Project Management Competencies in the Project-Oriented Organization

Competence can be defined as knowledge and experience for the performance of a business process. The specific competencies a POO requires relate to the performance of the previously described processes. Next the individual, team, and organizational competencies to perform the project management process will be analyzed in detail.

Project Management Competencies of Individuals

The project management competencies required by individuals differ according to the project roles to be fulfilled. The following project roles can be performed by individuals: project owner, project manager, project management assistant, project team member, and project contributor. The specific project management functions to be performed by a project manager can be described in a role description.

From the role description (Table 2) it is obvious that the project manager requires knowledge and experience not just to apply project management methods, but also to creatively design the project management process.

Functions in the project start process

• Know-how transfer from the pre-project phase into the project

• Development of adequate project plans

• Design of an adequate project organization

• Performance of risk management

• Design of project-context-relations

• etc.

Functions in the project controlling process

• Determination of the project status

• Redefinition of project objectives

• Development of project progress reports

• etc.

Functions in the project discontinuing management process

• Analysis of the situation and definition of ad-hoc measures

• Development of project scenarios

• Definition of strategies and further measures

• Communication of the project discontinuity to relevant project environments

• etc.

Functions in the project close-down process

• Coordination of the final contents work

• Transfer of know-how into the base organization

• Dissolution of project-environment relations

• etc.

This ability relates to:

• The selection of the project management methods appropriate for a given project

• The selection of the appropriate communication structures

• The facilitation of the different workshops and meetings

• The selection of the participants for the different workshops and meetings

• The decision to involve a project consultant

• The definition of the appropriate form for the project management documentations.

The project management competence of a project manager is the capability to fulfill all functions specified in the role description. Besides the project management knowledge and experience for a given project type, a project manager needs, to a certain degree, knowledge about the product and the organizations involved in the project. In international projects cultural awareness and language knowledge are prerequisites also.

Project Management Competencies of Project Teams

In order to perform a project successfully, a project team requires competencies. The competencies of a project team can be defined as the project management competencies of the project team members plus the social knowledge and experience of the team to commonly create the "big project picture", to produce synergies, to solve conflicts, and to ensure learning in the team.

A project team cooperates in workshops and meetings. The application of project plans, such as a work breakdown structure, a schedule, a project environment analysis, and so forth, have to be understood as tools to support the communication in the project team.

Project Management Competencies of the Project-Oriented Organization

Not just individuals, but also organizations have the capability to acquire knowledge and to experience and store it in a "collective mind" (Senge 1994; Weik and Roberts 1993). Willke (1998) describes organizational knowledge as hidden in organizational principles that define the way organizations work. Such organizational principles, which define the way projects are managed, are project management procedures, project management templates, and standard project plans.

Further, the organizational project management competence can be analyzed by observing the project management practices applied in specific projects. The project management documentations resulting from the project management sub-processes, the quality of project team meetings, the form of project marketing, and so on can be evaluated. Project management is subject to quality, too.

The project management competence of the POO can be described and assessed with a "project management competence" model (Gareis and Huemann 1998). The project management competence can be presented in the POO "spider web" model (Figure 7).

Figure 7: POO Spider Web

The overall competence of a POO is presented by the area resulting from the connection of the competence points at the spider web axes. The competence of a POO cannot only be shown in a spider web model but also a POO maturity ratio can be calculated. The POO ratio is the weighted sum of the competencies for the performance of the specific processes.