BCS Session Declares There is a Project Management Skills Gap!

Posted on | January 5, 2009 | Author: | jont | No Comments

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Tuesday 16 Dec 2008, London – BCS HQ saw a pre-Christmas gathering that attracted a healthy mix of project management professionals to take part in a debate on the subject of ‘Is There Really a Project Management Skills Gap?’ I had the privilege of representing Arras People and joined the panel for this debate, which was ably facilitated by Dr. Brendan D’Cruz, Head of Department: Business & Computing at the Newport

The session commenced with a vote by all attendees on the subject, which to my surprise produced a significant majority in support of the motion. Each guest speaker then had a short session in which to put forward their views on the motion to the floor. My own personal presentation can be seen here.

A debate then followed facilitated by Dr. D’Cruz during which time the floor had the opportunity to question the views put forward by the panel; to seek wider views of the points made; and to present their own take on the subject matter. The debate was lively and at times even contentious as the definition of “skills” became one of the central points of discussion. As an IT centric audience, the public failures of many such IT projects was used as evidence to support the skills gap argument. This assertion in turn took the debate on to the key role of the Project sponsors, governance and politics which all have potentially as much impact (if not more?) as the project manager in delivering success.

Finally the motion was again put to the floor for a final vote before the buffet was opened and the opportunity for networking commenced. The motion was once again carried, though we the dissenters did manage to change one persons view!

A BCS report on the event will be posted in due course on the BCS web site.