Project management competency assessment

Project management competencies and their levels are chosen based on the success level of the projects that an organization targets. These competency areas and competency levels are then set as the target and assessments are conducted to determine the current competency levels in the identified areas. Based on the gap between current level and target level of competencies, a training curriculum is developed and the project managers are trained on the curriculum. The project managers are then mentored and their on-the-job performance is measured to monitor the impact of training on delivery parameters. The delivery parameters could include schedule deviation, effort deviation, defect rate and so on. Ideally, the training should result in more accurate effort estimates, more stable requirements, less schedule and cost overruns and less defects.

While mapping competencies to project success levels, four project success levels are used; namely – product level success, project level success, organization level success and social context level success depending on the impact that the project is expected to create. Product level success involves making the product meet the specifications and project level success involves ensuring timely delivery within budget to the satisfaction of the customer. The organization level success implies that the project meets the organizational objectives. For instance, if an intranet portal is developed to cut down transaction time between employees and administrative staff, then, apart from meeting the specification and being delivered on time, within budget, the project will be considered successful only if it can reduce the transaction hours for the administrative staff. This is organization level success. And when a project is meant to create a social impact such as a Metro train project reducing traffic on roads, the project will be considered successful only when it creates this social impact.

Project management skills to delivery results linkage

Thus assessments can be used for improving the competencies of project managers that can in turn improve the delivery process as indicated by delivery metrics and the delivery result improvements can, in turn result in improvement of business results. A sample of delivery parameters and business parameters linkage is shown below in the diagram. 

Parameter Hierarchy

Human Resource professionals – If there is a complex project with many problems and the project manager is struggling to get things going, can you tell if the project manager is doing well or doing badly? Would you know if the complications are really because of inherent complexities of the project or because of lack of abilities of the project manager to handle those complexities? Marking out project managers who are really performing well can be difficult. If we take project parameters such as schedule overrun, customer satisfaction ratings etc., one project manager may be doing well, but his project may be an easy one and a better project manager putting in better efforts may still not be able to deliver good metrics while working on a really complex project. And sometimes, project managers who are poor in core project management skills, but are good in people management and soft skills can make average projects appear very complex because the project appears complex to them due to their lack of skills and not due to any inherent characteristics of the project. And because of their hard work and people skills, they may interact effectively with the management and convince them that theirs is really a very complex project and they are struggling hard to meet the challenges of the complex project. They may get recognised as heroic project managers also and their lack of knowledge of project management methodologies that could have made the project a less complex one can get hidden below the surface. 

So, on-the-job performance of project managers is a very uneven ground and when used alone, it may be difficult to make apple-to-apple comparison while comparing project managers. Project management competency assessment can come in very handy in this situation and create a level field to make apple-to-apple comparisons. The assessment results, when used along with other job performance measures could provide a strong handle to HR managers to decide the top performers for salary hikes and promotions. 

CIOs, IS managers and customers – Project management competency assessment and any certifications associated with it can be a great tool to judge the delivery capability of vendors to whom you are looking forward to outsource. While PMP and PRINCE2 certifications assess project management capability in general, our certifications directly assess software delivery capability. These assessments can help you make apple-to-apple comparison among vendors.