Cross-analysis of Transversal Competences in Project Management

Ana González-Marcos

, Fernando Alba-Elías

, Joaquín Ordieres-Meré

and Fermín Navaridas-Nalda

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Universidad de La Rioja, c/ Luis de Ulloa 20, 26004 Logroño, La Rioja, Spain

PMQ Research Group, ETSII, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, José Gutiérrrez Abascal 2, 28006 Madrid, Spain

Department of Education Sciences, Universidad de La Rioja, c/ Luis de Ulloa 8, 26004 Logroño, La Rioja, Spain

Keywords: Project Management, Transversal Competences, Competence Assessment.

Abstract: This paper presents a framework for project management competence assessment based on participant’s

performance and contribution in a simulated environment. The proposed framework considers competence

assessment through evidences and the participation of different roles. The system enforces the assessment of

individual competences by means of a set of performance indicators. A specific case study is presented and

the relationship between exhibited transversal competences and project quality is analysed.

1 INTRODUCTION

The European space for higher education is

immersed in a substantial transformation process of

the organizational, pedagogical and methodological

aspects of knowledge transmission (Council of the

European Union, 2004). In this changing context,

the new educational model focuses on learning and

competences’ development.

In a constantly changing society, the demands

faced by an individual vary from one situation to

another and from time to time. Therefore, in addition

to possessing the specific basic skills for

accomplishing a certain task, more flexible, generic

and transferable competences are needed to provide

the individual with a combination of skills,

knowledge and attitudes that are appropriate to

particular situations (European Commision, 2004).

In this new higher education conception, the

instructor’s role shifts from transmitting knowledge

to students to facilitate and guide their learning

process (Beltrán, 1999; Navaridas, 2004). Thus, the

teaching process must be organized in a more

learner-centered approach than classical lectures

offer.

This work presents a teaching framework that

aims to stimulate the learning of both technical and

human skills in project management. More

specifically, this study concentrates on the

relationship observed between four transversal

competences –teamwork, leadership, motivation and

results orientation- and the final project success.

The structure of the remaining part of the paper is as

follows. Section 2 presents a brief review on related

works. Section 3 provides an overview of the

learning experience and section 4 is dedicated to

present and discuss the relationships observed

between the four analysed competences and the final

project quality. Finally, the last section discusses

some general conclusions and presents future work.

2 BACKGROUND

Competences in project management are correlated

to performance on the job and can be confronted

against well-accepted standards and improved via

training and other development activities. The

underlying assumption is that a competency can be

broken down into dimensions of competence, as

Project Management Competency Development

(PMCD) Framework does. In this framework,

considered dimensions are Knowledge, Personal and

Performance (PMI, 2002). Furthermore, the

International Project Management Association

(IPMA) created the International Competence

Baseline (ICB) consisting of 46 elements for

knowledge and experience as well as personal

attitudes and abilities for general impression (IPMA,

2006). In addition, the Association for Project

Management (APM) developed the APM

Competence Framework providing the technical,

behavioural and contextual competence elements

needed for effective project management (APM,

González-Marcos A., Alba-Elías F., Ordieres-Meré J. and Navaridas-Nalda F..

Cross-analysis of Transversal Competences in Project Management.

DOI: 10.5220/0004847600340041

In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2014), pages 34-41

ISBN: 978-989-758-021-5

 2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

2008).

Even though human skills –communication,

teamwork, organizational effectiveness, leadership,

flexibility, creativity, etc.– are acknowledged as

important for project management, the education

offered in industrial engineering degrees

concentrates mainly on the control aspects of

projects, i.e., the technical skills. It is recently that

authors have started to discuss how to teach this

discipline in higher education. Thus, Pant and

Baroudi (2008) argue the necessity of a more

balanced approach between technical and human

concepts to enhance project management education.

Clark (2008) discusses the skills required for an

effective project manager, as well as the analysis of

four approaches at the M.Sc. level to develop these

skills. Barron (2005) discusses the difficulty of

learning effective project management skills and

suggests that there is a way to teach project

management through properly designed assessment.

In the same way, Sense (2007) emphasizes that

project learning and the learning of behaviours that

will lead to success are most appropriately pursued

through the creation of a suitable environment.

The teaching and learning of project

management has grown in interest and popularity

(Berggren and Söderlund, 2008; Ojiako et al., 2011;

Reif and Mitri, 2005) and there are some practical

approaches to the teaching of project management.

For instance, Abernethy et al. (2007) describe a

specific experimental approach for information

technology students. Authors argue that project

activities must mirror the real world for information

technology students to learn what needs to be done

in industry projects. More recently, Crespo et al.

(2011) advocated a combination of theoretical

content, individual applied tasks, use of software

systems and a strategy of learning by doing in

teaching project management. They formally

introduce negotiating and virtual team management

aspects to different teams from different universities

in different locations.

3 METHODOLOGY AND

IMPLEMENTATION

The Project and Portfolio Management Learning

(P2ML) framework presented in this work is based

on the experiential learning theory, i.e., learning

through action. The following is a list of the main

characteristics of the proposed model:

 Students are involved in real-world

engineering projects, which provides

authenticity and require students to use

academic and technical knowledge.

 Students are forced to adopt a more active role

since they are the ones who must develop a

project within given time and specifications.

 Acquisition of teamwork abilities and human

skills, such as leadership, communication or

negotiation, are promoted.

 Professional skills that should be deployed by

a project manager are implemented in scale.

In terms of the selected method for project

management, it was adopted PRINCE2

(Projects

IN a Controlled Environment) (Office of

Government Commerce, 2009) as far as it is simple,

product oriented and easier to understand for

students without any previous experience in neither

projects nor project management.

The use of PRINCE2

, even for academic

purposes is not new, as it has been frequently

reported (Hewagamage and Hewagamage, 2011;

Zhang et al., 2012). Authors preferred it instead of

the most common standard from the Project

Management Institute (PMI) –Project Management

Body of Knowledge, PMBoK (PMI, 2008)- because

of the students’ lack of previous experience. After

initial experiences (Ordieres et al., 2011), teachers

found that keeping the focus at the products to be

developed, instead of using an effort oriented

methodology help the most to the learning process,

as students always look at product level.

According to the chosen method a multiphase

lifecycle is accomplished. The meaning for all the

stages established by PRINCE2

is learnt during

the first three weeks of the course.

For the student’s learning process, it is necessary

to make clear the difference between the different

roles of persons who work together on the same

project, but with very different responsibilities. In

order to do this, and because students from different

locations –Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

(UPM) and Universidad de La Rioja (UR)- and

different backgrounds are involved, they are exposed

to different participation experiences by playing

three different roles (all of them are the available

figures in PRINCE2

 PM: Project Manager, with management

responsibilities. Each project is managed by a

team of seven or eight PM. The number of

students playing the role of PM was

established according to the necessity that all

students perform management tasks. It must

be noted the short length of the course, just

120/150 hours of student’s work (4,8/6 ECTS

Cross-analysisofTransversalCompetencesinProjectManagement

assigned to the UPM and UR courses,

respectively), which becomes short time

considering the lack of experience of the

students (Warfvinge, 2008).

 TMg: Team manager. A PM temporarily

assigned to manage Project Engineers (TM),

to produce what it was described into the

Work Package document (Managing Products

processes).

 TM: Team member, with engineering tasks

development responsibilities. Each project is

composed of ten or twelve TM.

The projects provided are basically oriented to

learn about the project management methodology as

well as to develop key competences as they include

reports preparation, video presentation for the

project as a commercial product as well as an

individual presentation much more technical about

their position in the team, the tasks carried out and

their self-assessment as this tool is a beneficial for

the learning process too (Crook et al., 2012). It is

included the drawing preparation if required by the

project topic as well as the formal budget estimation,

not only for the project itself but also for its

implementation.

The authors have chosen the IPMA-ICB

framework (IPMA, 2006) as a reference model for

competences in project management because of its

flexibility and the taxonomy provided. IPMA (2006)

defines the four competences studied in this work as

follows:

 Leadership involves providing direction and

motivating others in their role or task to fulfill

the project’s objectives.

 Engagement & Motivation. Engagement is the

personal buy-in from the project manager

(PM) to the project and from the people inside

and associated with the project and

motivation. Motivation of the project team

depends on how well the individuals bond

together and their ability to deal with both the

high and low points of the project.

 Results Orientation means to focus the team’s

attention on key objectives to obtain the

optimum outcome for all the parties involved.

The PM has to ensure that the project results

satisfy the relevant interested parties. To

deliver the results required by the relevant

interested parties, the PM has to find out what

the different participants in the project would

like to get out of it for themselves. This

competence in project management behaviour

is closely linked to project success

 Teamwork covers the management and

leadership of team building, operating in

teams and group dynamics.

In order to support learning and monitoring,

information and communication technology (ICT)

tools were used. The provided ICT environment was

built by integrating some open source tools as it is

described in González-Marcos et al (2013).

Moreover, specific procedures about how to operate,

how to do things, how to communicate mandatory

information etc., have been developed and learning

them as well as the use of the ICT system is the goal

of the first module for the course, in parallel with

learning about PRINCE2

Subsequently, students will develop a direct

relationship between PRINCE2

theory and

operational procedure. This module consumes three

weeks and the last activity is an individual

assessment that is used as evidence for Project

Management Information Systems ability and

theoretical knowledge about the method of

management.

During the period where the project is being

developed, students realize how complex the project

management becomes because different effects such

as contradictions found between stakeholders,

misunderstandings, time pressure, particular

motivations, or lack of attention to details. Along

this period the students are still learning theoretical

concepts for the document structure to be delivered,

legal responsibilities, as well as specific techniques

useful in daily work. This procedure also shows how

increasing complexity and uncertainty call for a

more comprehensive inclusion of managerial and

leadership knowledge respective to our teaching of

advanced project management (Thomas and Mengel,

2008).

Obviously, most of the work needs to be carried

out by groups or teams; however, it is based on

individual knowledge. Sometimes this individual

knowledge is improved because of the discussions

about how to perform the work. Thus, students are

responsible for their learning as well as the learning

of others (Hughes, 2012).

Evaluating the learning process is an essential

issue not only for students but also for teachers as

they are responsible for the learning process.

Unfortunately, there is no agreement on how to

integrate different dimensions of learning,

knowledge, skills, etc. (Huang & Yang, 2009).

Therefore, authors have incorporated two different

assessment methods. The first one is a formal

knowledge based set of test in different period of

time. The second one is a continuous assessment

CSEDU2014-6thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation

oriented to estimate the project management

performance and the contribution of each student to

it (Qureshi et al., 2009). This project performance is

based on the auditing processes carried out by the

Project Board and the Owner’s representatives (the

teachers) as well as on the competence level gained

during the daily work performed.

The auditing process has two different branches.

The first one is automatically performed by a web

tool developed by the authors. This application

collects real-time information about project and

students’ progress on the Enterprise Program

Management Office (ePMO) software used during

the simulation. It gathers relevant information about

each student’s performance in their project activities

(project planning activities, documents uploaded,

effort allocation, use of the provided communication

tools –blog, discussions, etc.). It also looks for

measurable mistakes, such as the absence of

relationships between tasks, the absence of links

between documents and deliverables, improper

effort allocations, wrong document codifications,

etc. Thus, instructors are able to make periodic

reports to better identify mistakes or inappropriate

behaviours. In this way, the teachers can more

objectively and efficiently monitor and evaluate

students continuously throughout the whole course.

Furthermore, students were given the right to order

an on-line self-audit based on the aforementioned

automatic checks.

The second branch asks for a more qualitative

but still evidence-based opinion about the products

being produced as well as about how the different

PRINCE2’s themes –risk, communication, quality

and configuration- are being managed by the team.

To determine the exhibited competence level the

answers to different questions are gathered from

different forms about products, processes and

behaviours. Most of them are Likert scale based and

opinions come not only from the producer of the

product or responsible for the process

implementation but also from different consumers of

those products or participants in the process.

The numeric assessment of the different

evidences considered as relevant to each competence

is carried out after considering, at least, four

different roles:

 The self-assessment, as it is always a relevant

perception.

 The auditor

 The owner of the product being developed

 User(s) of this particular configuration item or

product.

Thus, the competence assessment framework

uses some kind of 360-degree overview to different

activities inside the project and it collects all these

evidences in a weighted integration.

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Students from two different universities (UR and

UPM) were organized around eight projects (1301 to

1308). Each project was composed of seven or eight

PM and ten to twelve TM. At the end of the course,

more than 450 assessment forms were filled out.

The first step in any multivariate analysis is to

graphically represent the individual variables using a

histogram or boxplot. These graphic representations

are extremely useful for detecting asymmetries,

heterogeneity, outliers, etc.

In order to observe differences between

perceived PM competences within each project,

boxplots were used because they are a way of

summarizing a distribution, take up less space than

other graphical techniques and they are a quick way

of examining one or more sets of data graphically

(see Figure 1). The spacings between the different

parts of the box help indicate the degree of

dispersion (spread) and skewness in the data. A

boxplot (also known as a box and whisker plot) is

interpreted as follows:

 The box itself contains the middle 50% of the

data. The left edge (hinge) of the box indicates

the 75th percentile of the data set, and the right

hinge indicates the 25th percentile. The range of

the middle two quartiles is known as the inter-

quartile range.

 The dot in the box indicates the median value of

the data.

 The ends of the horizontal lines or "whiskers"

indicate the minimum and maximum data values,

unless outliers are present in which case the

whiskers extend to a maximum of 1.5 times the

inter-quartile range.

 The points outside the ends of the whiskers are

outliers or suspected outliers.

Comparing the boxplots across groups, a simple

summary is to say that the box area for one group is

higher or lower than that for another group. To the

extent that the boxes do not overlap, the groups are

quite different from one another.

Distributions shown in Figure 1 illustrate the

different opinion that each team project had about

the exhibited competences of their PMs. Thus, for

instance, PM team of project 1302 obtained opinions

varying from ‘strongly disagreement’ (Likert scale

Cross-analysisofTransversalCompetencesinProjectManagement

of 1) to ‘strongly agreement’ (Likert scale of 5),

whereas the other project teams introduced better

opinions on the competence level of their PMs (from

‘neither agree nor disagree’ –Likert scale of 3- to

‘strongly agreement’, with some exceptions).

Figure 1: Competence assessment results per project.

In general, teamwork (Figure 1, bottom) was the

competence with better assessments. In this case,

projects 1304 and 1305 exhibited the lowest

dispersions with highest assessments (between 3.8

and 5), whereas project 1302 had the highest

variability in the assessments (between 1.4 and 5).

It is worth to mention that the other three

competences analysed (leadership, engagement &

motivation and results orientation) had very similar

distributions per project. Since these three

competences were evaluated at the same time by

means of the same survey, it seems that the

evaluation of each person was based on a global

opinion that the assessor had about the assessed

person without making any distinction between

these competences.

The instructors team established the quality of

the project (SCORE) according to the content and

format of both management products (plans,

business case, project reports, etc.) and specialist

products (feasibility studies, engineering drawings,

calculations, etc.). In this case, a 5-point Likert scale

(from 1 for “very bad quality” to 5 for “very good

quality”) was used.

A visual inspection of all possible pairwise

scatterplots in the analysed variables helps to

understand the relationships between the variables.

If these scatterplots are arranged in matrix format,

the type of relationship existing between the pairs of

variables can be understood and the outliers in the

bivariate relationship identified. Such diagrams are

particularly important for identifying non-linear

relationships, in which case the covariant matrix

may not offer a good summary of the dependence

between variables (Peña, 2002).

Figure 2: Relationship between project quality (SCORE)

and transversal competences analysed.

Figure 2 summarizes all this information and

illustrates the relationships between the project

quality (SCORE) of each project and the mean value

of the assessed PM’s transversal competences. The

CSEDU2014-6thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation

lower triangle of the matrix shows a scatterplot for

each pair of variables with a polynomial

approximation according to their relationship nature;

the histogram of each variable appears on the

diagonal; and the absolute value of the correlations

with a size proportional to their magnitude is

included in the top triangle. From this figure, the

following conclusions can be drawn:

 The project quality (SCORE) is positively

correlated with the four transversal competences

analysed (Mean_Lider, Mean_CyM, Mean_Ores

and Mean_TW). However, as it can be seen from

the first column of the matrix, these relationships

are not perfect linear (red line). Although

projects 1304 and 1305 have the highest means

for the four transversal competences (points

located at the top of each scatterplot), projects

1307 and 1308 obtained the highest SCORES

(points located at the right of each scatterplot).

That is, large doses of leadership, engagement &

motivation, results orientation and teamwork are

important to ensure high quality of the project,

but they are not the only relevant variables.

 The highest correlation between the project

quality (SCORE) and any of the PM’s

transversal competences analysed is found for

the competence named results orientation

(Mean_ORes). This result is consistent with the

importance that the International Project

Management Association (IPMA) gives to this

competence: results orientation in project

management behaviour is closely linked to

project success (IPMA, 2006). In summary,

higher quality projects were attained by PM

teams that were able to develop project teams

focused on results in changing environments.

 Project quality (SCORE) and teamwork

(Mean_TW) have the lowest correlation (0.47).

 Although there is a high correlation between the

four transversal competences analysed, the

strongest relationship is found between

leadership (Mean_Lider), engagement &

motivation (Mean_CyM) and results orientation

(Mean_ORes). This result is consistent with our

previous observation related to the evaluation of

these competences through the same survey:

each assessor evaluated these competences to

each person without making any distinction

between.

By defining the effort ratio as the relationship

between the total number of hours claimed by the

whole project team and the total number of planned

hours, it is observed a strong correlation (0.83)

between this variable and the project quality (see

Fig. 3). This result suggests that the lower deviations

between planned and actual activity of the project

team, the higher final quality of the project.

Figure 3: Relationship between project quality (SCORE)

and effort ratio.

Figure 4: Relationship between project quality (SCORE)

and results orientation competence.

Fig. 4 illustrates the relationship between the

mean number of work assignments and the final

project quality. In this case, the correlation between

the two variables analysed is lower. That is, a higher

number of work assignments do not necessary mean

a better project quality. For example, although the

number of work assignments defined in the project

1308 was half of the work assignments defined in

the project 1307 both projects had a similar project

quality.

Regarding the teamwork competence (Fig. 5 and

Fig. 6), it is highly related to both the effort ratio

Cross-analysisofTransversalCompetencesinProjectManagement

(correlation equal to 0.78) and the size of the project

team (correlation equal to 0.85). These results

illustrate how the teamwork feeling increases as the

estimated effort was close to the actual effort (Fig.

5). The same feeling was identified taking into

account the size of the project team (Fig. 6).

Figure 5: Relationship between teamwork competence and

effort ratio.

Figure 6: Relationship between teamwork competence and

size of the project team.

5 CONCLUSIONS

This paper has presented an integrated framework

that allows competence assessment in project

management by putting it into practice in a

simulation environment. The system is distinguished

by the assessment of individual competences by

means of a set of performance indicators. The

indicators are obtained from both analytical

evidence and the opinions of other participants in the

simulation in relation to the skills demonstrated by

the candidate’s specific actions. Furthermore, the

system allows obtaining information about the level

of demonstrated competences not by the

measurement of individual knowledge, but as the

result of their use in a simulation environment.

An analysis of the PM’s exhibited competences

demonstrated the relationship between some

transversal (‘human’) competences and the project

success. In the academic course analysed, the

strongest relationship was found between results

orientation and project success, whereas teamwork

did not seem to be correlated with the project

quality. The authors attribute the lowest relationship

between teamwork and project success to the lower

number of pieces of evidence used to assess this

competence.

Another interesting result is the strong

relationship found between leadership, engagement

& motivation and results orientation. Taking into

account that these competences were evaluated at

the same time by means of the same form, it seems

that each assessor used a global opinion about the

assessed person to fill out the form. That is, no

distinction between these competences was made.

For the future authors look to improve the

assessment of these competences by using more

pieces of evidence. Furthermore, authors will extend

the number of competences assessed by the

presented framework as well as to use the collected

data for early detection of problems inside the

project, and to improve the learning procedure by

means of the gathered data.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors wish to recognize the support of the

“Vicerrectorado de Profesorado, Planificación e

Innovación Docente” of the University of La Rioja,

through the “Dirección Académica de Formación e

Innovación Docente” as part of this work was

supported by its grant APIDUR 2013.

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