IPMA Practice Competence Element — Requirements & Objectives

In my last article on IPMA, I wrote about the first competence element in the Practice Area, Project Design. In this article, I am writing on the second competence element of the Practice Area: Requirements & Objectives.

This competence element is to enable the individual to establish the relationship between what stakeholders want to achieve and what the project is going to accomplish.

I hate to repeat this, but it needs constant reminders for this thought to set into Project Managers. A Project Manager in recent times manages the project and ensures customers’ satisfaction with the project’s outcome. Of course, some will debate that this is a job of a Business Analyst and not the responsibility of a Project Manager. However, I like to argue that this is one of the skillsets that a Project Manager needs to be competent in his job.

Before we run the project, we need to define the type of race track, how it is being raced, who will be watching, who we are racing against, the rules, and what will we be measured against. These are the 5W1H questions that we need to find out. But, most importantly, what the end-user wants with this must be fit for purpose.

A Project Manager might need to deploy sessions to solicit those views and requirements either in group or face-to-face. One might also need to deploy the Design Thinking approach and use Agile and Rapid Prototyping to help stakeholders articulate their thoughts. Such is an example of how a Project Manager’s role evolves and is not limited to solely managing the project.

Execution of this CE depends on the other CEs and cannot happen in a silo. The other CEs include Strategy, Compliance, Standards & Regulations, Personal Communications, Leadership and others.

Thank you for reading, and I hope it gives you a glimpse into this Requirements & Objectives CE. In my next article, I will write on the Scope competence element in Practice Area.

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