ProjectExperts Supports asapm Advancement Efforts

From its beginning in 2001, asapm®, American Society for the Advancement of Project Management, has had the strong support of the ProjectExperts. Although we have also been strong supporters of Project Management Institute since 1982 (and will continue to be), encouraging tens of thousands of customers and class participants to join that organization, we understand that there is room for more than one professional project management association in America.

This is especially true because of the revolutionary range of initiatives asapm is pursuing to advance the profession. For example, asapm's stance on intellectual property encourages authors to keep the rights to their own work. This is encouraging greater sharing of information and best PM practices than we've seen in the recent past.

asapm Initiatives
Among the initiatives asapm is working on, and that we support, are the following:

Certification: Building an internationally-recognized, multi-level, performance-competence-based certification of Project Managers (whew! maybe you want to read that again). asapm is verifying Performance Competence rather than knowledge, and evaluating performance as a Project Manager instead of knowledge about Project Management. Finally, asapm acknowledges that different projects (by type, size and complexity) need different levels of competence and demonstrated skill.

Standards: Recognizing that there is little need to re-invent what already exists, asapm is embracing the current ANSI standard Project Management BoK. asapm is then extending its usefulness, establishing the USA National Competnce Baseline (NCB). This is useful not just for Project Managers, but also for all other key project stakeholders.

Learning: Improving the relevance and usefulness of Project Manager education. As long-time PM training and consulting providers, it has been disconcerting to us to see the increase in training offerings that merely help people pass a test, rather than improve their Project Manager effectiveness. Some companies have used their entire training budgets on such programs, then blame those who achieved certification for project failures—as if it was their fault.

Membership: Expanding the range of PM influence. In the early days (well, at least our early days) of PM, there were a handful of industries represented in Project Management organizations, and it was often the top-level, expert Project Managers who participated.

Today there is broad recognition that Project Manager competences are appropriate for all industries, professions and careers. asapm's greatest contribution may be its Enterprise-wide reinforcement of the discipline, from the Executive Suite, to Resource (Middle) Managers, to Team Members and individual contributors. Thus asapm's potential target audienc is in the range of over two hundred million people—the number of Americans in the above groups, from student age through retiree.

ProjectExperts Support
How does ProjectExperts help with all this asapm effort?

Certification: We participated in the definition of the multi-level Performance-Based Competence certification. However, our purpose in participating is not to develop cert-cram courses: Any Project Manager training curriculum that teaches participants how to be more effective Project Managers will help you prepare for asapm certification.

To help improve industry focus on improving PM Competence, we have adapted our PMCompModel (PM Competence Model) to the elements and structure of the USA National Competence Baseline, the foundation of asapm competences. We have provided this tool to asapm members and interested parties.

Standards: Our products and workshops are already either compliant with current BOK standards, or ahead of them. For example, the 2004 standards are looking more and more like our 20 year-old IT methodology, THE Guide. Because of the teamwork-perspective of our curriculum, we are perfectly positioned to support the asapm NCB emphasis on the Behavioral Attributes of Competence, in addition to the Technical Competences.

Learning: Our Project Team Competence Framework, together with our trademarked tools, such as SNAP^®, target and measure demonstrated performance of learning. SNAP, our Skills Needs Assessment Process, is a product and process that includes training needs identification, with Pre-course assessment, followed by post-workshop evaluation of performance of the learning objectives or class topics.

Consistently, our efforts extend beyond Knowledge transfer, with its short-term decay, to embrace Skills, Attititudes and Competences. And now, in asapm, we have a solid framework in this quest for more effective project management competence and performance.

Membership: We've always expanded the reach of PM from Executives, to Team Members and Individual Contributors. Our curriculum has always offered a different workshop series for different levels of the organization. For example, rather than sending everyone to the same 4-day project management class, we've offered classes for team members that are shorter, focus just on the competences team members need to demonstrate, and most importantly, present from the team members' point of view.

Here is another example: Because Small Projects require less rigor than larger ones, our Small Project Management workshop has doubled the target audiences for our PM Training. Everyone does Small Projects: our participants learn how to manage them.

More ProjectExperts Support
Here's another way we support asapm: Why don't you join the American Society for the Advancement of Project Management, and help advance the discipline?

Stacy Goff, PMP