The concept of professional development brings to mind Marcus Buck- ingham’s book, Now, Discover Your Strengths.13 In it, he describes how great managers develop their people: They pay attention to the talents of
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their subordinates and find ways of giving them the opportunity to use that talent over and over again. In many ways, this is the opposite of the traditional concept of professional development, which has focused on what is missing in people. We need to develop ourselves, the logic goes, because there is an inherent weakness that we must overcome with more training and education. In this view of professional development, managers identify what is broken and urge the employees to “fix themselves.”
But in Buckingham’s view, great managers recognize talent and provide the opportunity to expand on that talent rather than focusing on what their people do not have. He recommends that organizations move toward a talent-based model rather than a deficit-based model.
Applying this logic to project management, one thing we quickly notice is that in the past, project management development has been almost entirely restricted to the project manager track. Yet an organization’s project man- agement capability also depends upon planners, schedulers, cost account managers, analysts, and others that make the administration of a project succeed. Each of these positions requires a discrete level of skill and knowl- edge. And those who succeed at these positions generally have the talent to do them well. They may or may not have the skills or desire to move into project manager positions — but in the past, our approach to these individuals has been to try to turn them into project managers. This goal may be ideal for some, but others will have to abandon what they do well, and feel good doing so, in order to follow the prescribed path to “success.”
By contrast, the job descriptions, competency analyses, and career paths that we have described thus far in this book are all geared toward creating a professional development environment focused on maximizing the talents of all project management personnel. Supported by these processes and artifacts, managers can focus on opportunities that support the individual’s development of their talents while, at the same time, adding to the skills and knowledge of that individual. When professional development is directed at getting better at what we do best, company performance can only improve.14
But what is the best way to facilitate that improvement? Certainly, by shifting employees of talent into the career paths and roles that most favor their development, one eliminates the wasted energy of trying to pound the square peg of technical brilliance into the round hole of project management finesse. But even within these roles and career paths, a multitude of options exists for training, educating, and developing innate talents.
Education and Training
From 1998 to 2001, money spent on learning as a retention tool increased 15 percent, according to Hackett Benchmarking and Research, and since
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then the market for project management training specifically has boomed.15 New technologies have added the option of distance learning to the mix.
The wealth of programs available is, of course, a benefit to companies seeking training vendors for project management personnel. But it also has created two business pressures previously rare in the PM training market:
the pressure to prove the ROI of such training and increased difficulty in choosing training options. (See Appendix F for statistics from the Center for Business Practices’ survey on the value of project management training.)
In a 2002 interview, Dr. Jimmie West, dean of the PM College, wel- comed both the diversity of training options and the challenge to calculate ROI. The ROI issue, he asserted, brought more realism to project man- agement training. As a result, the examples and case studies we use in the classroom have immediate transferability to the workplace. Once PM training was largely theoretical; but now, when students leave the class- room, they are looking for an immediate impact on the way they do their job. People now spend a shorter time in the classroom, which forces the trainer to focus on essential critical elements.
The new pattern for PM training is to have more, and shorter, courses.
A general introduction can be followed by focused, brief courses on specific areas. This also leads to better customization of training content.
A part of that customization is the balancing of classroom training, on- the-job experience (also known as “just-in-time” training), and distance or self-paced learning. According to Dr. West, distance learning has great potential application for teaching prerequisites to courses; for example, learning the theory behind project management and acquiring the basic concepts and language. Tom Edwards, vice president of training, education and development for Bell Atlantic Corp., describes computer-based train- ing as effective from both cost and employee-development perspectives.16 Classroom training will never go away because the classroom is where students get to apply concepts and get feedback on an immediate basis from teachers and from fellow students, so that performance and under- standing are validated. Sharing of information is much more free in real- time than it can be on the Web; it is a “richer” environment.
Just-in-time training also fits some specific needs. It is a motivational device; one can interject humor and fun into learning in a just-in-time environment. It can also be a powerful team-building experience. Just-in- time training also helps students retain what they learn. Traditional wisdom says that students attending a class forget 40 percent of what they learned within 30 days if their training is not put to immediate use.17
One benefit of computer-based training via CD-ROM or the Internet is timely delivery, which can, in fact, be more important than depth of content. Computer-based training succeeds, not because it is the most comprehensive, but because it delivers usable knowledge to the student
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on the day it is needed. A two-day project management class delivered the day before building the project plan is often worth more to the business than a week-long course delivered two months earlier.18
West recommends a progression from distance learning, to the class- room, and then following up in the short term with just-in-time training to refresh what has been learned. Using all three methods, one accom- modates the various learning styles present in a diverse group of people.
Differences in age, social relationships, family position, maturity, patience, and interests require different training approaches. People also have differing learning speeds and styles based on their cognitive styles. A single pace of learning cannot keep the attention of a diverse group.
The typical student attention span for a stand-up lecture is seven to ten minutes. Thus, effective training delivery must vary between lecture, hands-on, textbook, video, CD, computer, and other media to keep the attention of the student. One method that dramatically increases retention of training is to test the student immediately after teaching a module.
The ROI Question
Well-planned training investments are rewarded. According to a study sponsored by Saba and the American Society for Training and Develop- ment, companies that invested above-average amounts in training outper- formed the market by 45 percent in the next year.19 And the Center for Business Practices’ Value of Project Management Training study reveals that organizations overwhelmingly improved in a number of areas as a result of project management training. The relationship between classroom and workplace performance is highlighted by the finding that 91 percent of the organizations showed a moderate to extreme improvement in the individual’s on-the-job performance. They also show moderate to extreme improvement in a variety of business measures, including customer satis- faction, productivity, and cost-schedule-requirements performance.20 Most companies are now at least making an effort to figure the ROI of training.
Table 6.4 lists some common metrics that are tracked in these efforts.
Within the company, however, it can be a challenge to tie specific improvements to specific training modules, especially in the realm of “soft benefits” associated with process improvements. One of the conundrums of project management training is that, although quantitative ROI mea- surement is the first thing every executive asks for, and although it is drawn from comparison of fairly obvious factors (project performance metrics, variance analysis, schedule and budget compliance, risk avoid- ance), the problem is that one must have a fairly sophisticated project performance tracking in place to even get these numbers. How many companies that are just beginning to train for project management even
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TABLE 6.4 Measuring Training Effectiveness: Some Common Metrics
Training Inputs % of Companies Reporting
Total training expenditures 88
Number of employees receiving training 88
Number of courses 77
Payments to outside training providers 75
Total training time/days 74
Tuition reimbursements 72
Wages and salaries of training personnel 68
Trainee travel expenses 42
Course development expenditures 40
Cost of facilities and equipment 38
Training expenditure per employee 34
Training expenditure as a % of payroll 31
Course development time 29
Contributions to outside training funds 12
Lost wages and salaries of trainees 11
Training expenditure as a % of sales 8
Training Outcomes
Customer satisfaction 69
Job satisfaction 38
Productivity 37
Return on expectations 35
Safety violations 28
Sales 22
Return on investment 20
Turnover 20
Cost/benefit ratio 18
Waste reduction 15
Grievances 12
Profitability 9
Absenteeism 8
Source: National HRD Executive Survey, www.astd.org, 1997.
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know they need such systems? Even once performance tracking is in place, one cannot get a comparative measurement in much less than two years.
Keep in mind that a complete ROI study is appropriate for only about 10 to 20 percent of training programs. For example, if rolling out a new software package, the need to train the IT staff is obvious. Therefore, doing an ROI process would be pointless. Similarly, analyzing the returns on a low-cost noon-time seminar probably is not worth the effort. On the other hand, a good candidate for an ROI study is a training program that probably has a very long life cycle, is very closely tied to operational goals, is strategically focused, is very expensive and has a high visibility.21 That said, there are steps that every project office should take to pave the way for measuring the ROI of project management training.
Establish a Baseline
Using the data available to you as the head of the project management office, or the product development group, or the systems development group, one can establish a current baseline. Determine the percentage of projects running behind schedule or over-budget, or being de-scoped to fit by analyzing the data provided in project status reports and user feedback. Further analysis of those projects will indicate which ones are in trouble because of a lack of trained manager — those with the predictable risk that happened without a mitigation plan, those that are late because a crucial resource requirement was not anticipated. And staff turnover — or to put it more positively, the staff retention rate — is readily available from your Human Resources function. Another baseline that can be developed is Organizational Project Manager Competency:
competency would be assessed, using the instruments discussed in Chap- ters 3 and 4, and a baseline established. Knowledge, skills, and traits development progress measured periodically thereafter can show the trend in improved competency, which can be linked to project performance or even to financial performance.
There are two quantifiable measures related to the corporate bottom line that are readily available, and even more important, relatively easy to measure: (1) project performance and (2) staff retention.
Project Performance
The bottom-line measure of success is often posed as a question: Are you delivering projects in accordance with expectations (schedule, budget, quality — the time-honored “triple constraint”)? The ability to show an improvement in project performance as a result of training often hinges on being able to demonstrate that an individual project manager was able
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to apply his or her training to the project. Therefore, when sending a project manager to a training class, consider how that individual will apply the training and how the manager will know that it is having an impact.
One method is to measure the individual’s knowledge and competency before the class begins and then again after the class or series of classes, such as those that comprise a Master’s Certificate Program.
Be prepared to actively review project charters, work breakdown structures, status reports, and other project artifacts. Look for behavioral changes such as scheduled project team meetings and timely status report generation, with project issues being resolved. Solicit feedback from project stakeholders, including users and team members; ask how they feel the project is going. And above all, discuss the project with the project manager; ask how he or she is applying what was learned in the classroom.
However, keep in mind that a project manager does not manage a project in a vacuum. Unless the rest of the organization has been exposed to management by projects and understands their roles and responsibilities to the project, the project manager cannot succeed.
Staff Retention
Another qualitative measure one can use is staff retention rate. Project managers have careers they are interested in enhancing — either while employed with you or with someone else. Providing project managers with the right opportunity to participate in skills development training is a powerful tool to retaining them. Consider the project managers’ work schedules when scheduling training. These resources often cannot spend a week, or even two full days, away from their respective projects. To address this challenge, consider offering courses more than once, perhaps even during off-hours. This allows the project manager who cannot attend the session Tuesday morning because he has a project review scheduled at that time to possibly attend the same session on Thursday evening.
Establish a process to monitor these metrics during the period that the training is being offered. If there is no improvement, conduct the analysis to determine why. Are the right people attending the right training? Are there other factors preventing project success that are not related to the training (i.e., organizational politics)?22
Set Training Targets
While most business leaders set financial targets, organizational goals, and objectives, few set measurable goals for employee training. First develop a list of tasks that you want your employees to be able to accomplish.
Determine how the training is connected to a business need. Too often,
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training is put in place without enough forethought. It may be the right thing to do, but we would like to precede that with an understanding of how it helps the business if we do the training.
Make sure the program has clear objectives. Training programs should have a learning objective: some observable and measurable behavior at the end of the process. There are five types of learning objectives:
1. Awareness: a familiarity with terms, concepts, and processes.
2. Knowledge: a general understanding of concepts, processes, or procedures.
3. Performance: an ability to demonstrate skills on at least a basic level.
4. Application: “What do we expect you to do differently?”
5. Impact: “What business measure will you drive if you do this?”
Impact objectives are often hard data such as output, quality, cost, and time. Soft-data impact objectives include customer service, work climate, and work habits. What is often missing from training programs are the application and impact objectives.23
Now, measuring ROI on a qualitative basis is pretty readily accessible.
Are we changing behaviors? Are they doing the things they need to do?
For example, are project charters now a part of the company culture? If not, training has not had any impact. Are they doing risk management plans? Communication plans? We can collect artifacts that show the changed behaviors. Here they are: the lessons learned. If I see a quanti- tative leap in the project documents produced, I can assume increased attention to project management.24
ROI data alone does not address other key business impacts, such as increased employee morale, better communications, or increased customer satisfaction, enhanced corporate image, improved conflict resolution, increased sensitivity to human diversity, and increased employee loyalty.
While less tangible, and therefore more difficult to convert to dollar figures, these “soft benefits” are important. They cannot be directly measured but they can be inferred or indirectly measured by associated outcomes. One way to approximate the value of soft benefits is to ask experts within your organization to give a monetary figure for these intangibles.
Most of the time, of course, improvements in job performance are only partially due to training programs. Variables other than the training — trainees’ age and work experience, economic changes, shifts in managerial styles, customer attitudes — might influence the data, making it difficult to determine the actual effect of the training on the ROI results. One way to measure the effects of extraneous factors is to compare the results of a control group with the results of the trainee group. The experimental group receives training; the control group does not. Trend-line analysis,
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forecasting, participant estimation, supervisor estimation, management esti- mation, customer input, expert estimation, subordinate input, and other factors are additional ways to isolate training’s effect on performance.25
Who Should Be Trained?
There are four audiences for training and each one needs a different depth and focus:
1. Executives need awareness training to give them an appreciation of what project management can do for them, and to teach them how to ask the right questions to get the right information so they can make good decisions.
2. Practitioners (project managers) need training designed around their present level of capability. One does not design a uniform training program — one designs a program that meets the needs of the population. Train all levels, from novice PMs to experts who need refreshers. Assess the practitioner audience for areas of strength and weakness and design around that.
3. Matrix organization functional managers need training in three areas: (a) their role in a project environment (as resource owners), (b) the role of project management in the organization, and finally, (c) an overview of what project management is all about. A related audience is ancillary managers, such as HR and finance, who support projects. The need for functional managers to receive project management training was highlighted in a recent field study published in the project management journal. One of the findings was that, even when project managers are knowledgeable about risk management, poor risk management results when functional managers do not have any formal risk management training.26 4. Team members on the project need to understand both the big
picture and their supporting roles. Encourage “would-be” project managers to participate in the training as well. Use training to grow the skills one will need to address the staff transition that will occur, to ensure there will a pool of trained staff upon which to draw.
Executives and project managers should be trained simultaneously.
The executives are change agents and project champions. If project managers know that executives are going to be asking them questions they might not be able to answer, they pay more attention. It improves performance at the same time it raises expectations on the part of exec- utives, so the two trainings reinforce each other.27