
  • Project managers want to inform much earlier how they are progressing. They are not there to please their project executive;
  • Project managers want to show, by using the right RAG status that they have their projects under control. To report Amber and explain the options they are investigating to bring the project on track again, shows that they are really in control. This also gives project executives the chance to intervene. Compare this with a situation where a project manager surprises the project executive with a Red status;images-12
  • Transparency means: I have nothing to hide;
  • Transparency means: my green RAG status is really green and is not a melon;
  • Transparency will help other project managers to manage dependences.

Article: Acts of leadership in complex projects’ from Ben Berndt

projectieIn the latest version of Projectie (Febr. 2015, number 1) I found an interesting article about ‘Acts of leadership in complex projects’ from Ben Berndt.

“In the project management arena it seems common understanding that project managers profile as highly result- and action- driven. Although project management academia nuances this topic, stressing leadership characteristics like team leadership, personal effectiveness, and e.g. interpersonal understanding, others (indeed) focus on achievement orientation. Research by Gehring (2007) concludes with a set of favourable MBTI (Meyers-Briggs) types, with Thinking and Judging (“TJ’s”) as preferred indicators. TJ’s see the world as logical and like to have matters settled. In “Management Drives” terminology this relates to orange, red, yellow profiles. Author’s pragmatic research as a program manager on projects X & Y indicates that in complex projects, where one deals with messy problems, another profile might prevail: one that understands patterns, believes in the wisdom of crowds”

This article reflects some insights from Ben Berndt’s book ‘The metis of projects’. See the review on this blog: The metis of projects

To download (with permission from the editor): Pro_01_2015 (page 1) Pro_01_2015 (page 2) Pro_01_2015 (page 3) Pro_01_2015 (page 4)