Five Avenues of Project Manager Competency Development

Project manager development is best based on an understanding of how project managers' performance requirements change across a career.  For one thing, timing is everything in project manager development.  Developing an area of knowledge or skill years before it will be used will be of little value since it will largely be forgotten before it's needed.  On the other hand, teaching something
that has already been needed reduces the training's payoff and faces the problem of having to undo pre-established misinformation and bad habits.  A map of what knowledge and skills project managers need at different points in their career can help plan the most effective timing of project management development.

There's a second way that understanding how project manager performance requirements change can help us guide project manager development.  We often think about professional development in terms of what new competencies are needed.  But that's only half of the story.  Part of development is also learning what existing competencies and habits need to be deemphasized, or even relinquished, as new responsibilities are assumed. 

That knowledge can be important because we naturally tend to hold onto what has worked for us in the past, even if new job requirements actually need different approaches.  For example, it's not uncommon for accomplished technical staff members to struggle in early (or even late!) management roles since they find it hard to delegate technical decisions to others.  They don't recognize that their new responsibilities bring a new recipe for success even if it means allowing project technical decisions to be made by less experienced staff members.  In instances like this, project managers need not only to develop new competencies but also how they need to change the mix of competencies that they use in their daily work.  To serve that purpose a map of project manager requirements should show both the increased need for new competencies as well as the necessary decline in our reliance on some old ones.

The needed technical competencies of project managers have been extensively identified by the Project Management Institute (PMI) and other organizations.  These are reflected in the best practices identified in the PMBOK and other PMI guides as well as in the the various PMI certification standards.

However, there are other, broader changes in leadership and management requirements that we should be aware of as we plot the course of a project manager's development.  In this article we'll describe five major leadership and management requirement shifts that occur over a project manager's career that should be considered in project manager development.

While the careers of project managers follow no one, established path, for the purposes of this article let's think of a project manager's career with respect to six waypoints: Technical Contributor, Technical Lead, Task Manager, Small-Project Manager, Large-Project Manager, and Program Manager.   While Technical Contributor and Program Manager are fairly distinct, we'll use the following (and somewhat arbitrary) definitions for the other positions:

• Technical Lead - In this position, an individual is responsible for the technical aspects of a project or a part of one.  It can include supervisory responsibilities.
  
• Task Manager - Individuals in this role have the responsibility for planning and managing a defined element o f work within a project. Tasks can of course differ in size, length and complexity just like the projects of which they're a part.  In this article we'll focus on tasks that have budgets of $1M or less and staffs of up to 10 individuals.
• Small-Project Manager - This position involves the management of a small project, which we'll define as one with a budget of $500K or less, a staff of up to five members, and a performance period of up to a year.
• Large-Project Manager - Since what is considered a large project will differ by application area, we'll define "large project" for this article as one among the largest 10% of projects within an application area.

The table below is a notional depiction of how each of five requirements attributes differs across these six positions.  Each cell in the table shows the relative involvement of the attribute shown in the blue-shaded part of the row title and that with the yellow -shaded part for the position named in the column's title.  The nature of the changes project managers are likely to experience as they move from one of the positions to another are discussed below.

 

Technical vs. Management Responsibilities

One of the clearest changes that occur during a project manager's career is the decreased importance of technical expertise and the increased importance of management expertise.  Over this period, the nature of the required technical expertise also changes from a competence concentrated within a specific technical specialty to a broad general knowledge of the technical areas involved in the project manager's application area.

There are distinct challenges to these change.  Among them are:

• Some individuals find it difficult to leave behind the exclusively technical focus of their early careers.  You can occasionally see this in the view of some junior project managers that technical efforts are the "real work" of a project while project management activities are just what needs to get done to keep senior management happy.  Such a view is an obstacle to their ultimate mastery of project management and their success as project managers.
• Some individuals remain tied to their original technical discipline, its perspectives, and its approaches to operational requirements.  As a result, they can have difficulty in acquiring the knowledge of related disciplines and integrating those disciplines into their projects.

Execution vs. Delegation

We begin our professional careers in roles that involve only the execution of assignments.  Over time the level of work for which we are responsible grows to require the effort of others, to whom we give assignments and provide supervision.  The volume and complexity of the work for which we are responsible then continues to grow until we are managing a scope of effort that is greater than what a single individual can adequately supervise.  At that point, delegation is necessary.  

Being able to transition smoothly as a project manager from a supervisor to a senior manager requires a similarly effective change from assigning and monitoring specific tasks to the delegation of functions and roles along with the corresponding management latitude and authority.

This is not a transition that always progresses smoothly or ends happily.  In part, that's because delegation is not an action as much as a part of an overall leadership approach that enables efficient and effective delegation.  Because of this, a set of leadership and management skills must be acquired by project managers to promote their ability and opportunities to delegate.  

For example, the ability to delegate is improved when a project manager establishes across the project staff a common understanding of the project's objectives, priorities, standards, challenges, and opportunities.  Without that, the up-front work needed to bring a subordinate "up to speed" before delegating a particular project function could exceed the time the project manager would take to perform the function him or herself.  The continual need for such up-front effort would reduce the motivation for, if not the short-term value of, delegation.  Similarly, mentoring and staff development increases both the ability to delegate and its likely success and is therefore an integral part of the delegation process.  

Project managers therefore require a progressive development of leadership skills to support the increased level of delegation that becomes necessary as their careers progress.

Focus on Events and Activities vs.  Processes and Structures

The areas of concern for senior project managers and program managers are much broader than those of task managers and mangers of small projects.  As the number of WBS elements, stakeholders, organizational participants, technical disciplines, and site locations increase in the projects project managers manage, they cannot continue to focus exclusively upon the individual activities and events that compose each project day.  Instead, an increasing percentage of their time and attention must be spent dealing with the processes that drive project activities and the structures (such as the WBS, task dependencies, organizational structure, task allocations, etc.) that shape them.

Developing plans and making decisions at the more abstract level of processes and structures does not come naturally to all, or even many, individuals.  For example, managers can tend to explain performance deficiencies in terms of the individuals and circumstances immediately involved with the errors, even when the problem is widespread throughout the project.  It is up to the senior manager to look across the project or program to see the pattern of performance that might indicate a remedy through improved communication, training, or processes. 

The development of senior project managers therefore needs to include training and experience in analytic tools and methods.  To help senior project managers meet the challenges of the projects and programs they manage, the professional development of  mid- to senior-level project managers should include training in analytical methods (such as root cause analysis ) and tools (such as Pareto charts, fishbone diagrams) and in complex decision-making (for example, using approaches such as the Analytic Hierarchy Process).

Short vs. Long Planning Horizon

As project managers advance in their careers the projects they manage are not only likely to be larger than their earlier ones, but also longer.  As a result project managers will increasingly find themselves developing longer-term project estimates and plans, which involve greater uncertainty and complexity due to the large number of possible factors that can impact the project during any extended period.  

Project managers (and managers of long-duration tasks within large projects) need to prepare for this challenge by increasing their knowledge of robust modeling and estimation techniques (such as Earned Value Management, Monte Carlo modeling and their skills in integrating such techniques into their management approaches and goals, particularly in their management of risk.

Personal Leadership vs. Organizational Leadership

When leading tasks and small projects, a project manager has the ability to interact with everyone on the team and exercise direct personal leadership in promoting both individual and team success.  However, as a project manager becomes responsible for larger projects and even programs, he or she cannot just rely upon personal leadership.  The staffs of large projects and programs are too large and often scattered across locations and/or organizations to allow routine interaction between the project manager and each staff member.  Instead, the project manager must exercise leadership through subordinate managers using organizational leadership - harnessing the project's or program's organizational processes to guide and influence the entire staff.  That is, the project or program manager must extend his or her leadership across the entire project or program by taking steps such as:

• Creating an organizational culture supportive of the project manager's goals and vision for the team
• Developing and executing an effective internal communications plan
• Ensuring that policies are consistent with the organization's goals, culture, and values
• Mentoring the members of the project or program management team.

By using organizational leadership techniques a project manager can extend their leadership beyond just those individuals who directly inter act with him or her on a routine basis.  But doing so requires project manager development in such areas as communication, organizational design, change and development, and executive leadership.  Development in these areas will allow project managers to project their leadership across their project or program and avoid the development of those closed "inner circles" of management that characterize and limit some organizations.