What is a Project?
A project is a unique, temporary, multi-disciplinary and organised endeavour to realise agreed deliverables within predefined requirements and constraints.
The above is the definition of a Project.
I am a certified Project Manager and Risk Management Professional since 2009 and 2010, respectively. However, my involvement in a project started in the 1980s, which is a long way back. Based on the definition of a project, you and I were already involved in a project when we started doing the school project. While many organisations seek to recruit a certified project manager (PM), you do not need to get certification to run one. As a fundamental, you need to manage three things, the Scope, the Schedule, and the Resources. PM know these as the “Triple Constraints”.
I am not advocating that you should not consider any form of certification. I am highlighting that a project is much closer to us than we think.
I am currently one of the Governing Committee members of Project Management Association Singapore (PMAS), a Managing Association of International Project Management Association (IPMA). IPMA is a competence-based certification that looks at Perspective, People and Practice across Project, Programme and Portfolio. We have a total of 29 Competence Elements across three competence areas.
People Competences — these consist of the soft skills required to effectively manage oneself and internal & external teams. It also deals with team dynamics and getting people to focus on team outcome.
Practice Competences — these consist of the mechanics that enable one to execute the project successfully effectively. The key focus is to manage the Triple Constraints.
Perspective Competences — these consist of elements that required one to consider factors beyond the project. Those include geopolitics, organisational objectives, cultural, and many more to manage a project, programme, or portfolio effectively.
This series on Project Management will share the Competence Elements listed in the IPMA Individual Competence Baseline (IPMA ICB®). I will also include some of my personal stories on project management, giving you a perspective on what I am experiencing on the ground, not from the text.
There are a few projects that I used to run that teaches me a lot about project management.
- Technology Implementation Project for Apple Premium Reseller: I am managing the project with the installation team from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Japan, South Korea, and India.
- Technology Implementation Project for Citibank: I am managing the project and conducting training with teams from Singapore, Malaysia, India, Hong Kong, and South Korea.
- Implementation of the Facial Recognition System: I was the first PM running the Proof-of-Concept Trial and Full Project with the Singapore Ministry. I have also gotten my experiences and expertise in Facial Recognition here.
- Technology Implementation Project for Singapore Ministry: I was the PM running a programme that deals with an overseas supplier, supplying military system for Singapore.
As I shared with you on those Competence Elements (CE), I will draw some references from these projects and others to better illustrate those CEs. Of course, my sharing will be generic, and I will not share anything sensitive about these projects.
Thank you for reading, and I will start with the Strategy CE from the Perspective Competence Area next week.
If you are keen to know more about PMAS, you can check this link out https://pma.sg/
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