Career Development Activities Across the PMO Continuum

The "career development" function along the PMO competency continuum represents an increasing recognition of project management as a professional discipline. At early PMO stages, it facilitates a professional capability, and at advanced PMO stages it mandates it. Thereby, this PMO function is an instrument for instilling and managing professionalism within the project management environment.

Table 11.1 provides an overview of the range of prescribed PMO career development activities according to each level in the PMO competency continuum.

Table 11.1: Range of Career Activities across the PMO Continuum

Project Office	Basic PMO	Standard PMO	Advanced PMO	Center of Excellence
Assists project team members plan and review career advancement activities	Introduces project management as a professional discipline Facilitates the identification and designation of project managers Encourages professional certification Recommends individual career planning actions Examines options for formal career-path development	Manages a project management career development program Defines a career path for project professionals Prepares career-path position requirements, job descriptions, and compensation Incorporates technical and professional certification requirements Develops a career guide for project professionals	Expands support capability for project management career development Implements a professional development plan and review process Provides project management career planning and counseling assistance Facilitates cross-functional professional job transfers and advancement opportunities	Monitors business interest fulfillment and value from career development Conducts studies and analyses to monitor project manager and team member retention Conducts studies and analyses to ascertain career-path-designation contributions to performance

The project office applies experience in the relevant organization, combined with general knowledge and information about professional project management, to guide and advise project team members in their individual pursuits of professional advancement.

Mid-range PMO levels introduce increasingly formal processes and practices of professional career development, including specification of the prescribed and HR department-approved progression of advancement for project professionals in the relevant organization. Its work is characterized by close collaboration with the HR department in setting up and managing a career path for project professionals. More advanced PMOs will ensure that business needs and interests are integrated into the career development program, and they will administer higher levels of individual assistance in areas of career planning and management support.

The center of excellence is characterized by its ongoing or specific examinations of results from the project professional career development program. Its findings from studies and analyses can be applied to improving the career development program within the relevant organization.

This PMO function addresses as many personal needs of professionals as it does business needs of the relevant organization. The unstated purpose of this function is to ensure that a professional approach to project management is pursued, and that can only be done when the participants in that effort are bona fide professionals in their own right. This function introduces and manages professionalism in the project management environment.