It goes without saying having a project team with requisite project management skills enhances the chances of delivering projects successfully other factors constant. Project management has finally been accepted in the mainstream as a core competence that organizations need to leverage in order to compete in extremely volatile environments.
Organizations are leveraging project management to deliver products first to market, deliver high-value infrastructure efficiently and within constrained resources and timelines as well as to deliver transformation change and organizational changes. Organizations that have embraced project management as a tool to deliver projects need to ensure that their project teams have the right skills. Due to the fact that project management as a skill set is comparatively new, there is a shortage of skills in the market and the available skill set is highly sought after. Organizations have to develop own skills to compensate for or complement whatever skill shortage they may have.
Project Management Institute (PMI) maps the project management skills sets in the form of a skills triangle. The skills triangle is made up of technical project management skills, leadership skills, and strategic and business management skills.
The technical project management skills cover those skills around management of the ten PMI knowledge areas; scope, time, procurement, risk, resources management, integration, communication, stakeholder management, cost and quality management. The leadership skills are about the project manager setting a vision and goals and rallying the project team to achieve these in order to ensure a successful project. This skill set talks to the softer side of project management that looks at how the project manager can galvanize the team towards a shared goal. These include among others; negotiation skills, facilitative skills, ability to influence others, problem-solving, empathy, critical thinking, coaching for changes skills.
Strategic and business skills are a complementary skill set for any project manager. Project managers need to understand the business environment in which their projects are executed to ably engage senior management. These skills include strategy, business case development or review, investment appraisals etc. Projects are initiated in an environment of constrained financial resources, with competing demands, and with various company objectives. The project manager should be cognizant of this and have the capacity to articulate how their projects will impact the organization on all levels.
It is imperative that organizations or the line managers determine the project management skills level of their subordinates or project team members. This determination is by way of a skills audit/ or assessment. A skills assessment in this context is a process of measuring the individual’s project management skills. In the case of the Project Management Institute (PMI), skills assessment would entail assessing how much the individual scores on each of the three (3) aspects that make up the PMI skills triangle i.e. technical project management skills, leadership skills, and strategy and business skills.
Other tools have been developed by project management organizations that attempt to measure the project management skills. Some of these tools measure the project management knowledge, and knowledge is correlated to skills, other tools have a competency-based approach of assessment. Under the competency-based assessment, a live project scenario is simulated and participants are tested against this.
The skills assessments are conducted to identify gaps amongst the project management practitioners with the view of proposing measures to close these gaps. The skills assessments present a baseline that organizations or individuals can use as a reference point to improve on. Any interventions are premised on the fact that they will improve on the baseline score. Subsequent skills assessments after interventions should be scheduled at predefined time intervals to determine the interventions were successful in closing the gaps.
Closing the skills gaps enhances the chances of success of projects that these project teams’ members are deployed on through the application of the newly acquired / or enhanced skill set. Closing the skills gaps also has an advantage of augmenting the organization’s project management maturity.
Skills assessments enable the project manager to take stock of skills inventory on the project team with a view of deploying the team members to the most optimum role that complement each other hence increasing the chances of project success.
Gaps identified in the project management skills assessments can be closed through a number of interventions, these include the following;
- Scheduling and conducting customized project management training that targets the identified skills gaps with clear timelines.
- Having the project management practitioners certify/obtain internationally recognized/acclaimed certifications such as Project Management Professionals ( PMP), PRINCE2
- Organizations can put in place a mentorship program where the more senior project managers mentor the more junior members of the team or those with gaps with a view of closing these.
As argued above, it is imperative that organizations conduct project management skills audit regularly (as predefined), put in place interventions to close any identified gaps in order to enhance the chances of project success of the projects they execute.
Mark Muzinda is a Consultant at InnoLead Consulting offering Management Consultancy and Corporate Training Solutions. He can be contacted on +267 3909102 and innolead@innolead.co.bw
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