APM Project Management Training Guide

Many people believe that for a project manager to be successful, they need to have not only good project management skills and experience but also previous experience of the business area or industry in which they are working. This view is probably so widespread because they have often, in the past, simply progressed from one role within an organisation into a project management role in the same company. Their previous experience is often seen as a bonus and they are just thrown in at the deep end of project management and have to quickly get up to speed with a relevant training course, or worse, no training at all.

But do project managers who have reached their current role in this way have any greater success than a formally trained professional? Or do they find it difficult to remove themselves from viewing the project at a detailed level because they understand the business in-depth but are then prevented from seeing the project from a wider perspective. It can actually be a disadvantage to get too involved in the detail of individual tasks and activities.

A professional project manager will have been trained in a wide range of skills that are transferable across businesses and will have built up enough practical experience to be able to gather the right amount of information about the business in order to understand the needs of the client. After all you wouldn’t expect other professionals such as lawyers or accountants to know everything about your business – they just need to understand enough to do their job properly.

It could be argued that there are some industries where detailed knowledge of that industry is a pre-requisite for a project manager and that may be the case in certain technical areas such as IT but it is not the case for the vast majority of projects being undertaken across a wide range of businesses. An understanding of building and motivating a team, planning and managing tasks, risk and change, and having the skills to interface effectively with a range of employees from senior managers and stakeholders right down to the most junior team member are far more important skills for a project manager to have.

So if you want to develop your career fully and have the confidence and freedom to move into new business areas, organisations or even industries then concentrate on developing your project management skills and don’t worry too much about your business or industry knowledge.

Ensure you have the confidence and ability to talk with business heads about defining the goals and objectives of a project, determining the expected benefits and the impact on the status quo, and where the project sits in terms of overall priority within the business. Assist with documenting the detailed business requirements and clearly describing the project by being an effective interface between the business heads and users and the project team who will deliver the end-product.

Then increase yours and the project team’s chance of success by ensuring you document who owns the project, who the stakeholders are and what criteria will define its success. And also ensure you establish a proper communication strategy and that you understand the reporting requirements.

Then you can actually get started with planning and running the project, assessing and managing the risks and establishing a solid change management process.

And, before you start, don’t forget to ensure that enough budget, time and people have been allocated so that the project is at least feasible at the outset.

When you consider all these project management skills that are required you wonder how a project manager would actually find the time to get closely involved with the detail of the tasks – even if he/she did have the relevant business knowledge. Far better to focus on developing yourself as a project professional and gaining transferable qualifications such as one of the APMP accreditations or a PMP Certification.

Perhaps the toughest part of any project is finding and assigning the right project manager. Many organisations promote staff to this role from within the organisation. These people know the company, its ethos and the other staff who are likely to be team members. They are experienced in their current role and looking for a new challenge. What could possibly go wrong? These are the project managers who have acquired this role by default.

The reasons for assigning a project manager role to an individual from within an organisation are sound ones – knowledge of the company, its products and people should by no means be underestimated. But whether that person has the necessary skills to lead a project is not always taken into account and there can be just as many problems with promoting internally as in hiring an unknown, but experienced, person from a different organisation who has specifically chosen this profession.

In fact, does the person interviewing for the role of project manager even know which attributes to look out for in the potential candidates? The skills and attributes required by a truly competent project manager are wide and varied and go far beyond the qualifications they may possess. The attitude, personality and soft skills of the candidate must also be considered but this is often difficult to assess accurately at interview.

So, within an organisation, many project managers still drift into the role or have it thrust upon them because of the growing need within businesses for people to control the work, the budget and the time of the many projects being initiated. These internally promoted project managers tend to come from a purely managerial background or a purely technical background and often lack the skills and competencies required to manage a complex project successfully. So along with the boom in projects has come a boom in the need for training so that these individuals can acquire the necessary skills.

Project management is still a relatively new profession but increasingly, as in established professions such as law or accountancy, professional credentials are available to provide recognition for stages, achievements and milestones on the project management career path.

Many of these relatively recent accreditations recognise (and, indeed, demand) practical experience so they avoid the problems associated with some project management courses where candidates gain a theoretical knowledge of processes and techniques, but lack the practical experience required to fully understand the realities of a real project environment. Because of the considerable effort required to attain these credentials, they are also indicative of a desire to continue within the profession.

The personality traits of an individual are those innate characteristics that are difficult to teach and to learn, yet are key factors in the success of a project. Personal values and motivation also contribute to a project’s success or failure.

Skills, or competencies, on the other hand can be taught and learned – project management, as with many roles, has a basic set of skills required to perform the role effectively, which include attributes such as:

• ability to lead a team
• composure
• motivation
• conscientiousness
• management of expectations
• problem solving

Many of these attributes only come to the fore when an individual is exposed to an opportunity or experience (such as a formal project management course) that enables them to be learnt. Standard definitions of core competencies are published by organisations such as the PMI and their PMP Certification is widely accepted as recognition of professional competence. For those new to project management the APM Introductory Certificate is a good first place to start your training. So project manager by choice or not – perhaps it is innate attributes and opportunities in training and experience that define success, or not.

A detailed project plan with a realistic schedule and well-defined milestones is vital for project success. Preparing the plan is one thing but it is also necessary to follow the plan – assuming that the plan is a good one.

The most effective project managers understand the importance of a robust project plan with reasonable estimates for each activity. So a considerable amount of time and effort usually goes into preparing the project plan. It requires enough detail so that every task can be assigned to the right person or team and they understand what is expected of them and when. It details dependencies between tasks so that risks can be thoroughly assessed and is one of the fundamental building blocks of a successful project.

But what happens if the plan is fundamentally flawed? Or if requirements change substantially part way through a project and the plan becomes meaningless? In such circumstances it can actually be detrimental to project success to continue to follow the plan. The project manager and the project team need to be flexible and adaptable in their approach to the project plan. Sticking rigidly to what was first specified is simply failing to grasp the realities of most projects.

And if it becomes obvious that the plan is flawed, you need to admit this and modify it to correct the errors. It may be a hard thing to admit but blindly following a plan that you know to be flawed will obviously never lead to a good outcome.

New or inexperienced project managers may be unprepared for the amount of flexibility required in real-life project plans and how many changes are required to the plan during the course of the project but experienced project managers will know that this is typical of most, if not all, complex projects.

Changes within projects can occur for a variety of reasons: essential staff leave, business priorities change, requirements become clearer as the project progresses, the business objective may simply change due to market forces. Changes can be due to internal factors within the organisation or external factors concerning suppliers or providers of outsourced services but whatever the reasons it is through the experience of managing many complex projects that you will learn that change is a normal part of every business and every project.

The best project managers employ project plans as a starting point into which will be built more information and details from team members working on individual tasks, from reassessment of the project’s resources as the project progresses and reviews of the business requirements and ultimate objective. It is, therefore, essential that you know how to monitor the status of projects and resources, and how to obtain meaningful feedback from team members and end-users.

Anyone involved in a project who believes that a project plan can be put in place at the outset of the project and simply followed through to a successful outcome is either inexperienced or has only ever worked on very simple projects.

So it is important to recognise that a failed project is not one that deviates from the project plan or schedule (or even the budget) but one that fails to deliver what the client needs or wants. Altering a plan to deliver what is required is simply one step on the path to delivering a successful project and should always be viewed as such. It is essential that everyone involved in the project is aware from the start that the plan is likely to change over time but it is just as important that the current plan is adhered to. It is a difficult balancing act to convince the stakeholders of the veracity of the plan at the outset whilst preparing them for the fact that it might change. No wonder so many people try to struggle on with an unsuitable plan rather than admit it needs updating but, nevertheless, this is what you must do to be successful.

A project plan will only create a problem if the project manager (or anyone else involved in the project) refuses to alter it to take account of changes that happen during the lifetime of the project. When you consider that many projects have a timeframe of several years it is unrealistic to expect the plan to remain unchanged.

All too often, failing projects become an operation to determine why the project is deviating from the plan and how to get it back on track instead of looking at how the objective could still be reached. This may be difficult to do, particularly when the original plan was part of the justification for the project, but it is not impossible if you concentrate on what the original business objective was. In fact many of the formal project methodologies focus on the business objective as the major factor in successful projects.

Project managers can often learn from previous projects and prepare for the next project by recording the differences between the expected schedule, budget etc and the actual data. Applying lessons learned to the next project will assist in managing the expectations of all those involved and improve the results of each successive project, which is why the most successful project managers are often the most experienced. But, for the less-experienced, there are project management courses on recognised methodologies such as PRINCE2, PMP Certification, and APM PQ that will teach many of the techniques that experienced project managers have had to learn the hard way.