Dateline: July, 1967 "Are You Experienced?"
It was a Jimi Hendrix song of the late 60's. We're not quite sure what he was talking about then, but today, we are positive the question is essential for Project Managers. As some savvy enterprises are finding it to be a competitive advantage to improve the competence of their Project Managers, we still find too many that invest their PM training funds in programs that merely teach people how to pass a test—a feat that has little to do with project success.

The result: Project Management certificants who have never managed a project to successful closure. They may not even be able to tell you how to do so. What you really need is Project Managers who are not only experienced, they can cite their successes, and explain why they are successful.

So, how do you achieve that goal? Only a few of today's thousands of Project Management consultancies even know the difference between PM Knowledge, PM Skills, and PM Competence. Many Human Resources professionals understand the difference. And some Project-Oriented Enterprises thrive because this insight is their competitive advantage.

Several advanced Project Manager Certification programs go beyond simple testing of knowledge acquired, to assess whether the practitioner actually demonstrates competence. But only the smartest Enterprises are even aware of these programs. Few can boast that they have Project Managers who are competent enough to certify at these advanced levels. Those who "Demonstrate the Competence Difference."

For the rest, there has been no obvious path to the development of skills, attitudes and Competences needed, not only to pass advanced Project Manager Certifications, but to excel in projects. Until Now.

Current PM Competence Efforts
Here are the current efforts that support Project Manager Competence; our PM Competence efforts have had a role in all of them except the first one.

AIPM, the Australian Institute of Project Management, worked with the governments of Australia and New Zealand to produce job designs for more advanced levels of Project Manager, and built Performance-based Competence certifications for those levels. This is now a legislated requirement for those holding those positions in those countries.

IPMA, the International Project Management Association, has established a Four-Level-Competence-based certification program for Project Directors and Program Managers, Senior Project Managers, Project Managers and Project Associates. The first three levels assess competence in addition to basic Knowledge, Skills and Behavioral Attributes; the fourth level assesses Knowledge, as do other popular test-based certification programs.

GAPPS, the Global Alliance for Project Performance Standards, has released its first two PM role frameworks after an extended public review. The document is entitled "A Framework for Performance Based Competence Standards for Global Level 1 and 2 Project Managers." asapm is a subscriber to the GAPPS initiative and PMCert Chair Bill Duncan has been an active participant from its beginning. Bill is implementing, at PMCert, use of the GAPPS criteria together with an adaptation of the IPMA 4-L-C program.

asapm, the American Society for the Advancement of Project Management, has adopted the IPMA Four-Level-Competence-based certification program (4-L-C), and is already administering IPMA Level B®, Senior Project Manager, Level C®, Project Manager, and IPMA Level D®, Certified Project Associate. Applications for the USA's only Competence-Based Assessments of Project Managers are being accepted for Level B® and Level C® at the PMCert.org website.

Project Management Institute has updated and released (as of November, 2007) release 2.0 of its PM Competence Development Framework. Its target audience is exam-based PM certificants who wish to move beyond knowledge, to skills, behavioral attributes and demonstrated performance competence. The revised framework is vastly superior to the 2002 release. We participated in this effort to help assure that the Institute's new efforts are as least as effective as those of the other players.

Moving the World to PM Competence
How have we aided these competence and performance competence efforts? We have provided content and editing or review for most of them. And, we have aligned our PM CompModel tool to each of them (except for the Institute's version: they charge too much to use our own works).

Our PM CompModel tool supports the development of PM Competence. We've used our competence model process and tool for over 20 years to help project oriented enterprises to assess and develop PM Competence, rather than just throwiing away their training dollars (or Euros, or Yen) on training that has no demonstrated result in improved project performance.

CompModel Available to Others
We have tuned versions of our PM CompModel process and tool to support the assessment and developmental needs for practitioners involved with most of the above efforts. Those versions are available through the ProjectExperts.

Just as we have made PM CompModel available to support these efforts, it is now available to our customers, friends, and other PM Vendors (such as those who are part of asapm's Competence Enabler program).

So What is PM CompModel?
PM CompModel is our Project Manager Competence Assessment tool and process. We use it to identify the Competences needed in a range of key Project Roles and Responsibilities, then assess the competence of those in that range to perform those Competences effectively. We've used the process together with Instructional Design to target organizational learning requirements, and then deliver the right learning or coaching experience for each audience.

Although one does not achieve competence just by training, it is also clear through our experience that the right Learning in the right topics builds a far more effective foundation for Skill-development, Behavioral Attributes and Attitudes adoption, and Performance Competence achievement. Thus we have integrated our tools and processes to develop a job-design-based Modular Project Management curriculum that delivers the right topics that the right audiences need to meet the criteria of each competence-based certification program.

Do we have your interest? For More About PM CompModel,
click here (the link takes you to the ProjectExperts website).