Developing homegrown project managers

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Thursday, 07 January 2010 09:12

Skills restraints are still impacting significantly on the project management profession, but importing skills is not the way to go

The global shortage of skilled project managers is making itself felt in South Africa and is impacting on the number and quality of projects. However, here there seems to be broad consensus among PM experts that the problem is not so much a lack of skills, but rather a lack of experienced, appropriately talented and capable project managers.

And while recent global research conducted for KPMG has revealed that the global economic slowdown may have cooled off an overheated PM market – thus bringing temporary relief in respect of the demand for PM skills – Jeff Shaw, a director at KPMG responsible for project advisory services, says the research nonetheless highlighted that in South Africa, as elsewhere, skills restraints remain one of the major problems.

“Skills we have lots of, but not capability,” says Dennis Comninos, an international author, consultant and lecturer in PM who also teaches at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business. “We have many people with skills, but not necessarily ones with the right aptitude for the job.”

Comninos says more attention should be paid to identifying talent and selecting experienced people with “the right aptitude”.

He also believes that black economic empowerment is impacting negatively on PM in South Africa, in that most experienced project managers are “older, pale males” who are no longer available to mentor young entrants in the field.

Professor Herman Steyn of the Graduate School of Technology Management at the University of Pretoria agrees that practical experience is essential. But, he says, those capable of serving as mentors in various organisations are the ones doing all the PM work and are so overloaded that they have no time for mentoring.

Steyn, however, also sees a problem in regard of numbers when it comes to the larger physical projects. “For these projects engineers have to be trained as project managers, but the number of people graduating as engineers has been declining.”

Steyn blames the South African schools system and low maths literacy for this.

Because practical experience is so important, Steyn’s university does not offer a baccalaureate degree in PM, but only a Master’s programme, for which the entry requirement is a four-year Engineering degree plus three years’ practical experience.

“You cannot have someone with no work experience managing people,” he says. “For the many other types of smaller projects, the shortages can be addressed through courses in the workplace. We have trained over 5 000 people the past 10 or 11 years in this way,” he says.

The UP also hopes to increase its number of engineering students and is building new facilities for the purpose.

Dr Erik Schmikl, who heads up Synerlead International and teaches at Cranefield College, a Pretoria-based project and programme management institution, says there are many engineers who believe they are qualified for PM after a brief encounter in that field.

However, he says, there are no shortcuts and companies suffer because they either do not invest enough in training and education or send people on the wrong programmes.

“To develop homegrown project managers, you need to establish a managerial ‘fast-track’ programme and assign each potential trainee to a mentor.”

“To identify persons suitable for the job, undertake talent assessments like the Kolbe A, MBTI Q, and EQi assessment. The employee profiles get matched against those of your best performers. Talent drives everything. Insufficient investment is done in this area,” adds Schmikl.

KPMG’s Shaw believes that in future, the government will become more sophisticated in building training requirements into projects as has been done, for example, with the Gautrain project.

He believes the quality of training in South Africa at the level of engineers is still good, but that there is a lack of depth and quality training in other spheres.

He, too, sees practical experience and mentoring as invaluable, but also says mentors are overloaded.

Shaw says it is essential that the government’s infrastructure projects should go ahead for the necessary skills to be developed.

But the large projects linked to the 2010 Soccer World Cup have been the “easy ones” with enough skilled people available, he says. The problem now will come with smaller projects spread more widely and requiring many more project managers, such as with water reticulation projects, for example.

Comninos, too, says the recession brought a trend of “small is better”, with projects being broken down into smaller entities – embracing the so-called lean project management and agile philosophy applied in information technology.

Trevor Lake, who lectures PM at Wits Business School in Johannesburg and is chief operations officer of IdeaSource – a company involved in software consulting and project financing – is not convinced that South Africa’s skills restraints have been relieved temporarily by the recession.

He, too, detects a proliferation of project operations and a corresponding demand for PM skills from diverse operations such as pharmaceuticals, advertising and even the legal profession.

“I am finding that more organisations are now aware of the potential benefits of a project management approach to resolving problems and re-engineering business processes. There is certainly a shortage of skilled project managers in general. I have found a growing demand for project management skills,” says Lake.

He adds that organisations are becoming increasingly aware of the benefits of adopting a PM approach and are training their staff or sending them on courses.

But in the public sector, he adds, too many people do not yet understand the value of PM skills. “Some are too slow to train their staff or have other agendas. Some are unaware of what PM actually is.”

But he nonetheless believes that “the new generation of government” is more serious about delivery, or the implementation of project plans. “They will sooner or later come to the conclusion that PM is the approach to adopt.”

Lake also advocates the importance of mentorship, internships and practical experience. People with infrastructure PM experience, he says, will only be employed if they have considerable practical experience.

“PM is essentially a practical programme. I don’t feel that there is a mismatch in the business school approach – it’s case-driven and example-led,” he says.

Schmikl believes South Africa will be able to deliver on its infrastructure requirements in time for 2010, and also for future requirements in the medium to longer term.

But that, he says, will have to be done “with help of outside contracted experienced resources as they do in the case of the Gautrain Project”.

“But this strategy costs a lot in foreign capital. Without these additionally sub-contracted resource skills and experience, projects may fall behind and will not all deliver on time. The most crucial aspect is having the right project manager who is both experienced and a top performer,” he says.

In the final analysis, Shaw says, South Africa will have to grow its own skills, as it does not have the competitive advantage to attract foreign skills.

Stef Terblanche

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Developing homegrown project managers
Thursday, 07 January 2010