Page 183 - Global Project Management Handbook

COMPETENCIES OF PROJECT MANAGERS 8-9

Part IV: Project Segment Management. Presents 11 “segments” or knowledge areas of
project management. These 11 knowledge areas are strategy, systems, objectives, risk,
relationships, finance, organization, resources, technology, value, and communications.

Qualifications and Experience

The usual reference for qualifications and experience is a résumé or curriculum vitae. As
mentioned earlier, employers, in recruiting project managers, generally will look for
experience on similar projects in similar organizations and will be interested in evidence
of successful completion of projects similar to those that will be covered by the proposed
job role.
Studies indicate that most project managers have a bachelor’s degree or higher and, on
average, over 10 years of experience. 8,9 The first degrees of most project managers are
not in project management because undergraduate degrees in project management are
uncommon but rather in a range of disciplines including business, law, social sciences,
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computer sciences, teaching, and education. Most, however, have degrees in engineering,
primarily civil and mechanical engineering, or in design and construction. Postgraduate
qualifications are similarly varied, including postgraduate diplomas and MBAs. An
increasing number of academic institutions now offer postgraduate project management
qualifications. Originally, these qualifications were focused primarily on engineering and
construction, but an increasing number of project management academic programs are
now generic in nature, and many are based in business schools. Several academic institu-
tions now offer professional doctorates in project management that are intended for
senior practitioners. A number of organizations work with academic institutions to develop
specific academic qualifications for their personnel. One of the earliest sources of educa-
tion in project management was the Defense Systems Management College in the United
States. A number of academic institutions, primarily in North America, offer masters cer-
tificates that are based on programs that are more akin to industry short courses than to
full academic programs. It is therefore becoming more common for project managers to
have postgraduate qualifications in the field.
Although there are relatively few project managers with directly relevant academic
qualifications, there are an increasing number with project management qualifications
awarded by professional associations such as the PMI, the APM, the IPMA, and the

Project Management Professionals Certifications Center, as discussed earlier. Other qual-
ifications are offered by professional institutions such as the Australian Institute of
Project Management and relate to national qualifications frameworks, which will be dis-
cussed in more detail below. Organizations such as the British Computer Society and the
Singapore Computer Society offer information technology (IT)–based project manage-
ment qualifications.
The range of expertise covered by nonacademic project management qualifications
varies among associations/organizations, with some encompassing project team members
to program managers (such as IPMA), whereas the offerings of others are not as broad,
and some focus on a single-level qualification (such as PMI’s PMP). For the majority of
qualifications there is a requirement of project management experience as well as equiva-
lencies for experience against formal education. Only the APM’s foundation qualifica-
tion, the APMP, and its equivalent, IPMA’s Level D, do not specify a need for project
management experience, although a curriculum vitae is required as a basis for determin-
ing “suitability” to sit for the APMP examination.
Another form of project management qualification is the one based on a project man-
agement methodology. The best known and most common of these are the foundation