Last week, the BCS’s Project Eye blogged about the low numbers of women entering science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) to pursue careers. Project and programme management is still required in this fields – so given that women choose project management as a career, why aren’t they choosing it in STEM areas?

I’ve teamed up with Dr Brendan D’Cruz from Newport Business School to try to look at this a bit further. We’d like to do some academically rigorous research into readers’ perspectives on a number of issues, and we hope to usefully gather the views of both men and women. We want to start by gathering your general thoughts on what employers, individuals and universities can do to support and encourage women into project management in IT and other areas. The focus is on IT because that’s what we both know best.

Leave a comment below or drop me an email and Brendan and I will use those (and the comments on the Project Eye blog) as the basis for working out what themes we should be researching.

This is what we are thinking about at the moment:

• Why do women pick IT project management as a career, and what makes them leave or stay?
• Should companies provide ‘extra’ support like women’s networks and mentoring schemes? Is there any evidence that these are successful and do they just discriminate against people who don’t take part?
• Is there still a glass ceiling and what can we do about it?

Given my previous articles on the fact that women manage the small, cheap projects and women’s pay doesn’t match men’s, I think you’ve got a fair view of my opinions about equality at work. However, for me, this investigation is about what practical steps are required to make a difference. If you have any suggestions, let us know! Thanks.

Related posts:

1. Research shows women don’t want management jobs Intellect’s Women in IT Forum and womenintechnology.co.uk recently released the results of their survey about women working in the technology profession. The survey shows that although...
2. Women manage the cheap, small projects: new research on International Women’s Day 2011 marks the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day.  Today, people all over the world are celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women...
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Project Management in the Real World on iPad

Happy New Year!

And happy birthday to me.

This month is the 5^th birthday of A Girl’s Guide to Project Management.  2011 is also the 5^th anniversary year of the publication of Project Management in the Real World.

To celebrate all these events, I have some great news to share.

Project Management in the Real World is now available on eBooks in .pdf format, for you to read on your Windows, Mac or Sony Reader.

It’s also available on Kindle both in the UK and US stores.  I thought you needed a Kindle to read Kindle books, but you don’t.  I downloaded the free Kindle app to my iPad and you can use that to download and read Kindle format books.  You can even get a free sample before you decide to buy it.  And very nice it looks too.

If you’d rather have a ‘proper’ book, then there’s 15% off Project Management in the Real World if you use the code PMRW31111 when you check out of the BCS Shop.

January is always a tough month when everyone is feeling poor, so take advantage of the money off now!  The discount ends on 31 January.

Here’s hoping 2011 will be an amazing year for us all.

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Is there are big divide between project management academics and those offering training?  And do project managers need both?  These were some of the questions discussed at a recent BCS event where a panel debated the differences between project management education and training.

The evening started with a vote on the motion:  “Education and training are suitably aligned to meet the development needs of project managers.”  There were:

• 3 in favour (including me)
• 13 against
• 3 abstentions

Why do I agree?  In my opinion, there is a sufficient blend of academic research and training on offer for project managers.  PMI sends out the PM Journal, packed with research.  Even PM Today includes articles based on academic research, properly footnoted.  Books like my own Project Management in the Real World draw heavily on academic research to support and inform practice.  The National Centre for Project Management at Middlesex University is headed up by Prof. Darren Dalcher, a very practical guy who is interested in real-life application of theory.  So in the space of a few minutes, I came up with plenty to justify how project managers have access to education (i.e. academia) and training (i.e. work-based courses) and how one supports the other.

Bob Hughes from the University of Brighton and ISEB presented the portfolio of ISEB qualifications which offers a mix of the practical (Foundation and Practitioner qualifications) and the academic (Higher Education Diploma, which gets 400 candidates a year, mostly from overseas).  “Although I come from an academic background, I’m very unusual for ISEB,” said Bob.  “There’s an ethos of kicking the academics out and leaving it to the practitioners.”  That’s something that could probably be said of other practitioner-led organisations as well, and doesn’t bode well for any alignment between academia and practitioners.  Could this be a disconnect I have never seen before?

Bob spoke about SFIA, the model that tries to rate professional competence.  “It’s very different to aligning that to the outcome of a training course,” he said.  “We don’t believe at all that if you do a multiple choice exam you come out a competent project manager.”  I agree with this, and I think it adds another level to the discussion about education and training – that of experience.  I would argue that project managers develop through experience as well as through education and training opportunities.

Melanie Franklin, CEO of Maven Training, put the case that both education and training are required to equip project managers.  She argued that education “builds the mind” and training “builds skills.”  Understanding the business context is essential for project managers and this is a product of education: the ability to understand the world in which your skills and experience are being used and apply critical thinking.  Capability is a product of training: a blend of competence and process.  “If we specifically need to do x,” she said, “we will train in x.”

She presented a version of Kolb’s learning cycle, and explained that context, capability, motivation and performance equal capacity.  And what businesses need is the capacity to deliver projects.   Education and training, she said, are about valuing people.  Developing people is a way to motivate them.  “I don’t think we can have one without the other,” she explained.  “But just because we have people with qualifications doesn’t mean we have greater capacity.”

“In this country there is a great resentment of book learning,” said Miles Shepherd.  “If the academic is rejected, how can project management be a profession?  It is simply a trade, like gas fitting.”  He said that we still need education, and we still need training.  “I’m not too sure how we’re aligned,” he added.

During the Q&A we discussed where some of these challenges come from, and the point was made that employers have a lot to answer for.  Employers want ‘useful’ people, not those with an MSc, so there is a bias towards collecting training courses as proof of usefulness.  The less the employer has to teach a new starter, the better.

At the end of the evening we had another vote – and guess what?  The results were exactly the same.  However, some people, including myself, had changed their position.  I chose to abstain in the second vote.  Each of the panelists had presented their own positions, but I didn’t feel that anyone had strongly argued for or against the debate topic, and some of the panelists had admitted to taking different interpretations of the question which I felt made it difficult to vote one way or the other based on what I had heard.  I still believe that education and training are aligned in the project management arena.  I still believe they both serve the development needs of project managers.  What do you think?

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It really is a busy Spring for project management.  Here’s another round-up of the latest news.

New qualification for NGO Project Managers

APMG is launching a new qualification aimed at project managers working in the development sector later this month.  Called, PMD Pro (Project Management in Development Professional), it was successfully piloted in South Africa and Zambia in March.

It’s a competency-based certification, that’s been developed in conjunction with PM4NGOs.  Apparently, a 1% improvement in effectiveness would yield an additional $47m to spend on projects – and development initiatives are often not as effective as they could be because everyone is working to different methodologies.  So this could help massively, and is by far the most exciting thing to hit project management so far this year.

PPM localgovcamp

There’s a PPM localgovcamp happening in London Cheltenham (sorry, my mistake) on 27 April.  It’s an ‘unconference’ for project and programme management professionals working in the public sector with the aim of sharing PPM best practice.  The delegates set the agenda, after a keynote from Sue Vowler, lead author of OGC’s ‘Portfolio, Programme and Project Offices (P3O) guidance’ on the topic of ‘Budgets are cut! Why is the portfolio office more critical than ever?’  Should be interesting, if only to see how the rapid democracy model works with a group of project managers trying to organise the agenda for the day in just 15 minutes.

PMXPO 2010

Gantthead is organising another PMXPO this year, and it was fab last year, so hopefully there will be more of the same.  It’s a virtual conference and exhibition, which you can attend from the comfort of your PC on 20 May.  And you get PDU’s, if you are bothered about that kind of thing.

There are five sessions (including one on improving project management competency with social media, which could be very interesting).  The whole thing is free, and you can register online here.

New Business Analysis book

The BCS has launched a new book focusing on practical guidance on the use of the most effective BA techniques. Business Analysis Techniques: 72 Essential Tools for Success, is by James Cadle, Debra Paul and Paul Turner and builds on the first Business Analysis book from the BCS.  I haven’t read it yet, but it looks really interesting – one to put on expenses for the BAs in your team.

PMO Survey

PM Solutions’ research team is running a survey on the state of Project Management Offices in 2010.  You have until Friday to take part in the survey, and if you answer all the questions you’ll get a full copy of the research results.  Take the survey here.

PPM Community

Don’t know where to start looking for project management information online?  PPM Community is a new site that brings together project and programme management blogs.  It’s a good idea (have a hunt for A Girl’s Guide to Project Management – we’re on there) but I think there are overlaps with other sites like PM Toolbox and PM Opinions.  However, PPM Community’s selling point is that it is blogs only, unlike the others.

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Here’s a round-up of the latest happenings in the project management arena.

The Turing Lecture

I attended the 2010 Turing Lecture last month.  Professor Chris Bishop, Chief Research Scientist at Microsoft’s research lab in Cambridge, discussed the field of machine learning.  He talked about how uncertainty can be modeled and quantified using probabilities and how these techniques had been applied to a medical research project to predict outcomes for children with allergies.  It was really interesting, although not very project management-y.  Still, it is good to see what is happening in other fields and I think PM’s do sometimes restrict ourselves to learning and networking only within our own professional circles.

I took loads of notes, but when I read them back I’m sorry to say that they didn’t make much sense.  Apart from “microphones in arm rests!!!!”  The IET building at Savoy Place was incredible: the lecture theatre was beautiful, imbibed with a sense of history and yes, each chair had a mike hidden in the arm rest for the Q&A session at the end.  I took a sneaky detour on the way to the ladies to peer into the library and it was so amazing I nearly joined The Institution of Engineering and Technology on the spot.

My notes didn’t make a lot of sense, but that’s no reflection of Prof. Bishop, as he made it easy to understand the complex issues.  You can watch the lecture online and if you are at all interested in how computers can be used to calculate risk and probability then I’d recommend it.

New PRINCE2 eBook for Executives

If you can’t get your project sponsor to read the whole of the Directing Successful Projects manual, maybe you’ll have more success with this new eBook.  The Executive Guide to Directing Projects: Within a PRINCE2™ and MSP™ Environment is “an accessible summary of the full guidance in a portable format suitable for quick reference” written with the busy project board member in mind.

It’s no good for new project board members who need to learn the whole thing from scratch.  However, if your board members have already worked in a PRINCE2 environment and they just need to know about the additional considerations of working within a programme and/or portfolio managed governance structure, then this could be useful.

The book is available to buy online (eBook and paper format), and it’s nearly half the price of the full Directing Successful Projects manual.

New PRINCE2 Translations

If you just can’t get enough of those PRINCE2 manuals, you can now get the 2009 editions in Polish, Chinese, Dutch and Danish.  The exams are also available in those languages too.

Other news

It was International Women’s Day this month, and I was very grateful to be included in a list of the 100 Most Powerful Women on Twitter.  I wrote an article about top women to follow on Twitter this time last year, and I’m well aware of how subjective such lists are, but I was still very pleased to be considered in the same list as Heather Armstrong.

I am planning on redesigning this blog soon, so if you have any comments on things you would like to see more or less of, or features you would like added, then please let me know.  And you will get the results of the social media survey – apologies for the delay in putting them together.

Related posts:

1. PM News Round-up (yes, again already!) It really is a busy Spring for project management.  Here’s another round-up of the latest news. New qualification for NGO Project Managers APMG is launching...
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3. Software news round up Learn PMP on your iPhone You can now get PMP Exam eFlashCards as an iPhone app! It’s a fully functional app offering over 1,750 exam...