Last week I presented at the PPSOSIG conference, which was focused on Competence and Competencies, I focused on PMO Competencies in the Marketplace, trying to bring a marketplace view on what competencies are deemed to be important in PMO professionals today by organisations and employers.
I kicked off by sharing the Current Top Competencies from the Arras People Project Management Benchmark Report 2010 which asked all professionals about what three competencies make them most effective in their role. The Technical (red) is methods, tools and domain knowledge and it’s good to see that Planning and Organising is the top competency (at 16%) across the PMs, Change Managers and Project Support professionals.
Looking closer at the Project Support which incorporates all the PMO titles, we would expect to see the Technical competencies ranked pretty high, after all, the job of the PMO focuses heavily on areas such as method, tools and processes. The PMO professions have access to a lot of training and accreditations that address the Technical competencies too, especially recently with the new P3O training but also from PRINCE2, MSP, MoR etc. I highlighted the concerns I have about how PMO professionals need to ensure they have the softer skills too. In the table, the Project Support professionals deemed communication skills and adaptability as very important in their effectiveness to do a good job. Current PMO professionals need to recognise the breadth and depth of knowledge and experience required to be successful practitioners and to ensure their career development plans take into account a balance of soft skills and the technical ability.
Next up, I looked at two roles within the PMO career structure, the PMO Manager and the Project Co-ordinator. I looked at ten recent requirements for PMO Managers and highlighted what top things organisations and employers were looking for in their PMO Manager recruits. Now, we all know how PMOs can vary from organisation to organisation, some might be heads of an admin type PMO, others leaders of Centre of Excellence, so what I tried to do here was take a cut across all ten to give a flavour. In the PMO Manager (above), there was a balance between the Technical (T) competencies required and the Behavioural (B). In fact, across all ten requirements, the Behavioural competencies were just as important as the technical abilities.
As we delve deeper into requirements, these are some of the behavioural or personal qualities that are important in the PMO Manager. Organisations and employers only tend to highlight these when in conversation, i.e., they don’t always figure in the job specification. These are the competencies that can make or break an application for a job or promotion because generally you will have two people with very similar technical ability and the ability to perform in the role but it is these behavioural competencies that differentiate between the good and the great
Taking a look at the Programme/Project Support levels, again I looked at ten recent requirements from organisations looking for Project Support professionals. In these level roles it is not surprising to see such emphasis on the Technical competencies, but what is surprising is a relative lack of behavioural characteristics. My advice to anyone starting out in the programme/project support area is to focus on the technical competencies first in your career, build a strong foundation in all the key competencies of project management and then look to the softer skills side later.
Formal training combined with on-the-job – relies heavily on developing a mentoring/coaching relationship with an experienced colleague.
Top level PMO Managers commanding £60k+ have generally come through the PM/Prog Mgmt route and are in demand for their seniority, leadership, strategic, board level experience etc.
The PPSOSIG is the Programme and Project Support Specialist Interest Group, for more information see www.ppsosig.co.uk
