15315: Project Management Assessment - Professional Development Plan (PDP)

Project Management Assessment

Case Scenario/ Task

Prepare an individual Professional Development Plan (PDP) using the Project Management Competency Assessment Matrix as a starting point. Use the Team Project as a source of experiential learning for developing your competency.

Select area/s in which you have a particular interest and which you have taken away from the workshop experience in which you will develop your learnings.

The emphasis on this reflective learning assignment is to demonstrate how you are able to apply the tools you have been given in the workshop.

The PDP will:

• Show how you will develop your project management competencies in the future
• Include the subjects that you intend to study and the work experience to will need to gain to meet your goals
• Include a GAP analysis – this means reflect on how your assessment of competency (as shown in the Matrix) compares to an industry competency standard. Gap analysis will compare the Project Management Competency Assessment Matrix and one of the known standards, e.g. IPMA, AIPM, PMI or GAPPS. Choose a standard that is relevant to your industry sector. For example use an accounting standard if your PDP objective is related to this sector.

The GAP analysis will:

• Determine the scope of your PDP and define your development goals.
• Indicate project management competency at this stage in your development.
• Identify the scope, the costs and time required with achieving your objective.
• Include other project management knowledge areas as appropriate.
• Show expenditure to-date, progress against schedule and the scope achieved as a demonstration of competencies achieved in this unit.
• Describe your management of risk, quality and procurement you will undertake to undertaken during this unit of study.
• Reflect on the team behaviours, effectiveness of communications and any changes you will make in subsequent units of study. Refer to your cohort [team members] as part of developing your project management community or practice network. Describe their competencies, their areas of strength and weakness.

Introduction:

Professional development plans play a very important role in the identification and development of required skills for being successful within an organisational context. According to Calderhead (2012), it is necessary for every professional to ask the question regarding the ways of making oneself more valuable to the company than before at the end of the year. A professional development plan is something that makes it possible for individuals to make their plans for improved performance. Lv (2014) remarked that professionals who aspire for high growth in their workplace are required to make their own professional development plan. In this assignment, professional development plan in relation to project management is analysed along with the loopholes that are still present event after PDP. Further, an extensive account of teamwork and performance and the ways to improve teamwork is analysed along with a commentary on own professional development plan.

SWOT analysis:

Table 1: SWOT analysis

(Source: Self developed)

Professional development goals:

Table 2: Professional development goals

(Source: Self developed)

Calderhead (2012) remarked that making of short, medium and long term goals helps an individual to gain success in improving skills and capabilities I want to improve my overall project management skills. I personally pose skills that are required for project management though there are certain skills that are required to be improved. In the next section, I have shown the ways by which I will improve my project management skills in future with the help of given project management matrix.

Professional development plan with the help of project management competency:

Team (2013) identified that for having proper project management skills, it is important to improve skills like as integration, integration, time, cost etc. According to Kerzner (2013), Integration refers to the application of managing all the project management activities whereas the principle of human resource management refers to the planning of human resource before starting a project. Hodgson et al. (2013) remarked that communication is an important part of project management. It is important to manage communication with team members, clients, stakeholders and all other people that are engaged with a project. However, Janssen et al. (2015) argued that the most important elements of project management are cost, time and quality management. Quality of projects is associated with managing cost and time properly. However, as identified in the project management competency framework, an individual requires 10 skills to be a proper project manager. I have made my personal development plan based on the identified 10 principles of project management.

Table 3: Professional Development Plan

(Source: Self-developed)

The above table shows the actions that I need to take for improving my project management skills as well as for managing the existing skills.

Gap analysis:

The personal develop plan has been able to show the skills that I have to improve and the skills that I pose with best practice or with high standard. I have been able to acquire few of the project management skills accurately, whereas there is a lack of few essential qualities. The below table will show my project management competency level:

Table 4: Gap analysis

(Source: Self developed)

From the above table, it is identified that, I lack time management, cost management and project development systems. Further, I lack proper communication qualities in order to convey my ideas to the stakeholder group. According to Mir and Pinnington (2014), communication has the ability to cover u other project management qualities. If a person do not have essential and required communication qualities, it will be difficult for the person to be successful in learning cost and time management. Due to the lack of communication, as ideas will not be delivered properly, project quality will also get hampered. Thus, it can be said that if I want to be a good project management, it will be important for me to develop my communication skills, which is also an essential project management goal that I have identified. Even though I pose good competency in managing quality, risk, human resource and procurement, the lack of communication, cost and time management qualities are restricting my other project management abilities. Hwang and Ng (2013) remarked that for being a good project manager, it is important to have essential integrate all the project management principles. In order to improve my project management qualities that I lack, I will require time and cost for improving it. The below table shows the time and cost of improvement of project management skills that I lack most.

Table 5: Time and cost associated with improving project management skills

(Source: Self developed)

Reflection on team performance and the ways of improving it:

Braun et al. (2013) pointed out that working as a team is the most essential component of performance improvement. Every member in a team needs to play own role in order to bring out positive results for the organisation. De Jong et al. (2016) pointed out that, every team needs to be belief each other. Without believing each other, it might not be possible to achieve the required objectives. Greer et al. (2013) argued that, apart from belief, measureable and clear goals are required for unifying a team to achieve the objectives. However, De Hoogh et al. (2015) believed that team members should have honesty and at the same time responsibility of doing their assigned tasks. Without honesty and responsibility of work, a team cannot be called as a good team. Dyer and Dyer (2013) remarked that team members’ needs to be self motivated whereas the leader is required to motivate the employees by either providing them with intrinsic or extrinsic rewards or by using emotional intelligence as a motivational factor for employees. In the opinion of De Jong et al. (2016), commitment and accountability among employees and team members is inherent to the success of a project.

As far as the team members in my organisation, they are accountable enough to carry out the tasks. However, there is a lack of commitment in them to carry out the given tasks with extreme effectiveness. It is identified that team member who trust each other are more open to each other regarding their weakness and strengths. It is beneficial for organisational development as well. However, as far as my team members are concerned, there is a lack of trust among each other and therefore, they are unable to communicate with each other. Communication plays a very important role in managing tasks effectively. However, there is a communication gap between the team members, which has become a matter of concern. Because of the lack of proper communication and trust among the employees, it has become a problem for the performance improvement of the team and in turn the organisation. In this context, steps for improving performance of employees are required to be taken. The ways of improving team performance are as follows:

Table 6: Team assessment

(Source: self developed)

Identification and reflection on the PDP:

Even though I lack few project management skills, I have been able to improve the knowledge and skills of a good project manager. I have taken steps to improve my communication skills by interacting with team members and client more proactively. Further, I have started to work on my time management skills. Time management being a crucial factor in time management I have made to do list and scheduling of daily activities that have become helpful for me in improving my time management skills. Currently, I am able to complete each task within the given time frame. The training of cost management has been able to improve my budgeting skills. I have been able to estimate the budgets of projects with near perfection. On the other hand, I have also been able to manage my team members. I have been able to encourage the team members and direct them towards the common goal. I have a good risk taking and risk management skills. However, I am taking other approaches for managing risk. I am a calculated risk taker though the lack of other qualities has not been able to make me apply this skill. In the current situation, I am using my risk taking skills in making estimation for budget and taking new projects in short deadlines. It might also be able to improve my time management and other skills. Even though I lack systems management skills, I am learning the use of systems management and therefore, I will be able to make scheduling of project plan that will be able to improve my project management skills. In overall, the personal development plan developed will be helpful for me to improve my project management skills that are essential for my future career growth.

Conclusion:

From the above analysis, it has become clear that project management requires the integration of different project management skills and capabilities. Cost, time and communication as well as human resource management has become one of the most important project management skills that can help an individual needs to have in order to become a good project manager.