The 70th Installment
Recommendation of developing a step-by-step project management
by Kiyoshi Sakamori,
Head,Professor, Master Program of Information Systems Architecture
1. Introduction
The importance of project management is recently recognized in many companies and organizations, and there is a pressing need to foster excellent project managers. A body of knowledge to be understood by the project managers is organized and many training programs for fostering project managers are developed.
However, most of the contents of these training programs nearly always end up by teaching the final figure of product manager and inexperienced students taking the program look like unrealistically. Although these programs can teach knowledge and skill, they do not involve the processes to reach such level. I wonder if the programs can foster competent project manager.
To reach what the project manager needs to be, it is important to acquire the items to learn step-by-step in pace with growth of a person. In the education of Chinese characters of Japan, for example, the Chinese characters are defined gradually, such as those to learn in early elementary school years and to learn in the upper grades of elementary school. A gradual road map of education is required to foster project manager.
2. Learning elements of project management
The learning elements may be finely defined and laid them step-by-step at the time should be learned. To organize the learning elements, it is easy to sort them from the viewpoints, Knowledge, Skill and Competencies.
Generally knowing technique and process of project management is Knowledge, ability for executing them is Skill and competent project manager’s action characteristic for a successful project is called Competencies. Let's think learning elements of project management through Knowledge, Skill and Competencies organized.
3. Education of Knowledge as introduction to project management
Learning elements classified by the knowledge of project management are organized on the basis of the body of knowledge such as PMBOK, are considered difficulty level of the element, degree of frequent occurrence in the project, an order of the elements and can be deployed in a road map of developing project management.
For example, in the education for freshman of society member, they learn WBS or scheduling and method of operating reports in the project, as basic elements in project management. After conducting some projects, they learn settling the project scope, administration of team members and performance reporting of the project. Should the situation come to having them task big projects, it is necessary to learn launching a project, stakeholder management, procurement control and staff fostering.
4. Education of project management Skill
Skill means ability for executing a project. All projects are different and it needs to conduct the knowledge in mind to meet with the projects. To learn the ability, a practice according to knowledge would be effective.
In the beginning of project, exercises of WBS preparation, method of estimation and drawing up schedule chart, etc. are conducted. In a mid-level, the practices of management method for coordinating a complicated schedule or EVM are conducted. When students come to be tasked with executing big projects, they need the practices of project member management and stakeholder management.
5. How to educate project manager’s Competencies.
Although the project manager’s Competencies is called excellent project manager’s action characteristic, how to educate it? It's often said that students would need experiences with unusual situation or failure in the education of competency. Is it true? Primarily it is not to learn from unusual experience or failure but to learn conducting proper project management.
The order of learning competencies would be having experiences with proper executing at first and undertaking various work experience after that. Only because they have abilities for properly executing a project, they can manage bad example of projects.
For education of competencies, students will learn by a task study method, such as accumulating experiences of projects execution according to scenario in a simulated environment and solving various problems of the projects. In the task study method, students analyze and discuss a variety of situations in their team, and can strengthen their competencies.
6. Conclusion
The educational system of project management in AIIT is consisted from acquiring knowledge to practicing skill and developing competencies in keeping the step-by-step flow in mind. It is based on the premise that students should acquire basic knowledge before entering the graduate school. After entering the school, they learn high knowledge of project management and the skill for executing it by lectures and practices in first grade. In second grade, they learn by PBL (Project Based Learning) methods so that the students will execute simulated project by a scenario and acquire competencies from task study of real project. By the innovation of step-by-step project management education curriculum, a learning effect to reach a high level can be expected in a short time of the two years.