INTRODUCTION
Project Management is “the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to the project activities in order to meet or exceed stakeholder needs and expectations from a project” (Duncan, 1996). Aproject is defined as “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service” (Duncan, 1996). This article provides an overview of the coverage of the project management discipline in academic graduate education.
BACKGROUND
A number of professional organizations have developed around the world to address and foster this specific discipline. Most notable is the Project Management Institute (PMI, www.pmi.org) with about 100,000 members worldwide. Other major international organizations are the Association for Project Management (APM) and the International Project Management Association (IPMA) (Morris, 2001). These organizations have recognized there is a distinct skill set necessary for successful project managers, and the organizations are devoted to assisting their members develop, improve, and keep current these skills (Boyatzis, 1982; Caupin, Knopfel & Morris, 1998).
Several universities have also recognized the fact that project management involves distinct skills, and that the traditional degree programs and courses in both business schools and other schools do not adequately cover and/or integrate these skills. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently reported that seven Philadelphia-area corporations established ties with four universities in that region to improve the business skills of computer science and IT students; most of these key skills involved the project management skill sets, which are specifically identified later in this document (Chronicles of Higher Education, 2001).
Perhaps self-evident from the previous paragraph is the fact that the knowledge and training needed by project managers covers both traditional business disciplines and disciplines involved with building or making things. Often the skills involved with building or making things would be found in an engineering curriculum, and also in information technology or computer science curriculums.
Since the skill sets needed by project managers are extensive, and since these skills involve both business and engineering disciplines, and also since most candidate students are degreed working adults, most schools have developed their project management curriculums as graduate school programs. A number of universities also have a single “project management” course offered as a graduate or undergraduate course.
TYPES OF GRADUATE DEGREE PROGRAMS
An analysis of universities currently offering graduate project management programs indicates several types of programs being offered:
1. A master’s level general degree program (such as an MBA) with a specialization in Project Management;
2. A full masters level (generally MS) program in project management; and
3. A “certification program” of several project management courses.
Some universities offer more than one of these program types. Also in some universities the program is offered in the School of Business (or Management) and in some schools the program is offered in the School of Engineering. In most universities, many of the courses appeared to be shared with other graduate degree programs; in other words, not all of the courses in the program are focused on project management.
PMI (and the other international project management organizations) have a certification program, and for PMI the designation is “Project Management Professional” (PMP). To obtain PMP certification, an individual must have 4,500 hours of documented project management experience over a period of six years, have a BS level college degree, and pass a rigorous 4-hour examination. The first PMP exam was given in 1984 to about 30 people, and today there are over 30,000 PMPs worldwide (Foti, 2001). Once the PMP status is obtained, an individual must earn 60 PDUs (Professional Development Units) every three years. Some universities offer a PMP Exam Preparation course or cover exam prep material in one of their project management courses. However, most graduate programs do not cover exam prep; in fact, the graduate programs studied herein are more geared to providing the PDU credits for PMPs.
Figure 1. Institutions offering graduate credit programs in project management
| university | Organize | School | Certificate P | rogram | MBA/MS Specialization | PM Masters Degree | ||
| # Courses | # PM | # Courses | # PM | # Courses | # PM | |||
| Amberton | KA | Business | 4 | 4 | ||||
| American Graduate Univ. | KA | Business | 12 | 7 | ||||
| Boston University | KA | Business | 8 | 8 | ||||
| City University | KA | Business | 6 | 6 | ||||
| Colorado Technical University | Step | Both | 6 | 6 | 13 | 6 | ||
| George Washington University | Step | Business | 12 | 3 | ||||
| Int’l School of Info. Mgmt. | Step | Business | 3 | 3 | 12 | 4 | ||
| Keller School of Management | KA | Business | 6 | 4 | 14 | 6 | ||
| Northwestern | S tep | Engineering | 12 | 4 | ||||
| Regis University | PG | Business | 13 | 6 | ||||
| Stevens Inst. Of Technology | S tep | Business | 4 | 4 | 12 | 4 | 12 | 6 |
| U. of Management & Tech. | KA | Both | 7 | 7 | ||||
| U. of W isconsin – M adison | KA | Business | 6 | 6 | ||||
| U. of Wisconsin – Platteville | S tep | Business | 12 | 5 | ||||
| University of Central Florida | S tep | Engineering | 5 | 1 | ||||
| University of M aryland | Step + KA | Engineering | 10 | 5 | ||||
| University of Texas – Dallas | S tep | Business | 6 | 1 | 10 | 1 | ||
| Western Carolina University | PG | Business | 12 | 6 | ||||
| W right State University | S tep | Business | 12 | 3 | ||||
Figure 1 summarizes the program types for most of the U.S. universities offering project management programs “certified” by PMI. The list of such schools is on the PMI website (www.pmi.org). Out of the 19 schools listed, 11 offer a certificate program, six offer an MBA/MS specialization, and eight off a full Master’s is project management. In 14 of the 19 schools, the program is entirely in the Business (or Management) school.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION
PMI has developed an index of project management skills and knowledge called the “Project Management Body of Knowledge” (PMBOK). The PMBOK has been developed through several iterations over many years; the first version was developed in 1976 (Cook, 2004). The latest version (PMBOK, 2000) has been released (for certification testing beginning 1/2002) (PMI, 2000). It defines nine “knowledge area” which are organized into 37 ” processes”. The processes are grouped into five “process groups”. This is illustrated in Figure 2 (for PMBOK, 1996) (Duncan, 1996).
Since so many resources have been put into the development and refinement of the PMBOK and it has been so well received by the project management community, it seemed prudent to us to organize our graduate program courses around the processes defined within PMBOK. The issue then became how do we ” slice and dice” the processes as shown in Figure 2 into distinct (but integrated) courses. The PMBOK document itself organizes its write-up by knowledge area. However, most classic overall project management topics and text topics are organized by process groups (Badiru, 1989; Cleland & King, 1988; Hajek, 1984; Kerzner, 1980; Meredith & Mantel, 1989; Royce, 1988; Verzuh, 1999). There are however a number of topics concerning particular parts of project management, and these cover particular knowledge areas, but they are not specifically written as “text topics” (Fisher & Fisher, 2000; Fleming & Koppel-man, 2000; Pinto & Trailer, 1999; Schuyer, 2001; Verma & Thamhain, 1996).
Looking at the universities currently offering degree programs to see how their curricula were organized, we defined three general types of organization:
1. “Step” - Courses are organized in the traditional manner from less depth to more depth over most of the knowledge areas. For example, the first course might be “Introduction to Project Management”; the next might be “Intermediate Project Management”; and the next would be “Advanced Project Management”;
2. “KA” - Follows the PMBOK knowledge areas (Scope, Time, Cost, …); and
3. “PG” - Follows the PMBOK process groups (Initiation, Planning, …).
Figure 2. PMI process groups and knowledge areas
| Initiation | Planning | Executing | Controlling | Closing | |
| Integration | Project Plan Development | Project Plan Execution | Overall Change Control | ||
| Scope | Initiation | Scope Planning Scope Definition | Scope Verification | Scope Change Control | Scope Verification |
| Time | Activity Definition Activity Sequencing Activity Duration Estimation Schedule Development | Schedule Control | |||
| Cost | Resource Planning Cost Estimating C o s t B u d g e ttin g | Cost Control | |||
| Quality
Human resources Communications risk |
Risk Identification | Quality Planning Organizational Planning Communications Planning Risk Identification Risk Quantification Risk Response Development | Quality Assurance Staff Acquisition Information Distribution | Q ua lity C ontrol Team Development Performance Reporting Risk Response C ontrol | Administrative Closure |
| Procurement | Procurement Planning Soliciation Planning | Solicitation Source Selection Contract Administration | Contract Administration | Contract Closeout |
Most programs do not fit entirely into one of these molds, but they were categorized according to the best fit. Overall, out of the 19 schools, 10 use primarily the Step method, six use primarily the KA method, and two use the PG area.
For schools offering certification, five use the Step method, six use the KA method, and none use the PG method. For schools offering the MBA/MS specialization, none use the KA method, one uses the PG method, and the rest use the Step method. For schools offering the full MS in Project Management, two use KA’s, one uses PG’s, and the rest (five) use the Step method.
The issue of course material organization is a difficult one for a university. As discussed earlier, universities offering these programs are taking different approaches in this area. We feel the “Step” approach is only useful for programs that have two or three project specific courses. The “KA” approach requires much more “course preparation” time, text topics are limited, and instructors need depth in these skills. One possible curriculum design would be to use a combination of “PG” and “KA”. For “PG”, separation into two process “super-groups” may be appropriate: project planning and project control; both covering scope, time, and cost. Separate “KA” courses would likely involve: procurement, risk, quality, and human resources/communications.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT CONTENT IN PROGRAMS
As can be seen from Figure 1, not all of the courses in a project management program are project management specific courses. For most schools, the certification offering is made up of mostly project management specific courses (the #PM in Figure 1 is the number of project management specific courses). For the project management specialization, most schools use three to six project management specific courses. For the full MS Project Management degree, the number of project management specific courses is about one-third to one-half of the courses. These non-specific courses in the full MS degree program vary widely from school to school especially if the degree is in the Engineering school instead of the Business school. Some of these non-project management specific courses are typically: general management, organizational behavior, leadership, managerial accounting, information technology, finance, human resources, quantitative methods, quality assurance, procurement and contracting, and risk management.
DELIVERY
Some universities are offering some, all, or portions of their courses in the form of “distance learning”. So the issue be comes: “where on the spectrum from ‘bricks to clicks’ should a program position itself.” There are many pros and cons on both sides of this issue, and most of those pros and cons depend on exactly how a course is made available “online” and the university’s overall vision, mission, and tradition. This issue encompasses most degree programs (not just project management), so we are not going to further debate it here, except to indicate it is highly dependent on a particular school’s mission, tradition, and demographics. As discussed in the following section, the potential students for such a graduate program are working adults, so attention has to be given to the best delivery for that market. Many schools are holding classes on weekends or evenings to accommodate the adult audiences for these types of programs (San Diego Business Journal, 2001).
program stakeholders and Their Needs
We have discussed and surveyed the needs of the stakeholders of a graduate program in our region. The external stakeholders we identified were those companies and those individuals who would benefit from such a program. The companies would benefit by the introduction or reinforcement of the specific project management methodologies into their organizations; this has both an educational and training perspective.
Our individual stakeholders are primarily degreed working professionals. This is similar to the market served by the other universities we investigated, since those other universities like ourselves are located in large metropolitan areas. These individuals benefit from a “continuing education” perspective that makes them individually more valuable. Those individuals having earned PMI PMP Certification would have another way to earn PDU credits (a credit course at a university earns 15 PDUs per semester credit hour). Currency of methods and tools is also quite important to both corporations and individuals.
future trends
For future university programs in project management, four dimensions can be defined. The PMI PMBOK focuses on the dimension of breadth of the knowledge areas (and the 37 processes) but intentionally does not go into much depth. Going into depth gets into method and tool specifics. Thus, a future trend in university programs would be to address not only the breadth but also the depth of these key processes.
The next dimension identified is industry particulars. While there is much commonality to project management in all industries, there is also much that is specific to each area. For example, task estimation for an IT project is much different than task estimation in a construction project. So this should be considered as another added dimension to new programs, certainly not for all industries but for the major ones in a school’s geographic region.
The next dimension we identified was that of time or “currency”. This not only includes the use of current tools, but the practice of project management in the current business and technical environment. Issues such as “virtual teams”, international coverage, and Web-based systems would be included in this dimension.
conclusion
Herein, we have examined content, approach, and logistics issues in graduate education for project management. The university programs surveyed were all relatively new programs, so there is little or no data available for a statistical or comparative historical analysis at this time. In the future, one may be able to survey graduates from the different types of programs to determine the pros and cons of each type of program organization and the “best practices” for project management education.
key terms
APA: Association for Project Management.
IPMA: International Project Management Association.
KnowledgeArea (KA): Project Management Knowledge Area; For PMI there are nine knowledge areas: Integration, Scope, Time, Cost, Quality, Human Resources, Communications, Risk, and Procurement.
Process Group (PG): A grouping of proj ect management processes; for PMI, there are five process groups: Initiation, Planning, Executing, Controlling, Closing.
Professional Development Unit (PDU): A unit of continuing education for certified project managers.
Project Management: The application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities in order to meet or exceed stakeholder needs and expectations of that project.
Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK): A consolidation and organization of information about project management including “best practices”.
Project Management Institute (PMI): The largest of the professional organizations which foster the discipline of project management.
Project Management Professional (PMP): The highest level of professional certification of project managers by PMI.
