September 2005
Australian Project Manager
The professional magazine of the Australian Institute
of Project Management
www.aipm.com.au
“Senior management perceptions of top performing
project managers” by Lynn Crawford, UTS. This paper addresses
some of the assumptions about a positive correlation between workplace
performance and professional certification programs and corporate
project management methodologies.
Workplace performance was measured in subjective terms –
that is the perception of supervisors of the performance of project
personnel. The certification used in the study was PMBOK. Another
factor which may have biased results is that participants were from
organisations that valued project management sufficiently to participate
in the study.
The results indicate no significant statistical correlation between
PMBOK scores and the perceived effectiveness of workplace performance.
It appears that the knowledge valued by project management practitioners
is not the same as the practices valued by senior managers. In fact,
one of the PMBOK knowledge domains (Quality) had a negative correlation
with supervisor perceptions. Monitoring and controlling scope also
decreased the odds of being perceived as a top performer!
Supervisors appear to prefer project managers who confine themselves
to the traditional responsibilities of time, cost and procurement.
They do not appreciate project managers trespassing into more general
management areas such as organisation structure, strategy, project
definition, project integration and communication. Program or project
directors, however, are expected to venture into this territory.
The results of the study were screened for contextual factors (eg
country, role, industry sector). The results indicate that to be
perceived as a top performer, project personnel should:
• live in the USA
• be a program or project director
• work in organisations that are at least Level 2 on the Capability
Maturity Model of the Software Engineering Institute
• work on ICT projects which have ill defined goals and/or
methods
• have high levels of knowledge in areas of time, cost and
procurement practices
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