توسعه و تحویل از یک صنعت منجر شده به برنامه توسعه مدیریت پروژه حرفه ای : مطالعه موردی در آموزش مدیریت پروژه و موفقیت مدیریت

Global changes influence the project environment, client relationships and the behaviour of suppliers. The people managing projects (the project management community of practice) are increasingly important, requiring professional development and training. Project management education is time and resource intensive. Historically conventional return on investment criteria have not been applied to investment in the areas of education and training. This paper reviews a case study modular distance learning programme: The Project Management Professional Development Programme; providing education in generic project management for a consortium of four international companies across aerospace, infrastructure, oil and gas, nuclear design, construction and information technology sectors. The programme started in May 2000 and has currently circa 200 delegates having graduated 100. It is an academic-industrial collaboration between The University of Manchester (UoM) and Rolls-Royce, AMEC, Goodrich and EDS with some guest organisations participating also. The literature on educational issues, professional development, competence and Benefit Metrics (return on training investment) are reviewed. Particular attention is paid to the management and development of the programme and the project management of project management education. The drivers, development and implementation of a managed learning environment, and blended learning are discussed. This includes issues related to expectation management and the interesting benefits of educating different members of the supply chain represented by the industrial partners. The linkages between Benefit Metrics, project management competencies and learning outcomes in the context of an industrial-academic partnership are specifically explored. Discussions and conclusions focus on lessons learnt and suggestions on the development and delivery of the programme and its effectiveness.

This paper concerns a modular distance-delivered generic project management professional development programme for cross-sector industrial partners. It is run as a project and the ongoing research reported here arises from a maturing academic-industrial educational partnership which has been running for nearly eight years. Over that time 100 students (delegates) have graduated with a masters degree in Project Management as well as others with postgraduate modules, certificates and diplomas. This paper begins with a brief introduction to the discussion on the drivers and criteria for project success. The authors then move on to explain the concepts of Benefit Metrics and Return on Investment in relation to professional development education and training. Anecdotal evidence from industrialists suggests that companies fail to take project management education seriously because of the difficulties in demonstrating its effects on profitability and competitiveness. Companies are unaware of the variables that influence such programmes and as a result are unable to measure a return on their investment. The paper briefly describes the case study course: The Project Management Professional Development Programme (a modular distance learning course) and then reports on the interim findings from three surveys, forming the initial phase of an industry led action research initiative to investigate Benefits Metrics. Conclusions are drawn relating to programme effectiveness and lessons learned to date from the industry-academic partnership.

The mode of delivery of the case study programme (PMPDP), described in this paper, is not complex. A combination of intensive residential events coupled with traditional and web enabled blended learning appears to provide a robust learning and professional development platform. The linkage between all the stakeholders of the programme: students (delegates), their line managers, senior managers, academic staff and academic related support staff is maintained through a project managed approach to this academic-industry partnership. The single point of contact between the industrial consortium and the university provider is an important feature of this, together with the influence of an active steering group with delegate representation. During the inception and scope definition stages of the “project” team building occurred as a result of a common purpose with respect to the development of learning outcomes arising from industry led objectives for the programme. Arguably, this is unusual in comparison to the “normal” relationship between academia and industry in which the investment of specialist project management resource from industry whilst possible may not usually be made available due to considerations of cost and project management capability from a university provider, although desirable, is frequently impossible. The project managed stability of project management development does not come cheap and effectiveness must be measured. The programme requires the understanding and management of expectations for all stakeholders in the context of a partnership. The serious consideration of Benefit Metrics (Return on Investment) is only possible if both qualitative and quantitative sensitive data are available. This is not simple and requires significant resources. Therefore, without project managed partnerships, trust and commitment it is difficult to see how this could be achieved. The general trend in all the three surveys indicates that PMPDP is contributing positively in increasing the knowledge of delegates. It appears from the analysis that the PM knowledge of employees participating in the PMPDP has gradually increased as they study more PMPDP modules. This is found true for all managerial positions. It is further concluded that studying the PMPDP does have a positive effect on project manager’s knowledge and their profiles in relation to the IPMA levels (A,B,C,D). Although, it cannot be determined that the PMPDP actually causes an improvement in the knowledge of employees, it appears from the analysis that employees attending the PMPDP would finish with a higher knowledge level compared to when they started. Hence, it can be deduced that professional development programmes like PMPDP provide an effective way of ensuring improvements in employee competence. It is further observed that the PMPDP does successfully address most of the identified areas requiring educational focus in particular project management areas. It appears from the results of all the three surveys that professional development programmes like the PMPDP can contribute to the development of competence and competencies in individuals, leading to benefits for the organisation as a whole. The results are in accordance with the views of a number of published articles on this subject that professional development programmes do play a significant part in improving the competence of employees. However, they also contradict other views [5] that competence is difficult to quantify and cannot be measured.