Webinar Poll Results: Companies Struggle to Define Competency

Because I’m already familiar with a good deal of the content presented in our Webinars, it’s the interactive portions of the program – the polls and questions from participants – that always hold the most interest for me. Last week, Debbie Crawford presented an information-packed hour on the relationship between PM competency and the bottom line (you can download slides or a recording if you were unable to attend). Primarily, she was adding detail and advice to the findings of a qualitative research study we carried out last spring (see the new PM College white paper for more about this study). One of the surprising findings of the study was how little work has been done – even by large, industry-leading firms – to link improved project manager competency to business results. It seemed to me that, if you spent a million on training, you’d want to know what the organization got out of it in terms of faster time to market, improved project delivery, cost savings due to better risk management, and the like. But this kind of analysis is relatively new in companies, apparently. Debbie’s webinar was a first step in helping companies to develop measurement initiatives of this type.

And they need it! A poll conducted online during the webinar showed that 85% of the participants work for companies that struggle to identify and measure competency. In particular, they have trouble understanding how to identify the attributes that suggest a person will succeed in a project management role, and in identifying and measuring the behaviors that express competency on the job.

Since many companies still do not have adequate project management role descriptions, this is understandable. One of Debbie’s strongest points was that you have to start at the beginning, working from the requirements of a job to develop a list of desired behaviors. Like anything important, assessing competency isn’t a snap. But it’s worth doing. As one of the respondents to the study – a company that has begun to link competency to business results – remarked, "even an incremental improvement in project success means the training has paid for itself."

More followup on the webinar: See Participants' Questions Show that Companies are Eager to Implement Competency ... and Measure Its Impact on PM Solutions' Strategy & Projects blog.

• Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin, Editor-in-Chief
• Competency