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Project Management Network for Excellence in Learning & Teaching
Rethinking Project Management
Miles Shepherd
Visiting Fellow
Bournemouth Business School
Project Management Network for Excellence in Learning & Teaching
Background to Network
• National need for programme and project
management skills,
• Growth and increasing complexity in project work,
• Growing importance of projects in organisations &
government,
• Increasing membership of associations,
• Perceptions of the failure of projects,
• Dissatisfaction with the discipline and profession.
Project Management Network for Excellence in Learning & Teaching
Focus Areas
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7.
Shaping & Planning the Network
Making sense of the field (context)
Making sense of PM practice
PM in different sectors
Rethinking the foundations
New research directions
Messages for Industry
Project Management Network for Excellence in Learning & Teaching
Meetings
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6.
7.
UMIST – Content, context and process
UCL – Emerging themes and new perspectives
Newcastle – Projects Across Different Sectors
London – Projectification & Managing Multiple Projects
Strathclyde – Actuality & Uncertainty
Bath – The Profession and Practitioner Development
Manchester – Research Topics, Industry Messages &
Network Review
Project Management Network for Excellence in Learning & Teaching
Practitioner Development Concerns
• The recognition of the multiplicity of project
management roles and competencies.
• Project management requires a wider range of
knowledge than conceived in the past - How can it be
brought to bear in practice?
• Thinking about uncertainty needs to be more
sophisticated.
• There are some contexts for which the APM Body of
Knowledge (BoK) is wrong.
Project Management Network for Excellence in Learning & Teaching
Concerning ‘Practitioner Development’:
• How practitioners learn and develop.
• Reclaiming the knowledge – professional
associations vs academic institutions.
Project Management Network for Excellence in Learning & Teaching
Reclaiming the knowledge
There is excessive focus on what to do - methods and
tools (Prince2) - and an unhelpful separation of training
and practice. More attention is required to address: front
end definition, ‘soft’ skills, understanding of types of
knowledge, social processes (CoP), learning in context,
development of judgement, the need for ‘educated’ senior
managers. Soft skills to address: ‘reading’, perception,
self-awareness, judgement, engaging with complexity
and uncertainty, intuition. Consideration should be given
to: simulation, coaching, double-loop learning, combined
individual and group learning, and combining individual
development with and organisational development.
Project Management Network for Excellence in Learning & Teaching
Practitioner Development
• The process of professionalisation
• Knowledge issues
• Implications for academia
Project Management Network for Excellence in Learning & Teaching
Professionalisation Issues
• the excessive focus on what to do - methods and
tools – rather than craft knowledge
• the dislocation between training, development
and practice
• the excessive focus on knowledge acquisition at
the expense of capability development.
Project Management Network for Excellence in Learning & Teaching
The process of professionalisation
• The role of the professional associations.
• The relationship between BoKs, practitioners and
certification.
• Scope: breadth of project management
knowledge.
• Contexts – whether there are any contexts where
BoKs are inappropriate.
Project Management Network for Excellence in Learning & Teaching
BoK Issues
• understanding what the BoK is for, and the
clarity of the definition of the profession,
• the ethical stance to be taken – whether clientorientated or contractual,
• the underlying theory of project management,
• the research design – being based on opinions
rather than investigation.
Project Management Network for Excellence in Learning & Teaching
Network view on BoK as Standard
• It is reasonable that governments should demand or impose standards,
since they suffer from gross wastage on projects. However it is not
logical that they should limit this regulation to project execution.
• We should query whether the trend and process whereby BoKs become
established and hard to change is inevitable.
• That the APM may need to rethink its policy of coupling BoK and
professional certification. Other profession (eg GMC) leave knowledge
ownership to the universities.
• It is essential that academia fulfils its role to describe things as they see
them – to go beyond the formal BoK and similar. There is a need for
independent research based knowledge.
• Practitioners will welcome the rethinking of boundaries and expansion
of the curricula, but will resist changes to the certification levels.
Project Management Network for Excellence in Learning & Teaching
Areas for Consideration
• The need to consider how the BoK is used in
practice, and how practitioners relate to it, use it,
ignore it, work round it etc
• The value and limitations of codified knowledge,
and whether it is beneficial or detrimental to
practitioner development.
• Whether BoKs are adequate for guiding
practitioners.
Project Management Network for Excellence in Learning & Teaching
Areas for Consideration - 2
• The distinction between a BoK and a “guide to
the BoK” (PMI).
• The distinction between a formal BoK and a
wider less defined ‘bok’.
• The distinction between a BoK (defining) and
‘models’ (for use).
• The wider body of management knowledge that
is relevant.
Project Management Network for Excellence in Learning & Teaching
Areas for Consideration - 3
• That in other disciplines there are restrictions on
practice by those who cannot prove their
knowledge.
• The need or otherwise for project management to
have a code of ethics.
• Auditable following of procedures vs the
application of professional judgement.
Project Management Network for Excellence in Learning & Teaching
Areas for Consideration - 4
• Whether project management professionals are
equivalent to others – professionals whose decisions and
actions can be trusted in complex situations.
• The means by which professional groups use BoK to
close off alternative approaches.
• The value, or otherwise, of certification of professional
groups by nation states.
• The importance of developing the capabilities of project
clients – client development.
Project Management Network for Excellence in Learning & Teaching
Reclaiming Knowledge
In traditional professions, knowledge is claimed
by academic institutions while practice remains in
the domain of the practitioner. In PM, both are
claimed by the associations.
This stultifies innovation and leads to conflicts of
interest – equivalent to protection by a guild. A
preferable cycle is for academics to carry out
research, and then codify knowledge which is
dispersed in the public domain..
Project Management Network for Excellence in Learning & Teaching
Reclaiming Knowledge – Current Issues
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Intellectual ownership (cross-disciplinary)
Resourcing and funding,
Handling pluralism,
The function of project management,
The nature of knowledge and the role of
government
Project Management Network for Excellence in Learning & Teaching
Further information…
Papers from all meetings are available from:
www.rethinkingpm.org.uk