1. 17/04/2019
Developing a Project Management Practitioner Competency Assessment Tool
Sean Whitaker, BA, MSc, MBA, PMP
Crystal Consulting

2. Outline Defining Competence Why Bother with Competence?
17/04/2019
Outline
Defining Competence
Why Bother with Competence?
An Introduction to Competency Models
Tailoring your Own Competency Model

3. Outcomes At the end of this session:
You will have an awareness of what project management competence is;
You will have visibility of some popular models for defining and assessing competence;
You will have some basic tools to begin developing or improving your own project management competency assessment

4. Defining Competence
“Competence is the demonstrated ability to perform activities within a project environment that lead to expected outcomes based on defined and accepted standards”, PMI 2007
A capability is a description of a task;
Competence is how well you perform that task, e.g. you may want someone to have the capability to drive a car and demonstrate competence in doing so.

5. Why?
Projects are not delivered by processes, tools, methods or techniques.
Projects are delivered when individuals work together to make a vision become a reality.
Each individual is unique in terms of their current and future levels of competence.
Appropriate competency assessment and development ensures each individual has the right skills, experience, aptitude and attitude to appropriately and effectively contribute to project success

6. Organisational Benefits
Reduction in staff turnover; increase in staff morale.
Increased competency = increased capability = more successful projects = strategic success!
Organisation is attractive to new staff.
Rational basis for rewards, promotions, transfers, succession planning.
An organization can use competency development to ensure it has the correct spread of experience and skills.

7. Practitioner Benefits
Defined career path and job description
Visible and defined developmental goals
Increased confidence at completing assigned tasks
Better delivery of projects
Ongoing professional and personal development

8. Organisational PM Maturity
Project management practitioner competency is an integral part of organisational project management maturity
Higher levels of organisational project management maturity are an indicator of greater project success

9. Competency Assessment
Models for competency assessment seek to assess, develop and continuously improve practitioner and organisational project management competency and capability
Performance based competency standards typically address 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?

10. Competency Models
PMI Project Manager Competency Development Framework, and PathPro
IPMA Competence Baseline – The Eye of Competence
GAPPS Performance Based Competency Framework

11. PMCD Framework
The ‘Project Manager Competency Development Framework’ 2nd Ed. from PMI is a great place to start as it “provides a framework for the definition, assessment, and development of project manager competence by defining and identifying the key dimensions of competence.”
You can use this information as it is provided, or customise it to your own needs.
It is currently being updated to the 3rd Ed. to reflect/include program and portfolio management, and links to PMI’s talent triangle.

12. PMCD Framework
Knowing
Behaving
Doing

13. Knowledge Competencies:
What they know
Personal Competencies: How they behave
Industry Specific Competencies
Performance Competencies: What they can do
Organizational Competencies

14. Knowledge Competence
What the project manager knows about the application of processes, tools and techniques for project activities
Described in the PMP Exam Specification based on the Project Managers Role Delineation Study.
Proof via PMP, or similar credential

16. Performance Competence
How the project manager applies project manager knowledge to meet the project requirements
Units include Initiating a Project, Planning a Project, Executing a Project, Monitoring and Controlling a Project, Closing a Project
Proof via observation and documentation

17. Personal Competence
How the project manager behaves when performing activities within the project environment; their attitudes, and core personality characteristics
Units include Communicating, Managing, Leadership, Cognitive Ability, & Effectiveness.
Proof via observation and documentation

18. Tailoring the Model
Industry Specific and Organizational Competencies within the model allow for customisation of the competence assessment to reflect your industry and organisation.
The Crystal PM Competence Assessment utilises all 5 aspects of this model and will be updated once the 3rd edition of the PMI PMCDF is released in late 2016.

19. Your Own Model
Elements of your own competency model will be easy to develop, some will be hard – you may choose to buy or outsource the tough stuff.
It must reflect and deliver organizational strategy – it must provide a source of competitive advantage.
Greater customisation leads to greater competitive advantage as it is difficult to replicate.
Align it with established project management standards and frameworks for legitimacy and access to credentials.
Developing a competency framework may expose holes in your project manager practitioner job descriptions and career pathways – if it does you need to fix these as well

20. Your Own Model
Regularly renew and keep it agile enough to keep pace with enterprise level change
Involve practitioners, and the PMO in the development, audit and improvement.
Make it business lead but HR/OD enabled
Document and standardise it
If the competency model is slowing your organisation down rather than speeding it up you haven't got it right

21. 10 Steps to Your Own Tool
Gather all of your existing job or position descriptions.
Ensure that all of these contain expected capability, competency, education and experience
Standardise across the organisation
Note missing documentation – this will need to be fixed
Translate the competencies, education and experience into your own tool Or use PathPro (more on this later).
Indicate an expected level for each role.

22. 10 Steps to Your Own Tool
Assess individual practitioners against this benchmark
Develop professional development plans to ensure individuals reach the required level.
Base professional development on the 70:20:10 rule
70% from challenging assignments i.e. experience
20% from developmental relationships i.e. mentoring and coaching
10% from coursework and training i.e. formal education
Review individual progress, reassess competency, adjust professional development plan

23. PathPro
PathPro is a free fully customisable online tool using PMI’s career framework to enable assessment of individual practitioners level of capability and competence.
You can tailor all aspects of it to mirror your own existing job descriptions.
It then s people and asks them to assess the practitioner against the documented competencies and experience.
It then allows you to view that assessment

24. Timing and Frequency Competency assessment is not a one off activity
It is an ongoing endeavour starting at recruitment and completed at regular intervals
Recruitment
Junior Practitioner
Senior Practitioner

25. Outcome
A project management competency assessment will identify individual, and group, learning and development opportunities.
These can then be addressed with
On the job experience
Education
Certification
Training
Coaching
Mentoring

26. 17/04/2019
Final Thoughts
Organisations achieve their strategic goals with successful projects.
Competent and capable practitioners produce high performing competent and capable project teams.
Competent and capable project teams deliver successful projects.
Therefore, practitioner and organisational project management competency is a key contributor to organisational success and competency development is not a cost - it is an investment.

27. Thank You
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me. I am always happy to chat. Please me if you want a copy of this presentation. Sean Whitaker

28. About Crystal
We know about organizational and practitioner project management capability and we want to help you be better at both.
You will not find sales people, marketing strategies and extensive social media engagement strategies trying to sell you something you already know or don’t need.
You will find passionate technical experts with years of experience in actually doing projects and providing valuable advice to others.
We have worked with organizations of different sizes, different industries and differing levels of maturity all around the world.
Our primary focus is upon providing the following:
Organizational project management capability assessment, review and development
P3M3® Assessments and improvement plans
PMO development, improvement and audit
Project review, health check and rescue
Practitioner capability and competency assessment
Project management methodology development, improvement and audit
Seminars, workshops and webinars for practitioners of all levels
We also offer a range of project management consulting services all designed to help you be more efficient and more successful at delivering portfolios, programs, and projects.
Contact us to discuss your needs and find out how we can help.