IPMA Perspective Competence Element — Governance, Structures and Processes
In my last article on IPMA, I wrote about the first competence element in the Perspective Area, Strategy. In this article, I am writing on the second competence element, which is “Governance, Structures and Processes”.
This competence element aims to enable the individual to effectively participate in and manage the impact of governance, structure and processes on projects.
While a project is a temporary endeavour, it can be part of a large organisation’s programme and portfolio. A Project Manager cannot work in a silo but ensures compliance to its corporate governance, structure, and processes.
My first official appointment as a Project Manager (PM) was in 2009 for a project with the Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) of Singapore. The organisation has a set of established processes, project structure and corporate governance. After taking over my predecessor’s appointment, I feel overwhelmed by the documentation and ensuring compliance with everything we are doing.
Apart from internal & external audit on the project processes, I need to comply with regulations and procurement guidelines when dealing with external sub-contractors. As a PM, I need to ensure that my team abide by a strict code of conduct, especially matters related to the individual’s integrity. Something that anyone of us did can impact the team and the organisation as a whole.
After assuming the PM role for two months and understanding the purpose of that compliance and processes from my GM, I can appreciate the benefits of having these.
They are there to help us do our work better and giving clarity to whatever we are doing. When we are planning a new project, we have a structure to get us started quickly. When someone needs to be away suddenly, the documentation helps the team promptly pick things up and continue with the project. When making purchases, the processes ensure that we have done our due diligence in getting something that we need.
These lessons helped me do a better job when I assumed PM for the first face recognition project that we are running for the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) of Singapore.
There was an instance when I prepared a document that the customer does not require. That was part of the project documentation that we need to create as part of the corporate processes, and I filed that under my project folder. During one of the customer’s internal audit, the auditor asked for this documentation. Fortunately, we have this document ready and handed over to the auditors promptly to avoid Non-Compliance.
While we may think that we can do things faster by taking a shortcut, they might come back to bite us suddenly if we run our projects without knowing our corporate governance, structure, and processes. Instead of saving time & effort, we might be spending more time performing rectification.
Execution of this CE depends on the other CEs and cannot happen in a silo. The other CEs include Organisation and Information, Finance, Resources, Procurement, and many others, supporting each other.
Thank you for reading, and I hope it gives you a glimpse into this “Governance, Structure and Processes” CE. I will write on the next competence element in the Perspective Competence Area, “Compliance, Standards and Regulations”, in my subsequent sharing.
If you are keen to know more about PMAS, you can check this link out https://pma.sg/ and follow my hashtag to learn more about the CE in IPMA Individual Competence Baseline (ICB) Version 4.0
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