Competency Mapping for Project Management

Abstract

Competency mapping is a systematic process that involves identifying, assessing, and aligning the skills, knowledge, and abilities of individual team members with the requirements and objectives of a project. The success of a project is often above all highly correlated with the choice of a project manager, that inhabits the necessary competences to lead team members and allocate resources in the needed way to pursue an effective and efficient progress. This choice can be supported by mapping the competencies of relevant employees in a standardized way. This article describes the different dimensions of competences, how to assess them and their respective importance for project management. These detailed insights also help with the further development of various skills. The mapping of competencies has relevance for the project management itself, but also directly relates to program and portfolio management, if the allocation of human resources has to be undertaken on a bigger scale. Further the article elaborates on limitations of the tool, that mostly arise in situations with different degrees of project complexity.

Introduction

The idea competence is often understood in various way from different people. It is often referred to as the knowledge or the skills, that an individual inhabits. The overall concept of competence however goes beyond this. A definition of the word is given by Ruas et al. describing competence as the “ability to mobilise, integrate and transfer knowledge, skills and resources to reach or surpass the configured performance in work assignments, adding economic and social value to the organisation and the individual”. Connecting this to the field of project management, it is therefore not sufficient to possess a certain expertise. A project manager also must be capable of transforming this expertise into a value-creating activity for the project. The definition of project management, given by the Project Management Institute “The application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements. Project management refers to guiding the project work to deliver the intended outcomes.” underlines direct connection and importance of competences for project management. Knowing the characteristics of a competence, still leaves the term quite broad in the sense of what kind of competences can be distinguished. The literature provides a several diverse classifications into different types, areas and levels of competences of a project manager. A screening conducted by Duriau et al. summarized these findings into four categories of competencies, that will be used to the explore the important competencies of a project manager in a more detailed way. The four categories of Project Management Processes, Personal, Technical as well as Context and Business will be explained by a selection of their associated competences in the following.

• Project Management Processes: Scope management, Cost management, Time management, Risk management and Quality management
• Personal: Leadership, Conflict resolution, Ethics and Integrity, Creativity, Analytical thinking
• Technical: General technical overview, Technical vocabulary, Technical risk assessment, Search for innovative technical solutions, Design
• Context and business: Finance, Customer relationships, Legislation, Continuous management improvement, Strategic alignment

Application

Limitations

Conclusion