IPMA
The environment under control: perspective competences according to IPMA
A project plan can be sound and the project can still stall. In my experience, the reason then often lies not in the project itself but in its environment: the strategy has changed, a committee does not decide, a regulation was overlooked, or someone with influence is against the undertaking.
In its competence standard ICB4, IPMA has given this environment an area of its own: the perspective competences, called “Perspective” in the standard. The ICB4 states that a project almost never takes place in a vacuum but is influenced by its organisational, societal and political environment.
Formal and informal influences
The ICB4 distinguishes two kinds of influences from the environment:
- Formal influences are written down: the strategy of the organisation, its structures and processes, laws and standards.
- Informal influences are not in any document: the personal interests and the power of individuals and the culture of an organisation.
This results in five competence elements.
1. Strategy
A project should contribute to the objectives of the organisation. The project management must know this connection and check regularly whether the justification for the project still holds. The ICB4 explicitly also mentions the possibility of ending a project early if it no longer fits strategically. Aids are critical success factors and key figures.
Question for practice: Which objective of the organisation does this project support, and how do we notice that it has been achieved?
2. Governance, structures and processes
Every organisation has rules on who decides what, how reporting is done and which departments support a project, such as finance, human resources or IT. According to the ICB4, the success of a project depends heavily on decisions being taken at the right time at the right level.
Question for practice: Which decisions can the project management take itself, which the project sponsor, and which need a municipal council or board of directors?
3. Compliance, standards and regulations
These include laws, regulations on safety, health and the environment, codes of conduct of an industry and principles of sustainability. The ICB4 requires the project management to identify the relevant requirements before the start and to treat them as opportunities and risks.
Question for practice: Which regulations apply to our undertaking, for example data protection, procurement law or archiving, and who checks them?
4. Power and interest
The ICB4 describes power as the ability to influence the behaviour of others. A large part of it is informal. People have personal goals that may or may not coincide with their official role. Influence also arises from expertise, relationships or acting as a role model, not only from hierarchy. The project management must recognise these influences and be able to distinguish them from the formal organisation.
Question for practice: Who can speed up or block the project without being responsible for it in the organisation chart?
5. Culture and values
Every organisation has a culture, partly written down in mission statements and values, but for the most part unwritten. It shows in how people talk to each other, how mistakes are dealt with and how decisions come about. The ICB4 requires the project management to analyse this culture and align its approach with it.
Question for practice: How are decisions really taken in this organisation, in the meeting or beforehand in the corridor?
What this means for SMEs and municipalities
The following points are an assessment from practice. They do not come from the ICB4.
- In SMEs, formal structures are often lean. The informal ones are all the more important: the opinion of the owner or of a long-standing employee can carry more weight than any organisation chart.
- In municipalities, several cultures meet, such as administration, school, municipal council and population. Added to this are political cycles such as elections and budget processes, which strongly influence the schedule of a project.
- External project managers do not know the environment at the beginning. A deliberate analysis of the context therefore belongs at the start of every engagement.
Link to HERMES
HERMES covers the formal perspective topics well: the study clarifies the alignment, the roles regulate the decisions, the legal basis analysis and the ISDP concept deal with regulations. The informal topics, that is power, interests and culture, are not regulated by a method. Here the competence of the person is required.
Further reading: IPMA project management: competence instead of method · Setting up IT projects in municipalities with HERMES
Sources: IPMA Individual Competence Baseline, version 4.0, German edition, chapters 3.2 and 4.3 · VZPM, IPMA certification system (in German)