Page 271 - Global Project Management Handbook

13-8 COMPETENCY FACTORS IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

project team members in the scores on the critical success factors of the PIP. Perhaps
administrative and technical personnel disagree in their assessments of project status
because of their more specifically focused backgrounds. Use consensus to establish as
accurate an assessment of project status as possible. The PIP provides a shared vocabu-
lary for reaching this consensus.

Pay Close Attention to Low Factors

“Low” scores are those that have a ranking below the 50th percentile. These low scores
indicate likely future problem areas that may have an adverse effect on successful project
implementation. Project managers should start developing action plans for improving
these factor scores. For example, if the factor score of personnel is rated as low, it is
sensible to critically examine the project team to see if present team members have the
necessary skills to perform their tasks. This low score may signal the need to locate and
enlist additional project team personnel.

Visually Emphasize the Critical Success Factors

Putting the current profile on the bulletin board or in memos can be a powerful tool for
indicating to members of the project team and upper management both the current status
of the project and where problem areas exist. These problem areas would suggest the
obvious “pressure points” that require extra consideration. In one instance, a project man-
ager would attach a copy of the project profile scores to the office doors of members of
his project team overnight so that this status report was the first thing they saw when they
arrived in the morning. These profile scores represent an excellent visual reinforcement
and an alternative feedback mechanism to the reams of budget and schedule data that are
generated on a daily basis.

ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE

A major engineering corporation was recently involved in the development, testing, and
commercialization of a nuclear reactor monitoring and diagnostic system. The goals of
this project were to develop and install a diagnostic system in reactor coolant pumps in
order to identify problems before potentially dangerous leakages occur.
Figure 13.1 shows a sample copy of the PIP for this particular project, as filled out by
the project manager, indicating the 10 critical factor scores. The raw scores obtained from
answering the 50 questions covering the 10 critical factors of the PIP have been
converted to percentile scores through use of the database of over 400 projects.
Interpreting this profile would suggest that 6 of the 10 critical factors for the project
can be rated as strong or well handled. One of the factors could be considered marginal,
and the other three critical success factors can be interpreted as being weak, representing
potentially serious problem areas.
The six strong factors include project mission, project scheduling/plans, client consul-
tation, client acceptance, monitoring and feedback, and communication. Each of these
critical factors has a percentile ranking of over 60 percent. The practical interpretation
of these scores for the project manager would be that these are critical areas that are cur-
rently being handled well; that is, there are no problems with these aspects of the