How good are your project management skills?
Naturally, you want to develop your career. So it makes sense that you should be interested in developing your project management knowledge and experience. And, if we combine these together, we can talk about competency.
As part of developing your career, you would ideally measure your competency. Having the ability to measure your competency against a benchmark is great, but it is not an option for most people in many professions. Fortunately, however, this option is very much open to you.
The new APM Competence Framework, launched in June 2015, allows you to do just this. It describes APM’s new view of the competencies necessary to be effective in project, programme, portfolio management and PMO roles in today’s environment. It has been created by professionals for professionals and it provides a common reference for all individuals and organisations engaged in project activities – regardless of their size, sector or geographic location.
So how does it work? There are 27 competencies that make up the full framework. Review each competency and score yourself (be honest!) on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is ‘aware’ and 5 is ‘expert’.
You are likely to score low on some competencies. This is fine. You don’t need to be an expert in everything. APM has defined a series of 14 role profiles that are available to all corporate members. For example, a project manager (intermediate) should achieve a score of ‘proficient’ in conflict management, but only needs to score ‘aware’ for asset allocation.
APM has provided a handy self assessment form on which you can record your scores; you can even ask your manager to complete a scoring as well. It’s important to be honest and recognise that you will have gaps in your knowledge and application, but that’s the point. Knowing your areas of weakness, assuming they are relevant to your role, gives you a clear focus for improvement.
So, the key to developing your career is developing your competency. To develop your competency, you need to benchmark and get the ball rolling.
Vince Hines is managing director at Wellingtone Project Management, an APM career development partner.
Other blogs in this series:
- Don’t be afraid to move industry. Your skills have universal relevance
- What are you worth?
- Your career is your own personal project
- Being 'social' is essential to your career success
- Making the jump from project coordinator to project manager
- Is it time to go contracting?
Find out more about starting / developing a career in project management
Vince is the Managing Director of Wellingtone PPM; the project management consulting company based in Windsor, Berkshire. We retain a particular focus not just in the UK but Ireland and Spain. Wellingtone is the only organisation that is both a Microsoft Gold Partner with the PPM Specialisation as well as an APM Accredited training provider. Wellingtone is also the exclusive UK partner of the PMO Global Alliance and PMO Value Ring as well as PMOtto; the AI Bot for MS Project Online.
Wellingtone works closely with the APM and sponsors the Annual Salary Survey as well as the PMO of the Year Award. We also run our PMO focused annual conference; FuturePMO. We have developed courses in Legal Project Management and the PMO, both of which have been Accreditred by the APM as part of the APM Professional Courses route.
Our "PPM Intelligence" is also demonstrated by publishing The State of Project Management; the largest piece of annual reseearch of its kind in conjunction with UCL, the APM PMO SIG and the APM Systems Thinking SIG.
Vince is an expert Project Management Consultant, having worked with clients across the UK, US and Europe. He retains a number of professional qualifications including MAPM and has extensive real world experience of developing client project management maturity. As an active member of the APM community Vince is also a judge for the Annual APM Awards.
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