Development of the GAPPS Project Manager Standards began at the first Working Session which was held in Lille, France in February 2003.  Prior to this Working Session, extensive research was conducted to review and compare project management knowledge guides as well as existing performance based standards and guidelines.

Knowledge guides selected for review were:

APMBoK: APM Body of Knowledge, 2000 Edition
ICB: IPMA Competency Baseline: 1999 Edition
P2M: A Guidebook to Project and Program Management for Enterprise Innovation, 2001 (PMCC, Japan)
PMBOK®Guide, 2000 Edition, PMI

Performance based competency standards reviewed were:

NCSPM:  National Competency Standards for Project Management (Revised Draft Version 1.1, February 2003 - BSTA (now IBSA) (Australia)
ECITB:  National Occupational Standards for Project management (Pre-launch Version September 2002) (UK)  
PMSGB/SAQA:  National Certificate in Generic Project Management (Project Administration and Coordination) at NQF Level 4 - South Africa
PMI PMCDF:  Project Manager Competency Development Framework (2002) – PMI

The first three of these performance based competency standards documents were developed in the context of nationally endorsed qualifications frameworks, namely those of Australia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. The Project Manager Competency Development Framework developed by the Project Management Institute, Inc. (USA) does not purport to be a standard but has a section that is presented in a format similar to that used for performance based competency standards.

From detailed examination of these documents, 48 concepts/topics were identified as covering the major functions that need to be performed by most Project Managers in most contexts. In order to ensure that development of a global framework reflected the content of existing standards and guides, these 48 items were used as a starting point at the first Working Session. The Working Session participants, representing a wide range of industries and nationalities, through a carefully facilitated process, developed and agreed on 14 groupings of the 48 items to be used as an initial set of Units of Competency. Appendix C of the GAPPS Framework document contains a detail mapping of the 48 items to these 14 groupings and then to the current 6 Units of Competency.

The next step was to write Elements of Competency and Performance Criteria using the 48 items and the 14 groupings as a guideline. An initial draft was developed prior to Working Session 2 which was held in Sydney in 2003. The group in Sydney made significant revisions to the draft material and ended with 9 Units of Competency by combining or reorganising the initial 14 from Lille.

The working group met next in Cape Town in May 2004 and recognised a need for further development of the Role Description. After sessions involving the exploration of examples of projects, and extensive discussion of factors that influenced the outcomes of projects, a core set of elements for describing a range of project contexts was identified.

Working Session 4 was held in Lille in November 2004 and was devoted to further refinement of both the Role Description and the draft of the Global Performance Based Competency Standards for Project Managers. At Lille, the group was supported by a professional competency standards writer from Australia.

The fifth Working Session was in Melbourne in February 2005. It continued the work of the fourth session by challenging, refining, and enhancing the draft materials. The result was a polished draft which was sent out to a small, select group of individuals within the project management community for review. A formal process for a public review was also developed in Melbourne with input from various organisations that have conducted this type of high level, wide public review previously.

The sixth working session was in St. Petersburg, Russia in May of 2005. This session dealt with the feedback that had been received from the informal review and addressed each comment individually. Each Unit of Competency was reviewed in plenary so that all participants in the working session were able to contribute to the final editing and review.

The Role Description, now formalised as the Crawford-Ishikura Factor Table for Evaluating Roles (the CIFTER) was also reviewed in plenary; revised, tested against a variety of different projects from different application areas; and found to be a sound tool for the identification of the global project manager roles.

In August 2005 the draft standards were released for public review.  The review process had been developed at previous Working Sessions and followed an agreed and rigorous process based on accepted standards development principles.  The feedback received was reviewed by a dedicated team during Working Session 7 in London September 2005.  Each item of feedback was addressed individually, the action taken was noted and the people who provided input were responded to.  Once the public review process was complete and all feedback had been addressed, the GAPPS members were asked to vote on both the process and the final document. 

Also at the Working Session in London, and at others in Singapore – January 2006, and Boston in June 2006, work involved further refinement of the original document  Much of the refinement and discussion on the standards was more to do with explanation of meaning and use than about the actual content and format of the standard.  Final acceptance of the standards after response and incorporation of feedback from the public review was on a vote by subscribing organisations.

Download the original benchmarking document in PDF: GPBSPMP_Working_Report_No_1.pdf file size: 220 KB