Project Management Vocational Model

Formal education must find a way to stay relevant to the skills that employers demand of their employees. Outcome based education endeavours to put such a system in use. This requires the input of academics and practitioners into the knowledge and skill mix to determine vocational level or competence. Human resource management find obstacles in dealing with multi-vocations in a centralised functional bureaucracy but as organisations evolve into distributed virtual teams, project management provides the solution. This paper presents a perspective on managing the interface between Human Resource Management and social development by suggesting a vocational model for project management.

Project Management is inextricably linked to development. Without project management there can be no development. Without development there are no projects to manage.

From this premise there is some agreement that modern project management has its origin established in industrial development, its present in business development and its future in social development.

Using a project life cycle with four stages i.e. Proposal, Planning, Implementation & Close-out, one realises that industrial development projects (buildings, power stations, petrochemical plants, bridges etc.) have their emphasis in implementation. Here project management is at its most mature, with many tools, techniques, methodologies and a great deal of understanding on how to get projects to succeed.

Business development projects (implementing strategy, re-engineering business processes, developing software, re-organising structures etc.) have their emphasis in the planning stage. Experience shows that if the plans are not well made implementation fails. It is here that project management is presently formulating theory and practice, with some understanding that there are few tools, techniques or methodologies on how to make projects succeed.

Social development projects (land reform, housing, sanitation, health care, education, etc.) have their emphasis in the proposal stage. In a letter from the European Commission, Director General; Development, dated September 1996 it is stated "Since January 1993 the European Commission has adopted Project Cycle Management" "which is based on the Logical Framework approach" "as developed by the European Commission". The methodology is concerned mainly with the greater good of the community at large by getting them involved in the proposal. Some project management theory addresses external stakeholders, some addresses internal stake holders, and some confuses the two. In social development projects there is no such luxury. If external stakeholders are not properly consulted in the proposal stage and brought on board to become internal stakeholders on the project team, all planning and implementation will fail no matter how well it was done. It is here that project management has no formal presence, no tools, no techniques and few methodologies on how to make projects succeed.

Henceforth we realise that in terms of money spent, industrial development usually spends around 10%, business development around 20%, and social development around 70% of the total amount. Already the IMF and World Bank are calling for the withdrawal of funds for social development projects. Even though $600b was spent in 1998 in India alone, there is not a single successful project to show for it.

The world has come to realise that if social development is to succeed, formal education must include project management education as a life skill. Outcomes based education or skill based education the world over is set to change how and in what areas people are to be educated, with the realisation that it is skills that drive the employment market.

Baroness Blackstone, Minister of State for Education and Employment in the UK, recently stated in a guest editorial in Project Magazine (June 1998) "In an increasingly global economy, Britain simply cannot afford to see its economic performance restricted by poor skills. The most successful businesses in the 21st century will be those that invest in the best educated and trained workforce. As a consequence, the best way of getting and keeping a job will be to have the skill needed by employers. Furthermore, the concept of a job for life is no longer relevant."

The need for a model becomes evident when one considers that according to basic macro-economic theory the global economy grows by the first world investing in the development of the third world. This accelerates the pace of development and determines the position of countries on the list of global competitiveness. The higher you climb on the list, the more efficient and effective your economy functions.

From this position two problems arise. Firstly, the increased pace of technological advancement increases the rate of vocational redundancy. (This is the rate at which jobs become redundant due to people being replaced by machines to increase efficiency). Secondly, employers demand SKILLED labour for the new positions, which the educational system must deliver. Employers become disenchanted with the educational system, because the individuals the educational system delivers cannot perform the work required of them and need further on-the-job training to become gainfully employed. The employer has a problem in that by the time the employee becomes skilled the vocation may no longer be required.

Research done by the Ministry of Education and Employment in England, now points to vocational redundancy between eight and fourteen times in a career. Your ability to have and hold a job will depend on your SKILLS as required by the employer. The problem here is that in the past a chosen vocation may have been good for three generations. Presently, a chosen vocation may be good for ten years. What this research is saying is that your chosen vocation may change every four years. If your education in this vocation takes four years you may not be able to find a job once you have completed your studies.

What a vocational model needs to show us is how repeatability and re-use of educational modules can accelerate competence to negate the effect of vocational redundancy.

Enter onto the scene OUTCOMES BASED EDUCATION. Through the creation of a statute National Qualifications Authority, a Standards Generating Body and a Education & Training Quality Assurance Body, Governments are set to change education to better match skills required by employers. This should result in faster vocational turnaround, giving employers the skills they need when they need them. This results in improved workplace efficiency and effectiveness, improving overall economic performance.

Figure 1

In Figure 1, under outcomes based education (the green section in the middle), the National Qualifications Authority (NQA) in South Africa set up the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) which determines the National Vocational Qualification Level (competence) in an attempt to match the job with the education in a more or less horizontal line from theory to practice through a NVQ level. This is done under the auspices of the Standards Generating Body (SGB) (Certification) made up mostly of academics and some practitioners, and audited by the education & training quality assurance body ETQA (Accreditation) made up of mostly practitioners and some academics. In the case of project management the ETQA fits into the role of the Certification Council of the National Association as stipulated by IPMA.

It is envisaged that the national qualifications authority, one certifies the education/training provider, certifies the lecturer as a vocational professional in that specific subject, certifies the course material, and then accredits the qualification. Competence of the individual project manager is certified by a professional body through an evaluation of knowledge + skill + behaviour.

Formal education is represented on the left and the height of the model (0% to 100%) - the level of education achieved in a specific area. Different columns represent "Organising Fields" or "Faculties" or "areas of study". There are generally twelve of these, nl: Agriculture & Nature Conservation; Culture & Arts; Business, Commerce & Management Studies; Communication Studies & Language; Education, Training & Development; Manufacturing, Engineering & Technology; Human & Social Studies; Law, Military Science & Security; Health Services & Social Services; Physics, Mathematics, Computer and Life Sciences; Services; Physical Planning & Construction. In South Africa, project management has been placed under "Business, Commerce & Management Studies"

The width of the model represents the knowledge / skill mix one gets from different formal education and informal training institutions, moving from left to right: Universities - 90% knowledge / 10% skill; Technikon - 70% knowledge / 30% skill; Trade School - 50% knowledge / 50% skill; Guild - 30% knowledge / 70% skill; On the job - 10% knowledge / 90% skill;

On the right we have skills as required by the employer in a specific job, with 0% at the bottom and 100% at the top as for education. Different columns represent different jobs requiring different skill sets, such as nurses or engineers.

To explain the model I have used the vocation of an aeroplane pilot. (follow the red line in Figure 1) If you attend university and achieve a PhD in Aerodynamics, you will be at the top of the scale on the left. This does not mean that you can fly a plane. In the job market skill is demanded which places the PhD at the low end of the skill scale.

On entering into his vocation as a pilot, our PhD finds his education useless. As he become skilled in flying a plane his education accelerates his skill up the scale provided he displays the necessary aptitude for the job.

This acceleration is exactly what we are looking for to offset vocational redundancy in a rapidly evolving economy. But, at this point in time, we do not know if knowledge accelerates skill or skill accelerates knowledge.

The red line in Figure 1, can also be used to explain the initial NVQ level of an Engineer. Once he leaves University with a Tertiary education he starts to work at the low end of the skill column. After working for about four years he has now moved up the skill column to where his skill is level with his knowledge and he takes his Government Ticket Exam to register as a Professional Engineer. On passing this exam he is then registered as competent.

Lifelong learning starts on the bottom left, moves up the knowledge scale a bit then switches to the skill scale on the right. Moves up the scale a bit then switches back to the knowledge scale and so on.

Pure knowledge-based education keeps personal development to the left and purely skills based education to the right.

A third dimension can be added to the model if one visualises the jobs and education fields stacked along the opposite sides of a cube.

The 3D model (Figure 2) also shows varying skill levels as one progresses from job to job due to vocational redundancy or simply as one progresses through life.

Elements of education or modules can be channelled into the NQF as can elements of different skills one has accumulated from various jobs.

With this understanding one can imagine that repeatability and re-use of education and skills accelerates the competence of an individual as he moves from vocation to vocation.

The human resources function is to place the right person with the right education and skill required for the job in the right place at the correct level for the appropriate compensation.

In the centralised functional bureaucracy this works well, as the correct knowledge and skill mixture (competence) can be matched to compensation with some ease. The employer employs the competence he requires and pays for it whether he uses 5% or 200% of it. This results in the natural inefficiency of a bureaucracy as an imperfect consumer of time in that available resources either exceed or fall short of demand.

As long as one competence is matched to one position within the organisation, the situation is in hand. Where problems start is when a person is promoted and the new job requires a different competence, e.g. when an accountant becomes a manager. He may be a highly competent accountant but lack skill in managing people. So we train him on the job and he becomes a competent manager. But now he has two skill sets, accounting and managing. Which does the organisation use and which is he paid for?

Matrix structures tried to solve these difficulties and could handle two competencies in one job, but when it came to more than three or four it became very troublesome to manage.

If one considers that vocations nowadays last about five or six years then most people in the job market today have more than one set of vocational competencies. If the work place is to become truly efficient then employees should be able to deliver in more than one skill set.

Returning to figure 2 one can see on the right side of the cube how skill are accumulated in moving from one vocation to another, as can education on the left.

A curiosity exits in that the workplace does not seem to be able to take advantage of this.

Within business development, project management can be equated to Human Resource Management as the business makes use of cross functional, self directing, lateral or distributed virtual teams to overcome the situation of multi-skilling for the job, but for compensation it is still a headache.

Adding the multi-project dimension it is possible to have one person working on 25 projects at the same time in different positions. On one team he is an administrative assistant for two hours, on another a technical expert for one hour and on another the project manager for four hours, all in the same day. Within virtual distributed project teams the organisation becomes a more perfect consumer of time by matching the multi-skills of the individual to distributed demand for those skills.

A further element is that project management is used in many education fields and across many skills.

Project management competence can now be measured by the height of the circle from the base.

Using this model project management now enters the realm of a life skill as it becomes part of all education and all vocational skills. Now project management is a foundation package on which all knowledge and skill is built. Project management is what turns vision into results. Project management brings a team of divers levels of education, social backgrounds, religions, experience, etc. together to form a coercive group that can reach the objectives put to it in an efficient and effective manner.

If project management is part of all education and experience then can one describe the role and function of a project manager in an understandable way without understanding the fundamental differences between industrial development, business development and social development?

Combining human resource management with project management in a renewed sense of how business development impacts on social development through outcome based education. This results in project management as a life skill essential to the development of all economies.

As the pace of technological development increases, the speed at which vocations become redundant increases. The ability to have and hold a job becomes more dependant on skill and less dependent on knowledge.

Formal education must find a way to stay relevant to the skills that employers demand of their employees. Outcome based education endeavours to put such a system in use. This requires the input of academics and practitioners into the knowledge and skill mix to determine vocational level or competence. To accommodate this statute bodies called National Qualification Authorities put qualification frameworks in place.

Human resource management find difficulty in dealing with multi-vocations in a centralised functional bureaucracy but as organisations evolve into distributed virtual teams, project management provides the solution.

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