Well, after several weeks in the classroom my fellow Arras colleagues and I have finally been released into the wild from the safe haven of our fortnightly Study Group. The majority of us are due to actually sit the exam in November with one exception in September (good luck, Mick!) but as a group we have now completed the syllabus – now to the revision!
Over the last few weeks we have been aligning ourselves with the APM’s worldview of project management by learning and re-assimilating all sorts of subjects such as Governance, Project Planning, Requirements Management and the dreaded Earned Value Management! I say dreaded because from a personal perspective the only exposure I have had to EVM previously was a 45 minute seminar I attended a couple of years ago, and I have to say at the time I found it all rather confusing. Now I’ve actually sat down and learnt how the techniques work in a practical setting though, I have to say I’m feeling much more confident (I’ll probably regret saying that when it comes to exam time now).
Our final session today focused on the people aspects of project management, which in the real world I have found to be one of the most, if not the most important aspects of the profession. We learned an extensive amount about self assessment techniques such as Belbin and Maslow and it got me thinking, how does this work in a real live project recruitment scenario? When searching for candidates for different types of roles one of the major factors we here at Arras consider is how a candidate’s personality would fit in at our clients’ organisation. This is something we pride ourselves on and regularly spend up to an hour vetting candidates in an interview situation to make sure they are a good fit for the post. Using Belbin’s model for example, a good quality Technical IT Project Manager would need to have a combination of attributes, but I imagine that ‘Implementer’, ‘Completer Finisher’, ‘Shaper’ and even elements of the ‘Plant’ dynamic would be evident. A Project Support Officer on the other hand might need to be more of a ‘Monitor Evaluator’, ‘Coordinator’ and ‘Team Worker’.
Interesting stuff anyway and something I’ll certainly be considering in the future when speaking to candidates.
Right, back to the revision…
