The Adaptive Project Professional: one year on 

In an era of unprecedented technological, social and environmental change, the project profession will be the profession at the heart of creating and delivering change. To deliver change successfully, project management’s future is as the adaptive profession.

Adaptive professionals need to be responsive to the shifting contexts in which they work. They need to be learning continually. They need strong meta-competencies – such as resilience, anticipating and creating change, building diverse teams.

Rising skills needs include the ability to use and implement new technology, for example, data analytics; and more people-centred or ‘soft’ leadership and people skills, communications, collaboration, and managing increasingly complex stakeholder engagement.

The project profession needs to build a strong talent pipeline by embedding new routes into the profession for young entrants and pathways for more mature, mid-career switchers including returners to work or ex-service personnel.

Employers and policy makers should build on the relatively new Project Apprenticeships (including at degree level) and other vocational routes, where there are hugely positive signs about their effectiveness in developing new entrants. Efforts to build awareness of the project profession as an increasingly desirable career should be redoubled, with collaboration between APM, schools, colleges and universities – with emphasis less on the processes of project management and more on the transformational, inspirational, benefits of projects.

Increasingly, the pathway to chartered makes this a career for many who see the value in a profession that runs through the heart of so many organisations and varied sectors.

In the context of longer working lives and likely technological disruption to work, we urgently need improved support for professionals to train, retrain, and keep learning throughout their careers.

Individuals need to recognise their own responsibility for investing in their learning and development throughout their careers, but employers must also take responsibility for developing their people, helping them adapt to changing economic needs and new ways of working. Policy makers should take an ambitious and creative approach to supporting this culture of professionalism: this may require greater flexibility in skills funding, the creation of skills accounts which empower individuals to manage their own learning, and more support for helping retrain for different roles.

The Projecting the Future debate has demonstrated the desire of project professionals to have a more influential role in shaping the strategy of projects, and the overall strategy of organisations running projects.

In organisations with significant portfolios of projects, there should be a seat at the top table for those responsible for projects – perhaps building on the concept of the chief project officer (CPO), or by bringing more project management experience into the boardroom – to ensure that the importance of projects is recognised as a critical part of strategic development in today’s fast-changing environment.

The development of Chartered (ChPP) and the increasing number of charter holders provides a leadership cohort which can give the profession greater visibility and parity of esteem with other professions for the first time. Going further, there is a need to identify the attributes and training needs for aspiring CPOs – what are the leadership characteristics, skill and attributes that project managers need to be leaders? – as well as to improve the recognition of project leadership more widely.

Project professionals also have an obligation to stand up, call out and challenge poor practice when they see it.

Project management has a core set of skills and expertise but, as a profession, it is important that we exchange with other professions, employers and other organisations to take into account new and innovative ways of training, and to build a shared understanding of how best to improve the delivery of projects.

Collaboration will be essential. What possible collaborations could help to broaden project professionals’ competences beyond their core technical project management competences – for example in general leadership, digital skills, or personal capabilities such as resilience and managing mental health? On what else, and how, can the profession best collaborate with others? Let us know your thoughts.

We need to continue to champion the virtues of project management and showcase its influence as an agent of change working across the economy and society.

APM has a key role to play in this area and should act as an umbrella for activity that includes corporates, government and other bodies. Chartered Project Professional status (ChPP) is key: it provides the profession with a distinct identity and sends a signal to both other professions and the wider community about the project profession’s commitment to high standards.

What ways can we use the chartered brand to support the raising both of standards and the profile of project management globally? How can we most effectively – whether it is individuals, organisations and employers or APM – support the project professional brand, particularly Chartered? And how can we put it on a global footing?

There is a widespread appetite for an improved evidence base on effective techniques in project management and for sharing insights on what works in a rapidly changing world. It is recognised that too many projects fail to deliver on the desired outcomes or overrun on time and budgets.

How are the conditions for project success evolving, and how can their adoption be promoted more widely? How can the profession learn to the draw the right lessons from experience when it faces a complex and chaotic world, where past ‘proven’ solutions might not work a second time? How can government use, and contribute to, an expanded evidence base as it seeks to raise standards of project management in order to deliver on its policy agenda?

If the UK is to deliver on its net-zero target by 2050, project professionals will have a significant role to play, both in projects transitioning to a cleaner, greener economy, and in mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change.

Sustainability needs to be an integral part of project management’s toolkit, part of the thinking for new projects and retrofitted into existing projects where relevant. The way that the profession builds decarbonisation and net zero planning into the heart of existing and future projects will be a key test of its benefit to society.