What is a Project Manager? At CompFrame we contend that it is a job or role title, pure and simple. As capability specialists, we take a much wider and deeper view of a person’s skillsets. Just as in life a spade may be a spade, there are some spades you wouldn’t use for digging a post hole and some you would. When confronted with the spade you can easily see what it is designed for. Job titles however are wholly different. Often people are overlooked for a task because nobody knows their full experience or skills. Similarly, recruitment often poses a risk because key factors about the new recruit are unknown.

Back in the mid-nineties, the UK government sought to address these issues by developing a skills framework to help ensure consistency of delivery and project success in IT projects. This framework developed into the Skills Framework for the Information Age, or SFIA™.

Having worked with SFIA for a number of years and having trained key personnel in the Australian government among others, CompFrame developed the concept of skills frameworks across other disciplines and industries. Along with the frameworks, CompFrame has developed learning frameworks and assessment tools to get the most out of capability analysis. Enter the CompFrame Project Management Framework, or PMF.

Our approach is comprehensive. Starting with a framework which addresses professional skills such as Risk Management along with behavioural competencies such as Influencing Skills, we move on to provision of a robust assessment and validation technique, followed by a learning and development tool to help people move between competency levels. Our frameworks are not prescriptive, we work with our clients to develop unique solutions that fit their needs, developed according to best practice using our unique experience.

Our Project Management Framework (PMF) comprises twelve key skills areas, along with six behavioural competencies. We would expect our clients to want to modify the behavioural competencies in-line with their internal competency frameworks, and we are able to adapt the professional skills if requested.

Our learning and development tool comprises a workbook to allow people to track their progress through their project management career and breaks each professional skill area down into a number of learning interventions for each level of competency within a skill. The tool deliberately avoids interventions aimed at behavioural competencies as these are usually addressed in the client’s Learning & Development function.

So in a nutshell, using the CompFrame Project Management Framework, you can discover your Project Management competencies, validate them against a consistent framework, catalogue them and have a full understanding of your ability to deliver projects from the PM perspective. Three roles are included in the PMF, Project Administrator, Project Coordinator, and Project Manager. Additional roles can be defined and added on request.

Please read on for full details of the philosophy behind our frameworks, including PMF, and the benefits that can be derived from their use.