Are activities part of the WBS?
I got an email earlier today from an asapm member who wanted an answer to the title questions above. I told him “yes,” and he then quoted my words from the 1996 version of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge back to me:
“The activity list must include all activities which will be performed on the project. It should be organized as an extension to the WBS to help ensure that it is complete and that it does not include any activities which are not required as part of the project scope.” (emphasis added)
To me, this argument is a total waste of time. This is project management’s version of “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” If I take the lowest level of the WBS, and break it up into 4 activities, why not just include those 4 activities as part of the WBS? Why maintain two lists? Where is the added value?
Why did I change my position? Actually, I didn’t. The words in the 1996 document represented political expediency. During reviews of various drafts, there were a bunch of people who either (a) confused the CWBS with the WBS, or (b) worked in construction where the prime doesn’t develop a complete WBS. Both groups insisted that activities should not be part of the WBS as they understood it. I accommodated them.
So while the activities may be separated from the WBS on some projects or in some application areas, the split is artificial. You can take the drawers out of your dresser and say that the drawers aren’t part of the dresser. But why?
Some may argue that the WBS contains deliverables which are nouns, while activities have a noun and a verb. True enough, but keep in mind that any deliverable can be described as an activity, and any activity can be converted into a deliverable by dropping the verb.
When we certify at asapm, we are concerned with whether or not a project manager produces results. Whether you include activities in the WBS or not may be interest to people who are writing trick questions for knowledge-based exams, but we’ll stick to evaluating performance.
The rush to licensure
The idea of licensed project managers has been discussed off-and-on for nearly 30 years now. With the Association of Project Managers in the UK apparently on the verge of getting approval from the British government to begin chartering project management, the discussions are heating up again.
In case you’re not familiar with the British system, “chartering” is effectively the same as licensure. Accountants in the UK are “chartered” and this credential is an almost exact analog for the Certified Public Accountant in the USA with requirements a matter of law.
Personally, I’m ambivalent. I think there are arguments for licensure and arguments against.
I would strongly recommend that anyone interested in the topic start by doing a little research. Begin by reading (or at least skimming) “The System of Professions” by Andrew Abbott. Here’s the publisher’s blurb from Amazon:
In The System of Professions Andrew Abbott explores central questions about the role of professions in modern life: Why should there be occupational groups controlling expert knowledge? Where and why did groups such as law and medicine achieve their power? Will professionalism spread throughout the occupational world? While most inquiries in this field study one profession at a time, Abbott here considers the system of professions as a whole. Through comparative and historical study of the professions in nineteenth- and twentieth-century England, France, and America, Abbott builds a general theory of how and why professionals evolve.
Next, dig into both sides of the argument in the Harvard Business Review:
http://hbr.org/2008/10/its-time-to-make-management-a-true-profession/ar/1
http://hbr.org/2010/07/the-big-idea-no-management-is-not-a-profession/ar/1
Then — and only then — weigh in with your opinion. This is not about “is project management a profession or not?” where the answer depends solely on which definition of “profession” you use. This is about the future: will the discipline of project management be ruled by elected officials? Or will it continue to be driven by practitioners?
Why do we repeat our mistakes?
According to research, it’s because we don’t realize we’re making mistakes.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the-anosognosics-dilemma-1/?ref=global-home
Here’s a quote from the above to whet your appetite:
“[It's] not just that people said these positive things about themselves, but they really, really believed them. Which led to my observation: if you’re incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent.”
This would seem to explain a lot. In particular, it would seem to explain my prior rant: there are a ton of incompetent project managers out there who just don’t know enough to know that they are incompetent.
Experience does not assure competence. Testing for knowledge does not assure competence. The only way to even have a chance at determining competence is to have someone who is competent assess you. So … sign up today!
Can’t anybody here play this game?
My Dad always rooted for the underdog. As a result, I hated Casey Stengel and the Yankee’s with a passion … until Casey took over the hopelessly inept Mets, and then he became one of my favorites. The quote above dates from his experience managing the new New York team in its first year. If you google the phrase, you’ll also see that it is a popular heading for columnists ranting against what appears (to them at least) to be willful stupidity.
So … I’m a columnist … and here comes a rant …
Can’t anyone here manage this project?
Why is there so much apparent incompetence out there? I’ve been posting to a variety of LinkedIn discussions lately, and here are a couple of the things that people claim are common:
- Project managers who reject changes that provide value.
- Project managers who don’t know the difference between an estimate and a budget.
- Project managers who don’t know the difference between scope and work.
- Project managers who don’t understand that fixed price means fixed scope.
- Project managers who don’t realize that a “construction project” is just one phase of an asset development project.
- Project managers who think that schedule baselines can be established without considering resource availability.
- Project managers who don’t know what float is.
I keep hearing that certification provides value by encouraging people to learn the fundamentals so that they can pass a test. Since many of the project managers referenced above seem to have been certified, what’s going on?
It’s really quite simple. Most project management certifications evaluate knowledge rather than performance. Let’s face it: getting the right answer on a multiple choice question is not nearly the same as being able to make the right choice on-the-job. Even those certifications that require experience generally don’t evaluate the quality of that experience. Would you want to hire a project manager who gained their experience delivering projects months late and 50% over budget?
To quote the Case again … “Don’t cut my throat. I may want to do that later myself.”
This is why we certify based on performance. Always have. Always will.
How do you define gold-plating?
The following is adapted from a question I posted on LinkedIn. Some might ask how this question relates to certification. Simple. Level D tests a candidate’s knowledge of project management, so a clear definition of gold-plating would be useful for the Level D exam. Levels B and C assess a candidate’s ability to perform in the role, so evidence of gold-plating could be an indication that this PM is not yet competent.
The original edition of PMI’s PMBoK Guide included the phrase “meet or exceed stakeholder needs and expectations from a project” as part of the definition of project management. In subsequent editions, the “or exceed” was removed on the basis (I’m told) that this encouraged “gold-plating.”
In the current working draft of our NCB update, we are using the “meet or exceed” phrase.
Why? To me, gold-plating is limited to scope. It means delivering a higher-grade product than the customer needs or wants. Does anyone have examples of gold-plating in the area of schedule or cost? And a related issue … do you think a project manager should be trying to exceed any of the following:
- Stakeholder needs?
- Stakeholder expectations?
- Stakeholder requirements?
Or is it enough to do the minimum?
Touching Base
Sorry for the radio silence. Been busy working on delivering certifications and on development of the new aPRO standard. Check it out at http://apro.asapm.org
I’ll have more on certification within the next week or two.
Bad question, bad exam
I stopped by a website recently whose proprietor specializes in training people to take a certification exam offered by one of our competitors … “That Other Organization” or TOO. Here was the Question of the Month offered by this training provider:
“Ten stakeholders need to receive communications on an important change. You and your team of 40 are concerned that everyone needs to receive these changes. What is the formula to calculate communication channels on a project? How many communication channels are there?
Now, I realize that this is an open-ended question rather than multiple-choice, and so it may not be truly representative of what’s on the actual TOO exam. I also don’t know if this person has attended an item-writing session, so I don’t know what expertise they have to construct questions.
But this question does illustrate some of the reported problems with the construction of other project management certification exams. As a result, it also illustrates some of the problems that you will not have with our Level D exam.
First, the questions asks about an important concept: the fact that the number of communication channels goes up exponentially as the size of the project team increases. However, I could be well aware of this fact and still:
- Not know the formula.
- Have forgotten the formula.
- Recall the formula incorrectly.
- Do the calculation wrong.
So there is a good chance here that I know the concept and still get the answer wrong. By definition, that means this is a bad question.
Second, has anyone ever used this formula on a real project? I’m going to guess that the answer is no. At asapm, we try to avoid asking questions that are of academic interest only.
Next, the question itself has an excess of information that does not affect the answer. The first two sentences are completely irrelevant and simply slow the examinee down. Change the numbers from 10 and 40 to 3 and 7. Same question. I’m guessing that the item-writer was trying to provide context, but extra text does not equate to context. Context is when I give you information that is relevant to your choice of an answer.
Now let’s look at the question itself:
- “Ten stakeholders.” Not clear whether these 10 are part of the team or not.
- “You and your team of 40.” Are you part of the team? Is the team 40 people or 41?
- Both NYT Style Guide and the Chicago Book of Style counsel against mixing number forms. So if the first two sentences were needed, they should read “10 … 40″ or “Ten … forty” to make it easier to absorb the information.
- “Everyone needs to receive these changes.” Who is “everyone”? The team? The 10 stakeholders? Some other group?
- Let’s assume that we want to send the information to the 10 stakeholders. That means there areten channels since this is a one-way push, not a discussion. So the formula may be irrelevant. This starts to sound like a trick question.
Our promise to you: No trick questions. No excess verbiage. No useless knowledge.
Debate about merits of various PM certifications
The following link takes you to a LinkedIn discussion with lots of information, different perspectives, and even a couple of personal attacks! Good reading if you have the time …
http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers&discussionID=7074372&gid=35313&commentID=8959122&trk=view_disc
Designing a Certification Program: How to Certify (2)
Recapping from “How to Certify (1)” … certification is about assessing competence. Competence is intangible so it must be inferred from some kind of evidence. That evidence can be input-oriented or output-oriented. At asapm, we have decided to focus on outputs or results.
Why? Simple logic. If someone has already done the job successfully once, there is a much better chance that they can do it successfully again.
After looking at a number of alternatives, we decided to use a performance based competency standard (PBCS) as our measuring stick. Lots of reasons:
- PBCS have been around for well over 20 years.
- They are the preferred approach to competency assessment among most Human Resource Departments.
- They are used in government-sanctioned competency assessment programs in countries such as Australia and South Africa.
We became a founding member of the Global Alliance for Project Performance Standards (GAPPS) and worked with GAPPS to develop a PBCS that would be compatible with IPMA’s Four-Level-Certification. Some of our assessors were initially skeptical, but they were won over the first time they did an assessment.
Explicit, pre-defined criteria provide a higher degree of validity than any other approach currently in use. A comprehensive set of questions enhances inter-rater reliability.
Not only that, but the candidates themselves were equally delighted. One of my favorite comments came from a Level B (Senior Project Manager) candidate: “Wow! I actually learned something in the process of being assessed!”
The GAPPS standard is available for FREE from www.globalpmstandards.org.
From LinkedIn: Which Certification Best Represents…
This is an extract from a recent post of mine in a LinkedIn discussion group. Thought some of you here might be interested.
The question asked was this: which certification option best represents the holder’s skills, knowledge and abilities as a Project Manager?
Full disclosure … I have not been a big fan of PMI’s certification program since about 1998. Our differences led to a lawsuit in 2000 that cost me over $100,000. If anyone wants details of the suit, please feel free to contact me directly.
To begin, there are really only three internationally recognized options worth mentioning. In alphabetical order:
- Global Alliance for Project Performance Standards. GAPPS doesn’t actually certify, but it does provide a performance-based competency standard that is used by others.
- International Project Management Association. IPMA and its member associations have been certifying individuals as project managers since the late 1980s.
- Project Management Institute. PMI’s Project Management Professional was introduced about the same time as IPMA’s program.
Here’s how I view the various approaches. In the interest of fairness, I’ll reverse the order.
PMI’s approach lacks rigor. The experience requirements are drawn too loosely, and the quality of the experience is never considered. It’s not even clear that someone must have worked as a project manager in order to sit for the exam. The education requirements do not ensure knowledge since it seems that a significant percentage of applicants meet the requirement through exam prep courses which emphasize how to pass the exam rather than how to manage a project. The first time pass rate for native English speakers who take a prep course appears to be well in excess of 90%, so it wouldn’t appear that the wholly multiple-choice exam itself is very difficult either.
IPMA’s approach is far more rigorous. IPMA requires the same amount of experience as PMI, but itrequires that the experience have been obtained as a project manager. IPMA’s exam includes short answer essay questions in addition to multiple-choice. Finally, it also requires a written report describing a project you managed and an interview with 2 assessors that typically lasts about 2 hours. The main weakness in the IPMA program is the lack of defined criteria to justify the decision. IPMA’s assessors are all experienced project managers, and based on what I’ve seen, they do an excellent job, but if anyone challenged a negative decision in court, the lawyers would be the only winners.
The core of the GAPPS approach is the most rigorous with over 50 defined performance criteria that must all be met in order for a candidate to be assessed as “competent.” Another plus is the CIFTER which is used to assess project management complexity. Weaknesses include the fact that GAPPS only requires a single assessor (as opposed to IPMA’s 2), and that it allows the organizations that use its standards to set their own length-of-experience requirements. One more plus: the standard itself isFREE. Anyone can use it.
At asapm, we’ve blended the GAPPS and IPMA approaches to deliver what I think is the best of both worlds: a challenging exam and defined performance criteria assessed by two experienced project managers.
Designing a Certification Program: How to Certify (1)
I’ve left this for last since it is the hardest issue to address. In fact, I have several books on my shelves that cover how to assess competence, so trying to answer that question in a few hundred words does seem more than a bit presumptuous. So please think of this entry as an introduction or an overview. If there is interest, I’ll get into more detail later.
First, remember that competence is intangible. You can’t see it, touch it, feel it, or smell it (although I have heard that incompetence has a distinctive aroma). Because competence is intangible, we must infer it from some type of evidence. Thus “how to certify” is fundamentally a question of what kinds of evidence will you require and how will you evaluate it.
In this regard, there are two broad schools of thought. One is input-oriented and the other is output-oriented. The input-oriented folks look at the characteristics of individuals who have been successful in a particular role, and then infer that someone else with those same characteristics will be successful as well. Here are some simple examples:
- Most successful professional basketball players are tall, so we infer that height is an aspect of basketball competence.
- People who do well on the Law School Aptitude Test (LSAT) tend to do well in law school, so we infer that someone who does well on the exam will be a competent law school student.
- Exam-based certifications assert that competence is a function of knowledge, and they infer that someone who can pass a well-constructed test will be able to apply their knowledge in the real world.
As you can see, the input-oriented school tends to be predictive in nature. It asks, “are you likely to be successful?” rather than asking, “have you been successful?” Since there are so many potential factors involved in being competent as a project manager, we elected to adopt the output-oriented approach. We look for evidence of actual performance as a project manager.
Designing a Certification Program: Why Certify?
This might sound like a simple question to answer, but it really isn’t. There are many possible reasons:
- Because individuals want a credential that will help them get a new or better job.
- Because individuals want something to brag about.
- Because hiring managers want a tool to “screen out” some of the resumes they get.
- Because line managers want a way to “prove” that their staff is skilled.
- Because line managers want a way to “prove” that their PMs are more skilled than those of their peers.
- Because line managers want a way to help them decide who to promote.
- Because buyers of services want to know that their providers are competent.
- Because sellers of services want a competitive edge.
- Because professional organizations want to make money.
- Because professional organizations want to limit entrance to the profession or discipline in order to increase the salaries of their members.
Some of these reasons are more altruistic; some are less. And each reason has the potential to influence the design of the program. For example, if you want to help someone get a new or better job, marketing the credential may be more important than the quality of the assessment process. If you want to assess promotion potential, you will be looking at different factors than if you are evaluating a candidate’s ability to do their current job.
At the same time, there is a lot of overlap and there are some feedback loops. For example, if the certification program does what it claims to do, then everybody wins:
- Certified individuals will find it easier to find new and better jobs.
- Hiring managers will feel comfortable screening-out non-certified individuals.
- Buyers of services can be more confident about the level of competence of their providers’ staff.
- The sponsoring organization can make a lot of money …
Sorry. Had to mention that last one. Project management certification today is big business. The world’s best known certification has generated an estimated $150,000,000 (yes, seven zeros) in “profits” for its sponsoring organization in the last 10-12 years. Two lesser known programs have generated substantial income for their sponsoring organizations. Several major international enterprises have developed their own internal certification programs because of the selling advantage it provides. And certification preparation is big business. Stop by any LinkedIn project management group and you will see that a huge percentage of the “discussions” are actually advertisements for certification preparation products.
So … why is asapm doing this? One major reason: we felt there was a crying need for a performance-based credential. Our founders were disappointed with the quality of the certification programs in the market, especially those available in the USA. We wanted to develop something that would actually assess a candidate’s performance, not just their knowledge and experience. We wanted to develop a credential that was based on verifying that the candidate had actually worked as a project manager. On verifying that the candidate could provide evidence of successful performance.
I think we’ve succeeded. We have clearly built a better mousetrap. Now the question is … does anyone else care? Here’s the question I’ve been asking: Would you rather go to an interview saying “I got a D- or better on my exam and no one evaluated my experience,” or “I’ve got two skilled project managers who questioned me in detail for 2 hours about over 50 explicit performance criteria and found me competent.”
Defining a Certification Program: Where to Certify?
There are three aspects of “where” that all have to do with marketing considerations.
The first aspect is, of course, geographic coverage: local, national, international, or global? The broader the coverage, the greater the expense. In addition, trying to offer a product or service globally also requires knowledge of local customs and languages. On the other hand, operating in only one country limits you to organizations that also operate only in your country. At asapm, we think we have the best of both worlds through our membership in IPMA and use of IPMA’s Four Level Certification program. IPMA provides the basic structure and relies on its National Member Associations to tailor the program to local needs. This way, asapm and PMCert can focus on what is needed and useful in the good ol’ U.S. of A. while still providing a credential that is recognized and valued around the world.
The second aspect of “where” also addresses geographic coverage, but on a more micro scale: do we offer assessment interviews in just a few cities and make our candidates travel to us? Or do we attempt to to provide local assessors in all major cities? The travel-to-us model has worked well among IPMA’s European members with their relatively small countries. In the USA, we have opted for the latter approach and are busy recruiting qualified assessors throughout the USA. Our plan is to have at least two assessors within a one-hour drive of 90% of the US population.
The final aspect of “where” has to do with industry emphasis. Focusing on just a few market sectors would mean lower costs and a simpler product. For example, there would be no need to address the fact that the oil and gas industry uses the term “contingency reserve” to describe what the aerospace and defense industry call “management reserve.” However, project management is used in pretty much every field of endeavor from medicine to construction to software development. It is as vital to success in the public sector as it is to success in the private sector. And one of asapm’s organizational objectives is to address the societal impact of poor project management, so we decided that we would not limit ourselves: our certification program is open to all industries and application areas despite the challenges that choice creates.
Designing a Certification Program: When to Certify?
In looking at when to certify, we are not addressing season or time-of-day. We are looking at in a project manager’s career to certify. In this case, we went along with Jacqueline Susann and decided that once was not enough.
Our first certification, for the very start of a possible career in project management, is Project Associate (IPMA Level-D®). This is an exam-based certification that requires only six-months of experience working on projects. The exam has two parts: multiple choice questions to verify the candidate’s knowledge of project management fundamentals, and several short answer questions to verify understanding of key concepts. Reviewing the USA-NCB should be helpful, but any introductory book or course on PM fundamentals should be adequate as well. By design, you should not need any special “exam prep” courses to pass our test.
Our second certification comes after you have made a commitment to the discipline. This certification requires three years of full-time equivalent work as a project manager with real project management responsibility for reasonably complex projects. We use a version of the CIFTER table developed by GAPPS to assess project management complexity. You can find full details about the CIFTER on the GAPPS website (www.globalpmstandards.org) as well as an article about it on the asapm website.
This second certification is IPMA Level-C®. In addition to satisfying the experience requirement, you must also provide documentary evidence of your performance as a project manager. Preparing your evidence usually takes about 4-6 hours. Finally, you must demonstrate that you actually understood what you were doing and why by providing satisfactory answers to questions from two experienced project managers during a face-to-face interview.
The third certification (IPMA Level-B®) is for much later in your career when you have become a Senior Project Manager. Typically, you must have been managing projects full-time for over six years in order to qualify. The process is essentially identical to that for IPMA Level-C with one major difference: the management complexity of your projects must be significantly higher.
And if the practice of project management hasn’t driven you crazy, we’ll soon have a fourth certification for old hands who have experience as program managers.
Designing a Certification Program: What to Certify?
We’re looking at the who, what, when, where, why, and how of designing a project management certification program. In this post, I’ll focus on WHAT to certify. The options pretty much all fall into one of the following six categories:
- Specific skills?
- Potential?
- Experience?
- Attitudes?
- Competence?
- Knowledge?
The first letters form a useful acronym, SPEACK, pronounced “speak” as in “speak to me about why you should be certified.”
Specific skills and attitudes could be assessed, but there is little agreement about what skills and attitudes are needed to be a successful Project Manager. The question of the relative importance of technical skills and management skills is especially acute in some fields. We could try to assess potential, but this is essentially what a job interview does. Bill Oncken tells us that we never hire the best person for the job; only the least bad person that applied. Hardly good criteria for a certification program!
Experience is also tempting because it is so easy to measure: how many years have you been working in your current position? But experience doesn’t really tell us anything. First, there is the old joke about do you have 10 years of experience or did you have 1 year of experience 10 times. Second, it’s possible that a candidate could have been less than successful. Employers will have little respect for a certification program that approves those who have not been successful.
Knowledge can certainly be assessed. In fact, our entry level program, Level D, assesses knowledge. Tests are easy to administer and grade. Unfortunately, tests are subject to Hume’s Law: all they prove is that the candidate was able to obtain a passing score on the day they took the test. Even a test that includes situational questions cannot provide assurance that the candidate will choose the right answer when faced with a real world problem. Grading also presents a can of worms: do you pose hard questions and allow low scores to pass? or do you ask easier questions and make the passing grade higher? do you require passing grades by topic area? or do you allow someone who misses every question related to risk management to pass?
If you’ve been keeping score, the only thing we are left with is competence. Although there are many definitions of competence, the one that we use is this: “the ability to perform according to the standards expected in employment.” So what we assess is this: can you demonstrate competent performance.
Designing a Certification Program: Who to Certify?
I recently revised the presentation that I give about PMCert’s Certification Program to include a few slides about the factors to consider when designing a certification program. I’ll provide a brief narrative of those slides in a series of posts here. If anyone wants a copy of the entire presentation, write to me care of asapm.
The basic factors should be familiar to all of you: who, what, when, where, why, and how. Some of those are easier to answer than others. Let’s start with “who.”
When I asked that question at the conference where I first used the slides, I was met with a degree of incredulity. “Why, project managers, of course!” most in the audience said. But there are many others who can affect the success or failure of a project: sponsors, team members, customer, clients, users, program managers, resource providers, and contractors to name just a few. In many application areas, there are also cost estimating specialists and full-time, professional schedulers who can make or break a project. And let’s not forget the senior managers who decide which projects to approve or cancel, or the project portfolio managers who provide recommendations to the decision-makers.
Maybe a less-than-competent project manager could still succeed if all the other stakeholders were competent?
Nonetheless, we decided that our initial WHO would be project managers. But that is still a rather wide range of possibilities. How do we decide who is a “project manager” and who isn’t? Just looking at titles doesn’t always help:
- In defense and aerospace, a project manager is often called “program manager.”
- In many IT organizations, the person with the title of project manager is often a controls clerk who collects timesheets and prepares status reports while someone else deals with problems and makes decisions.
- In many construction projects, the owner and each of the various contractors will have a “project manager.” In the spirit of the old TV show To Tell the Truth, “will the real project manager please stand up!”
So we decided to ignore titles: if you manage a project, we will consider you a project manager regardless of your title. Unfortunately, we’re now faced with the Clinton-esque question of what does “manage” mean? PMCert decided that you manage what you are accountable for. When we get to the discussion of what and how, we’ll come back to this issue.
Simple, no?