Michael DePrisco is the chief operating officer (COO) of PMI, one of the world’s leading programme and project management certification providers. DePrisco was in India recently with most of the organisation’s Board and executive management team for their annual board meeting.
India, he says, has always been important for PMI, but over the last 5-7 years, it has become even more so, with the rise of technology, with the growing importance of skilling and upskilling, with more and more construction projects. “The Board felt that they wanted to show our team and our stakeholders here just how important India is by picking this location for the meeting,” he says.
Over the past year, Times Techies has highlighted on several occasions the rising importance of project and programme management, as organisations move towards digital transformation and towards dealing with more and more complex problems. DePrisco notes that 10-20 years ago, organisation leaders thought of project management “as overhead, backoffice, really heavy process, people who get in the way of getting things done.” But they, he says, have now realised how valuable it is, particularly in executing strategy. “There is a clear connection between the strategy that is set in the boardroom, or the executive suite, and the execution of that strategy, and making that strategy come to life. We believe projects are the way that happens. We know that organisations that embrace project and programme management generally perform better, they waste less money, they deliver outcomes more effectively,” says DePrisco, who spent over 20 years in higher education in the US, focused on art, design and gaming, before joining PMI ten years ago.
PMI was founded in IT – IBM was one of the biggest organisations they worked with in the early years in the 1980s. The largest numbers coming for PMI certifications are still from IT, but finance, construction, and general consulting professionals are also now a significant part of those seeking these certifications.
“Fundamental to IT is project work – since IT touches everything that happens in an organisation. The things they are working on are also very costly, whether it is implementing an ERP system, CRM system, or trying to take a business model from a physical one to a digital one. A couple of missteps and you can lose millions. So there’s recognition that there needs to be a standard best practice,” DePrisco says.
Such issues are becoming bigger as enterprises move towards organisation-wide digital transformation. The biggest value in such digitalisation comes from combining different digital projects into innovative new business offerings. So, programme management is now a big focus for PMI. While a project manager will lead a specific project, a programme manager will need to understand the bigger business opportunity, and bring together all the needed project teams to deliver on this.
“Teams are dispersed around the world, you have to manage time zones, language, culture. That takes a level of skill, experience and knowledge. Most programmes that fail, fail because of complexity that the team wasn’t able to overcome,” DePrisco says.
What is taught
So, what is it that professionals learn in these courses? DePrisco says there is a technical side to project management, which involves learning how to create workflows, roadmaps, schedules, and budgets. It involves learning agile processes.
Then there’s the people side, which DePrisco says is becoming more and more important. This involves learning about communication, stakeholder management, change management. “These are some of the more complex competencies that individuals need to have to manage projects. We now have a risk management professional certification, and in the last three years we have seen an incredible increase in people coming for that specialty. Covid was the No. 1 risk, and nobody had it on their risk register. Today they do. That was a wake up call for many organisations to say, we need to think seriously about risk, and what the next disruption is going to be, and take some steps now, and ensure we have resiliency baked into our models,” he says.
Finally, there’s the business acumen side, which is about understanding competitive market forces, how the market is changing, what the threats are.
“We call it the talent triangle – technical skills, people skills, and business acumen,” says DePrisco.
India, he says, has always been important for PMI, but over the last 5-7 years, it has become even more so, with the rise of technology, with the growing importance of skilling and upskilling, with more and more construction projects. “The Board felt that they wanted to show our team and our stakeholders here just how important India is by picking this location for the meeting,” he says.
Over the past year, Times Techies has highlighted on several occasions the rising importance of project and programme management, as organisations move towards digital transformation and towards dealing with more and more complex problems. DePrisco notes that 10-20 years ago, organisation leaders thought of project management “as overhead, backoffice, really heavy process, people who get in the way of getting things done.” But they, he says, have now realised how valuable it is, particularly in executing strategy. “There is a clear connection between the strategy that is set in the boardroom, or the executive suite, and the execution of that strategy, and making that strategy come to life. We believe projects are the way that happens. We know that organisations that embrace project and programme management generally perform better, they waste less money, they deliver outcomes more effectively,” says DePrisco, who spent over 20 years in higher education in the US, focused on art, design and gaming, before joining PMI ten years ago.
PMI was founded in IT – IBM was one of the biggest organisations they worked with in the early years in the 1980s. The largest numbers coming for PMI certifications are still from IT, but finance, construction, and general consulting professionals are also now a significant part of those seeking these certifications.
“Fundamental to IT is project work – since IT touches everything that happens in an organisation. The things they are working on are also very costly, whether it is implementing an ERP system, CRM system, or trying to take a business model from a physical one to a digital one. A couple of missteps and you can lose millions. So there’s recognition that there needs to be a standard best practice,” DePrisco says.
Such issues are becoming bigger as enterprises move towards organisation-wide digital transformation. The biggest value in such digitalisation comes from combining different digital projects into innovative new business offerings. So, programme management is now a big focus for PMI. While a project manager will lead a specific project, a programme manager will need to understand the bigger business opportunity, and bring together all the needed project teams to deliver on this.
“Teams are dispersed around the world, you have to manage time zones, language, culture. That takes a level of skill, experience and knowledge. Most programmes that fail, fail because of complexity that the team wasn’t able to overcome,” DePrisco says.
What is taught
So, what is it that professionals learn in these courses? DePrisco says there is a technical side to project management, which involves learning how to create workflows, roadmaps, schedules, and budgets. It involves learning agile processes.
Then there’s the people side, which DePrisco says is becoming more and more important. This involves learning about communication, stakeholder management, change management. “These are some of the more complex competencies that individuals need to have to manage projects. We now have a risk management professional certification, and in the last three years we have seen an incredible increase in people coming for that specialty. Covid was the No. 1 risk, and nobody had it on their risk register. Today they do. That was a wake up call for many organisations to say, we need to think seriously about risk, and what the next disruption is going to be, and take some steps now, and ensure we have resiliency baked into our models,” he says.
Finally, there’s the business acumen side, which is about understanding competitive market forces, how the market is changing, what the threats are.
“We call it the talent triangle – technical skills, people skills, and business acumen,” says DePrisco.