Knowledge is power when integrated with experience and skills and acted upon.  However, knowledge, experience and skills must be tightly integrated to form a cohesive view of reality. Service-based project leaders must be able to forge these three together to establish a sound base for their personal competency pyramid.  

Knowledge without experience leaves the leader without the confidence to execute project strategies that may seem radical to customers or sponsors. Knowledge and experience without demonstrable skills leave the leader stagnating, just talking about what should be done.  Thus, building knowledge, experience and skills should be viewed holistically; each complements the other and is mutually necessary.

A few years ago a student approached me about whether she should maintain her PMP. She had learned over the years that organizations, like hers, didn’t apply most of the PMP best practices to projects.  I encouraged her to continue to build the knowledge needed to successfully drive organizational change,  I responded, “Learn how to implement this best practices in a meaningful way that adds value to your stakeholders, you can’t wait for others to mandate these methods.”

She decided to continue to maintain  her PMP, but this story illustrates an inability to translate knowledge of basic project management processes into a job – a failure to integrate knowledge, experience and skills.

For example, a critical, though under-utilized skill is the effective use of work breakdown structures in project planning and scope definition.  A skill project managers must have is the ability to graphically render a simple WBS that aligns with the real need and mission statement of the project.  The WBS is built with the customer and team members in mind.

The skill of creating a WBS with an appropriate level of detail is invaluable to enhancing project buy-in.  You must neither lose the stakeholder amidst excessive detail nor waste time only stating the obvious.  Each major deliverable should have obvious value to the project, its process and its end result.   The customer and team want to understand expenditure of resources to create numerous deliverables.   Projects that are driving change often require deliverables to help continuously clarify the ambiguity of the change.  Thus attaching a clear objective with a WBS helps the team and customer understand how to best manage the quality associated with the deliverable.

If you are not adept at implementing and using a WBS or other critical project management skills, you may need to refocus your approach to maintaining your PMP.

Written by Jack P. Ferraro, PMP
http://www.myprojectadvisor.com/