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Chapter 6
The Care and Feeding
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clear and desirable career path that includes training, promotion criteria, recognition of achievement, and the opportunity to progress to the highest executive levels in the organization.1 According to Christopher Sauer of Oxford University, developing a career structure is essential to the devel- opment of an organization’s project management capability. The career path structure serves three purposes:
1. It allows the organization to match a project manager’s level of competence or experience to the difficulty and importance of a project.
2. It assures project managers that the investments they make in developing their professional skills will be rewarded.
3. It provides an incentive for people to stay with the company because they can see a clear promotion path.2
Career planning is a challenging specialty that combines aspects of business, psychology, and education; and planning careers in project management is exceptionally challenging. Understanding what we mean by “career” is an essential starting point if we are to develop a path that meets both individual and organizational needs.
From a broad perspective, careers can be viewed as “a series of separate but related experiences and adventures through which a person, any person, passes during a lifetime.”3 An individual can pursue multiple careers, either in sequence or at the same time. We see this frequently in project management, where a technical or functional track is perceived as the career, and building project management expertise is considered a secondary endeavor supporting the primary career track.
Moreover, career includes both an individual’s work and family expe- riences, as well as the interaction between the two. With project manage- ment being such a young and evolving profession, organizations are not totally clear on what their “needs” are and, consequently, individuals’
work experiences and opportunities may have been limited in this pro- fession until recently.
To survive in the competitive business environment, an organization must develop a career program that will respond to future strategic requirements for certain skills. By doing so, the organization provides opportunities for and encourages multifunctional experiences and allows its personnel choices and control over their lives. Typically, an employee will choose a career path that fits his or her talents, core competencies, and values, thereby ensuring satisfaction and growth — and reducing organizational attrition, which has positive financial and productivity impacts on any organization. Individual careers develop from an interaction
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between individuals’ competencies and career goals and the work expe- rience the organization provides. To the extent that the organization provides opportunities for the individual to use and develop his or her personal competence while moving through various jobs, functions, and levels, the individual will grow and experience career satisfaction.
The objectives of any career development program should be to:
Improve skills
Assess an employee’s readiness for advancement Define professional skill areas
Create an equitable salary structure
Create a positive and open environment for career discussion Ensure frequent feedback
Provide opportunity for advancement through a career path Encourage a “change to grow” environment
Developing a career development program for any profession can be challenging. In the project management profession, it is even more so because there are few models to draw upon, and the project management needs of an organization can be quite varied.
One of the first things an organization must do is take an inventory of the skills required for effective project management at all levels. (This is also, of course, the first step in developing competency requirements, as described in Chapter 3.) After developing a skills inventory, identifying the key attributes of those skills must be deter mined and a profile developed. Management must commit to meeting with employees at a minimum of twice a year to discuss opportunities and plans for advancing an employee’s career goals. Most importantly, tangible actions must be taken that assist the employee with achieving his or her career goals. If this does not occur, the credibility of a career development program will be weakened.4
A career path includes at least three valuable elements: (1) experiential requirements, (2) education/training requirements (knowledge acquisi- tion), and (3) documentation and tracking mechanisms. The experiential requirements detail the types of on-the-job activities that must be accom- plished for each level in the career path. The education and training requirements detail the types of knowledge required for each rung on the career ladder. At the lower levels, these tend to be basic courses designed to provide exposure and practice to the rudimentary skills required of that level. The upper-level positions require more advanced, strategic types of educational experiences that enhance leadership, inter- personal, and communications skills. These might include topics that go
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beyond the realm of project management into personal business strategy, financial, and political development. Documentation mechanisms include the attainment of certificates, degrees, or other credentials that substantiate the acquisition of the desired set of skills.
To support the validity of a career path, the next step is to ensure the availability of the necessary experiential and educational opportunities.
The experiential opportunities must be coordinated with the appropriate resource manager and the human resources department in the organiza- tion. The HR department is also valuable in the development of the training program. To be effective, information collected from the knowledge, behavior, and potential assessments is necessary to create a targeted training program. The educational program should be targeted to the requirements identified in the career path, and be designed in a progressive nature. That is, the training requirements of team members are prerequi- sites for project managers, etc. The most effective approach is to identify the learning requirements for each level and aggregate across all levels to get both introductory and advanced course requirements. Mentoring and coaching, in combination with other training and development, can help prepare the next generation of project leaders. (More guidance on mentoring is provided at the end of this chapter.)5
A broad range of experiences is required for future project managers.
It is not possible to develop them by restricting their experiences to one function. Thus, rather than climbing up the ladder of the functional silo, project managers benefit from being exposed to a number of functions, perhaps moving back to functions they have fulfilled before, but in a more senior role. One writer has labeled this “the spiral staircase” career path.6
The first important criterion for project manager success is the desire to be a manager in general and a project manager in particular. Many organizations force people into the position even if they are not adept at it and do not desire to become one. True, the project management position may be the only way to promotion beyond the job of technical specialist;
the step from technical specialist to project manager may be the assumed progression when there is no way to move up a technical ladder. It is far better, however, if alternative upward paths exist: one through technical managership and one through project managership (see Chapter 4 for a discussion of identifying these two sets of competencies in project man- agement). With such dual promotional ladders, technical managers can stay in their departments and become core team members responsible for the technical portions of projects. Dual ladders also allow progression through project management, but project managers must be able to manage technical specialists while handling the behavioral and adminis- trative tasks that motivate the specialists to do their best work.7
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A project manager’s multilevel career path can be developed around levels of competence in the following categories: education and experi- ence, interpersonal skills, technical coaching ability, business acumen, customer focus, project complexity, role in managing projects, and the industry or work environment.8
The best project managers come from a variety of different career paths. A software development project manager, for example, would find it highly beneficial to come from a background of development program- mer, team leader, and resource manager, three areas that help develop the technical, organizational, and leadership skills that are essential to being an effective project manager. A project manager would be further served by assisting a more experienced project manager for at least the first project. New project managers need mentoring. The mentor should be a seasoned project manager — or, as one project executive describes it, a “well-worn” project manager — with project successes (and failures) in his or her experience bank. The mentor’s primary role is to help the new project manager learn how to do things right the first time.9
PM Career Paths: Two Best-Practice Examples
Nearly a decade ago, a benchmarking study of project management in large organizations declared that “best practice project management groups make project management a career track … [and] develop clear and precise job descriptions to differentiate different types of project manager roles.”
At that time, however, only 31 percent of the benchmarked companies said that their companies had clear promotion paths.10
Project management has undergone a dramatic shift over the past decade. Some observers date the change from a 1995 article by Thomas Stewart in Fortune, celebrating “project manager” as the career of the future. Certainly, it was the first time the title had ever received such lofty press attention. Since then, mainstream business media from the Wall Street Journal to CFO have carried an increasing number of articles on project management and project managers. But large corporations are like oil tankers — they take a while to respond to changes in direction. Project management may be a hot topic of conversation, but project managers in many corporate environments still feel one-down when it comes to recognition and rewards; relegated to a dead-end job description within a functional department. However, some companies have worked to become “best-practice” in the area of career development for project managers. The two examples that follow — one large organization and one small organization — provide excellent examples of what can happen when we start giving project management the attention it deserves.
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Career Pathing for Project Managers at IBM
In the early 1990s, IBM looked at its corporate capability in pr oject management — not at the project managers themselves, but at the orga- nization — and decided improvement was critical. A consistent and broad understanding of how to manage projects throughout the company was lacking. Training was haphazard, with different programs going on in different parts of the company. With a common approach to educating project managers, the company hoped to have teams behaving in a common way. Because each project would not have to start by asking
“Do we need to complete a Project Charter?” or “What content should be included in our Project Charter?”, the company expected projects would get off to a quicker, better start.
IBM began by defining an approach to the education and career development of project managers. The first step was not only to define the skills, but also to define at what point in a career that skill was needed.
They noticed that beginning project managers need to learn certain skills immediately and, in most cases, their level of proficiency needed increases as they mature in their careers. However, in some cases, a skill needed early in a career atrophies and is replaced by other skills. For example, senior project managers may lose some of their proficiency in scheduling because they depend on someone to take care of that for them. They found that the needed skills and skill levels go up and down throughout project managers’ careers.
Next, the company created job codes for project managers so that everybody recognized that there was something significant about the people who do those jobs. At IBM, project manager is not an entry-level position. Project managers start in some technical area, whether coding or designing hardware or delivering services — even in HR or marketing.
They begin by being involved in doing the work related to their back- ground and progress, as their leadership skills grow, into team leadership positions. At that point, some people realize they like leading teams better than doing the technical work; others feel the opposite way.
IBM realized that, to some extent, project managers are a self-selecting group — although there are those who express interest in project man- agement and their manager must tell them they are not cut out for it.
While the company does not claim to have identifying a good project manager down to a science, it has identified a progression in terms of skills, from the core project management skills (scheduling and issue management, for example), and progressing beyond these into big picture issues — balancing priorities and making tradeoffs. The company married this concept of the progression of skills to some defined job codes and also to a program of education that supports skill development.
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The company’s project management education has three tiers. Tier One — basic or core skills — education from a vendor and modified the curriculum to include some internal content, so they learn not only generic project management but how we do certain things within IBM. When people complete that tier, they get a certificate in project management.
Both internal and vendor-supplied courses are accredited, so they can be applied to a graduate degree at another institution. The “stage-gate” for moving on the Tier Two is to pass the Project Management Institute’s Project Management Professional certification exam.
Tier Two and Tier Three focus more on experiences, on how the project manager applies learned skills inside IBM. At this level, topically focused workshop discussions with knowledgeable senior personnel take the place of classroom teaching. Tier Two also focuses on technical education. An IBM certification that focuses on their experiences within the company is the capstone of Tier Two.
Finally, top project managers — those in Tier Three — are required to show “giveback.” People who are mature in their skills are not only required to keep up their own skills, but also to give back to the community by mentoring, sharing experiences, presenting at conferences, helping teams develop programs … sharing the intellectual capital.
Educational opportunities are structured to allow people to take the courses they need in the right general order or timing. In addition, “just- in-time” materials are developed from the courses and applied directly to current projects to reinforce the education.
Targeted educational events are offered for specific parts of the project management community, such as a conference for those who are IBM- certified, where they interact with others of similar experience and levels of knowledge. These exchanges are taped and webcast. These community- building events are important because one of the issues project managers have is that, unlike programmers or engineers, where 50 or so work together in a group, project managers tend to feel isolated.
A further community-building tactic is that IBM believes you cannot educate only project managers. Everyone on a team must know something about project management, so that they know why the project manager is doing what he is doing. Therefore, modules out of the core project management curriculum have been inserted into the educational programs of other professionals in the company.
This program blends aspects of social learning and classroom learning and strives to meet both personal goal achievement needs and corporate needs. Career is a “whole-life” project, and the career progression programs at IBM appear to address that project holistically: progressively throughout an individual career, and consistently throughout the company.11
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Career Planning for Project Management Consultants at PM Solutions
In 2001, our own company, PM Solutions, a full service consulting orga- nization of more than 100 employees, implemented a career development program for its employees, resulting in major changes in the way we discuss performance, current skills, and future goals. The results of an employee survey highlighted the employees’ desire for a strong and proactive career development program. The three areas identified as needing the most improvement were (1) clearer definitions of roles and responsibilities, (2) more opportunity for promotion, and (3) more training opportunities.
The results of the employee survey validated the need for management to put in motion plans to address strong career development across the company. In addition to a career development program, there were other areas for improvement identified to complement building a robust career development program. These areas included:
Defining the required skills for project management
Developing a professional profile of a project manager with the requisite attributes
Aligning training programs and on-the-job experiences to fill the
“gaps” for the requisite skills required
Creating a promotability program using the professional profile Revamping the employee appraisal process and replacing it with
a merit review process
Building a succession planning tool through the promotability program
Due to the rapid growth of the company, skill development had not been the focus of the company; keeping up with r esource demands through hiring had been the major challenge. But it soon became apparent that, to prepare associates for new job assignments and to enrich their professional lives, the company needed to focus strongly on career devel- opment and begin to offer a positive career path.
The resulting career development program addressed improving pro- cess excellence and developing human capital to the point where asso- ciates could feel optimistic about career growth prospects. Since the program was implemented, feedback has been exceedingly positive, despite the fact that follow-through on the actual development plans has sometimes proven to be a challenge due to resource and budget constraints.12
To better define skills, functional positions were created such as Planner I and Planner II, and Project Manager and Senior Project Manager (see Tables 6.1 and 6.2). For each of the functional positions, skills in ten
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TABLE 6.1 Program/Project Manager Career Growth Potential
Position Organizational Level
Project Leadership Track
Chief Project Officer Enterprise
Strategic Project Office Director Enterprise
Project Office Director Divisional/Departmental
Portfolio Manager Enterprise
Manager of Enterprise Project Managers Enterprise
Manager, Project Managers Divisional/Departmental
Global Program Manager Enterprise
Enterprise Program Manager II Enterprise
Enterprise Program Manager I Enterprise
Enterprise Project Manager II Enterprise
Enterprise Project Manager I Enterprise
Program/Project Mentor I, II Enterprise or Divisional
Program Manager II Divisional
Program Manager I Divisional
Project Manager III Divisional/Departmental
Project Manager II Divisional/Departmental
Project Manager I Divisional/Departmental
Project Planning and Control Track
Chief Project Officer Enterprise
Strategic Project Office Director Enterprise
Project Office Director Divisional/Departmental
Manager of Enterprise Project Support Enterprise
Manager, Project Support Divisional/Departmental
Enterprise Project Controller Enterprise
Project Controller II Divisional/Departmental
Project Controller I Divisional/Departmental
Project Planner II Divisional/Departmental
Project Planner I Divisional/Departmental
Project Estimator II Divisional/Departmental