APM Strategy - setting the standards for the profession

1. APM Strategy - setting the standards for the profession APM Education Network Forum 1 December 2010

2. Structure • What is APM? • Context • APM strategy: • 5 Dimensions of Professionalism: • Recent achievements • Future plans • Enabling infrastructure • Chartered Status: • Current position • Summary & Discussion.

3. Association for Project Management • UK-based with international influence • Largest independent professional body of its kind in Europe • Leading member of International Project Management Association (IPMA) • 18,500 + individual members across 4,000 + organisations • 500 + corporate members across public and private sectors: • across all sectors, including academic community • interaction with ca. 30,000 additional practitioners • Charity, founded in 1972 • Campaigning for increased professionalism: • helping make it happen in practice.

4. Structure • What is APM? • Context • APM strategy: • 5 Dimensions of Professionalism: • Recent achievements • Future plans • Enabling infrastructure • Chartered Status: • Current position • Summary & Discussion.

5. Ever-growing importance of Project Management • UK Government’s 43 major projects on their own worth £200 bn + expenditure • UK Utilities, Energy & Transport projects: £426 bn + • Major projects key for delivering in crucial policy areas:

6. Context (cont’d) • Comprehensive Spending Review • Project assurance process at heart of government • Highlights need for effective portfolio management • Implementation of NAO “Commercial skills for complex government projects” • Formalises importance of project management • Practitioner and “intelligent client”: • Reinforces APM’s theme of professionalism.

7. Context (cont’d) • Sir Peter Gershon, HonFAPM, at APM Conference 2010: • Fewer projects • Reduced tolerance of lack of success: • Media and public • Project management must ‘stand up and be counted’, incl: • Stop the projects whose date in front of the Public Accounts Committee should be added to the schedule at the outset.

8. Everybody can call themselves a ‘project manager’ • No need to demonstrate skills, training, commitment to professional standards or code • No single & universally recognised professional standard • Skills shortages amongst practitioners • Inconsistent skills and awareness of those who deploy the practitioners.

9. Regulated by law for benefit of the public Context in maturity terms: Nine tests of public obligation for a profession are satisfied Statutory Industry field governed by framework of professional institutions Public Defined qualification regime Governed Recognition as a community Qualified Organised Source: Profession Maturity Model, reported in the Study of Established Professions to validate the IT Professionalism Model, British Computer Society, 2006

10. Structure • What is APM? • Context • APM strategy: • 5 Dimensions of Professionalism: • Recent achievements • Future plans • Enabling infrastructure • Chartered Status: • Current position • Summary & Discussion.

11. APM in transition • From Gentlemen’s Club • To Professional Membership Organisation • To proposed Chartered Body: • “creator and then owner of the profession for society”.

12. To develop and promote the professional disciplines of Project and Programme Management for the public benefit. and Portfolio APM Mission

13. With and through others “A rising tide lifts all ships” APM’s Strategic Direction • Development and maintenance of standards & knowledge • Promotion and application of those standards & knowledge • Development and maintenance of APM infrastructure. APM Board currently developing Strategy 2020 Today’s objective: To assess the existing model of co-operation between the project management professional body (APM), education and industry and define areas of improvement

14. APM’s Strategic Direction • Development and maintenance of standards & knowledge • Promotion and application of those standards & knowledge • Development and maintenance of APM infrastructure.

15. Why 5 Dimensions? • Stakeholder consultation during 2009: • “Professionalism is a “Good Thing” • Differing views of what professionalism looked like • Support for a single recognised and valued quality professional standard in project management • APM’s 5 Dimensions combine to form this standard.

16. APM’s 5 Dimensions of Professionalism Accountability Membership Qualifications CPD Commitment Achievement Body of Knowledge Competence Framework Depth Breadth

17. Standard-setters & influencers CPD Membership Individuals Competence Framework Qualifications Body of Knowledge Learning & development providers Corporate organisations Delivering public benefit Public Benefit

18. Breadth Knowledge • APM Body of Knowledge • Refresh Programme: • Fully address the 3Ps: • Project, programme and portfolio • Regular new SIG publications: • Launched at APM Conference 2010.

19. Benefits Management Breadth Contracts & Procurement Women in Project Management Earned Value Value Management Governance Specific Interest Group Network Sustainability People Risk Planning Project & Programme Assurance Portfolio Management Programme Management

20. Breadth Knowledge • APM Conference & Awards: • Academic Awards: • Herbert Walton Award (doctoral research) • Geoffrey Trimble Award (master’s level dissertation) • Brian Willis Award (highest APMP score) • KnowledgeShare • Scotland Conference • Local Branch & SIG events: • 1,000 events over 4 years.

21. Breadth Knowledge • Standards • ISO 21500 (to be published 2013) • Significant APM engagement within committee • BS 6079-1 (pub. Sept 2010) • Significant APM engagement within committee • Many APM positives post-consultation: • BS detailed appendices  APM guidance material • Knowledge and process-orientation  opportunity around competences for APM.

22. Depth Competence Framework • Part of APM Refresh programme • Creates common approach and shared language • Government-wide Competence Assessment Tool: • places APM at heart of government • 16 departments / agencies signed-up since Feb 2010 launch.

23. Commitment Commitment Continuing Professional Development

24. Commitment Typical CPD activities

25. Commitment Commitment The only project management journal in the world listed on the Thomson Citation Index "This is one small step for IJoPM; one giant step for project management".

26. Commitment 500 + corporate members, representing a further 30,000 project professionals ca. 90% retention rate No sector accounts for > 14% of membership

27. Commitment Echoed by increasing evidence of “profession of first choice”

28. Accountability APM Code of Professional Conduct • Underpins concept of chartered project professional: • Voluntary regulation • Delivers public benefit.

29. Career-long professional qualifications Professional capability Experience Knowledge Competence Achievement > 35,000 candidates since 2001/2 launch Certificated Practitioner APMP Introductory

30. Development and maintenance of APM Infrastructure

32. Structure • What is APM? • Context • APM strategy: • 5 Dimensions of Professionalism: • Recent achievements • Future plans • Enabling infrastructure • Chartered Status: • Current position • Summary & Discussion.

33. Committed to gaining Chartered Status • External recognition of professionalism: • “parity of esteem” • “Leaders in our field” • Self-regulating: • Codes of Conduct with teeth • Overseen by Privy Council.

34. Phase 1 APM as Chartered Body Phase 2 Chartered Project Professionals Phase 3 Harvest the benefits

35. Is APM chartered? • Application still in progress • Process is taking longer than expected BUT • APM’s 50 letters of support highest ever level achieved • Ever-growing support for our campaign for increased professionalism, incl. MPs: • within Public Accounts Committee • and / or with hands-on project management experience • across all major parties.

36. So what’s happening? • APM focus on professionalism agenda: • Progress our application: • “maintain a dignified silence” in public on the detail • acknowledge that it is uncomfortable • allows due process of consultation to happen.

37. 3 key messages: • APM remains committed to gaining chartered; • APM has not allowed the delay in the progress of its application to dent the momentum of activity around increased professionalism; and • APM ready for applications forAPM Registered Project Professional (RPP) from 1 March 2011: • RPP pulls together the strands of APM’s 5 Dimensions.

38. Structure • What is APM? • Context • APM strategy: • 5 Dimensions of Professionalism: • Recent achievements • Future plans • Enabling infrastructure • Chartered Status: • Current position • Summary & Discussion.

39. “There is only one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.” Victor Hugo

40. APM’s Strategic Direction • Development and maintenance of standards & knowledge • Promotion and application of those standards & knowledge • Development and maintenance of APM infrastructure. Today’s objective: To assess the existing model of co-operation between the project management professional body (APM), education and industry and define areas of improvement

41. APM Strategy - setting the standards for the profession APM Education Network Forum 1 December 2010