Potential barriers on the road to professionalization

OVER THE LAST FEW YEARS there has been a lot of discussion in PMI‘s publications and elsewhere about the state of project management as a profession. In the January 2000 issue of PMI Today, the monthly PM Network supplement, PMI^® Executive Director Virgil Carter clearly puts forward PMI‘s position in stating that “Project management is truly a global profession” from the fundamental PMI Ends policy. In addition, a survey of PMI membership shows that two-thirds of the membership supports this view of project management as a profession [The PMI Project Management Fact Book]. More often than not we read statements such as “What will X mean for the future of our profession?”

Three articles in PM Network in 1999 serve as an introduction to this discussion. In April, Francis Webster provided the historical development of project management in “Setting the Stage for a New Profession.” In May, Jeannette Cabanis presented a compelling argument for the role standards play in the development of a profession. In an October commentary, Rodney Turner questioned “whether project management was a profession based on faith or knowledge.” Turner asserted that most of us see project management as a profession based in knowledge, not faith; but to be a mature profession in those terms project management must develop the theoretical basis of the subject. (See sidebar for references cited in this article.)

The assumption being made is that project management is a profession, or at least is well on its way to attaining the characteristics of traditional professions such as law, medicine, and engineering. Clearly, there is a significant effort under way to gain recognition for project management as a profession, and project management does bear some obvious resemblance to traditional professions and disciplines: it is a knowledge occupation, the practice of which is increasingly important to the welfare of modern societies. However, in sociological terms, there is a distinct difference between an occupation and a profession, and labeling this occupation a profession is a touch premature. The future of “project manager” as an occupation [The Future of Project Management] is dependent partially on how members of this occupational set choose to handle some of the same questions that were dealt with by the classic professions such as medicine, law, and accounting, and partly on how they deal with some new and emerging conditions.

The purpose of this article is to examine project management in the light of the sociological development of the classical professions and highlight some potential roadblocks facing project management on its professionalization journey. By drawing on what we know of the historical development of other professions, we hope to provide insights for those interested in professionalizing project management.

Profession vs. Professional

Professions have been studied in sociology for more than 70 years. This analytic history provides us with definitions of the characteristics and traits of professions and an understanding of the stages or steps most occupations followed in attaining professional status.

In sociology an occupation is defined as a category of jobs characterized by a set of skills, responsibilities, earnings, entry qualifications, and prestige. The term profession can be viewed in two ways in sociology. First, as an organizational form, a profession includes some central regulatory body to ensure the standard of performance of individual members; a code of conduct; careful management of knowledge in relation to the expertise that constitutes the basis of the profession's activities; and, lastly, control of numbers, selection, and training of new entrants. From the perspective of profession as organizational form, there are very few traditional professions recognized in sociology. Typically, law, medicine, accounting, and engineering are recognized as traditional professions. Second, profession can be viewed as a work orientation. A professional's work orientation entails exclusive concern with the intrinsic rewards and performance of a task and is typically associated with personal services involving confidentiality and high trust. While project managers may exhibit the work orientation of a professional as defined above, as an organizational form, project management fails to meet some of the criteria necessary to be viewed as a profession.

Two dominant perspectives in professions research are the Trait and the Process approaches. The Trait perspective specifies the characteristics of those occupations that have successfully laid claim to professional status while the Process perspective describes how occupations migrate from non-professional to professional status. Each of these perspectives is summarized below in order to frame our discussion of the challenges facing those interested in the pro-fessionalization of project management.

Trait (Characteristics). The first question of interest in the sociology of professions is, what are the characteristics of an occupation given the status of profession? This perspective emerged with the pioneering work of Alexander Carr-Saunders and P.A. Wilson who sought to identify those characteristics of a select group of knowledge occupations that had received special public and legal recognition and had been publicly accorded very high occupational status; those called the professions. While the specific list of occupational traits cited by analysts varies, professions such as law, medicine, engineering, and accounting all share the following characteristics (or have successfully laid claim to possessing these):

Bill Zwerman, Ph.D., is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Calgary. His research interests are focused on emerging occupations and organizational forms, with emphasis on the impact of new technologies on social structures and processes. Current research and writing focuses on new professional occupations, project managers, software developers, Internet professionals, and changes in classical professions.

Janice Thomas, Ph.D., associate professor of project management at The Centre for Innovative Management at Athabasca University,is responsible for all courses in the project management area and is in the process of designing an online MBA in project management. She is also an adjunct professor in the project management specialization at the University of Calgary, where she supervises masters and Ph.D. research students. Her 10 years of “real world“experience as a project manager in information technology and organizational change led her to undertake research into the fundamental reasons for project failure. She is an active researcher and consultant who presents her research to academic and practitioner audiences around the world.

Exclusive control and command of an esoteric and systematic body of knowledge, essentially a monopoly on understanding and application.

Autonomy of practice. Incumbents are the only ones capable of understanding and practicing and believe they should be free to control their own work; outside interference would only lower “professional” standards of practice.

Norm of altruism. Members have been imbued with a sense of service to their clients and the community and do not act out of self-interest.

Authority over clients. Professionals should have total control over clients within the client/practitioner relationship. The quality of service is compromised if clients challenge the authority of the professional practitioner.

Distinctive occupational culture. A distinctive set of norms, values, and symbols sets one occupation apart from others.

Recognition. There is an explicit acknowledgment by both the community and the law that the occupation is special and its incumbents are deserving of special privileges. This means that professions come into existence when some governmental authority recognizes the practice of the profession as requiring specific training and preparation, the regulation of that profession is turned over to a professional body, and there is general acceptance that the tasks of this profession cannot be done without this preparation.

In “Why Ethics?” Carter reflects on PMI‘s awareness of these characteristics when he defines a profession in traditional terms as:

Having specialized knowledge and wisdom

Granted certain status and rights not given to those outside the profession

Committed to broad principles of conduct including goals to aspire to in professional practice and conduct

Mandatory rules of conduct for services provided

Regulatory recognition evolving from professional certification, registration, and licensure.

Significant progress has been made in developing several of these characteristics within the project management occupation in recent years. Efforts by professional associations (notably PMI) have made significant contributions to the areas of establishing a knowledge base of the profession and, in turn, defining a distinctive occupational culture. For example, in 1986 PMI established a body of knowledge and has published revisions since then, including the global de facto standard A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK^® Guide). The Association of Project Management in the U.K. has published its own similar yet different work on the subject. The theoretical basis of the profession is being established through growing amounts of research and published material on project management in recent years. Efforts are also under way to develop international standards on organizational project management maturity models, work breakdown structure standards, project manager competencies, project taxonomies and project management principles [Cabanis]. While these efforts have been extremely beneficial in establishing a distinctive occupational culture, most would generally accept that these efforts are far from meeting the first criteria of a profession, that of having control and command of a recognizable, esoteric, and systematic body of knowledge.

In addition, PMI‘s PMP^® certification and the licensing of project managers by the Australian government and the Australian Institute of Project Management is a move toward recognition of the occupation by the community. More than 27,000 individuals globally have earned PMP certification. Among many local and global corporations and some governments, the PMP is a recognized and valued credential. However, these efforts remain voluntary in nature and do not reflect the status conferred by legal requirements to be certified to practice, as is the case in traditional professions such as medicine or law.

Establishing a code of ethics for PMI members and PMPs to ascribe to goes a long way toward establishing a norm of altruism. However, monitoring and adjudicating breaches of these ethics by the profession itself is the sign of a mature self-regulating profession, and this still appears to be some way off.

Finally, characteristics such as autonomy of practice and control over clients appear to be a long way off. One of the fundamental problems with project management is the lack of autonomy and control given to project managers [D. Slevin and J. Pinto]. One could argue that this characteristic of a profession is being questioned in established professions like law and medicine and may not continue to hold true in our more educated population; however, it is hard to see the establishment of a position of power in industry without this characteristic.

Thus, project management can be seen to be acquiring many of the traits considered indicative of professional work orientation but at the same time missing many of the traits that would allow it to claim the status of a profession. Establishing these traits will entail a significant effort on the part of both the professional associations and the membership.

Process. The second question studied in the sociology of professions—and one that is very important to project management—is, how does an occupation go from nonprofessional to professional status and achieve the social and political recognition that characterized the established professions? George Ritzer and David Walczak combined the works of Theodore Caplow and Harold Wilensky into a six-step process of becoming a profession. The steps, not necessarily occurring in this order, are:

[I]n sociological terms, there is a distinct difference between an occupation and a profession, and labeling this occupation a profession is a touch premature.

Reader Service Number 005

Create a full-time occupation.

Create a name, which becomes the occupation's exclusive domain.

Establish a national association.

Develop a training school.

Create a code of ethics.

Engage in political agitation to win popular and legal support.

The process perspective starts with a fulltime occupation, which then moves to legal recognition of its claims to special status. In the United States, project management proponents, through the auspices of the Project Management Institute, and elsewhere its counterparts in Australia, the United Kingdom, and Europe, have attempted most of the first five steps in the professionaliza-tion process with varying degrees of success. There is a recognizable occupation of project manager, but at the same time the title of project manager continues to be used loosely and can often be applied to an individual with little or no specialized training in project management. National associations exist in most major Western countries and PMI is arguably an international association representing the occupation. Training in project management is flourishing at all levels, from trade schools to graduate-level university education. Professional associations are involved in both delivery of and in some instances attempts to certify training. Codes of ethics have been created but means to evaluate their application are largely missing. In at least one jurisdiction (Australia), political agitation has led to governmental recognition of project managers. In other jurisdictions, many large and influential organizations have recognized the need for certified project managers. However, large-scale agitation to win popular and legal recognition restricting the non-controlled use of the term project manager is largely missing.

The following section provides some insights into some potential roadblocks to professionalization that arise out of these missing characteristics and processes.

Development of the occupation requires a differentiation, in name, between those who occasionally manage projects and those who have devoted their occupational lives to this work.

Potential Roadblocks to Professionalization

Both the process and the trait perspectives are useful tools for the analysis of occupations and of how some have become “professions.” To date, project management has evolved to the extent that it has begun to receive some recognition as what we would term a “potential profession.” It has embarked on the professionalization journey but has not yet attained the necessary characteristics to be judged a profession in sociological (or legal) terms. A number of potential issues arise from examining project management with respect to its professional status and its future efforts aimed at professionalization:

Ownership of the Name; no one “owns” the title “project manager.”

Knowledge: Process vs. Content; the knowledge claim of project managers to “professional” status is built on a mastery of processes related to project completion rather than content knowledge and related skills.

Identified specializations within project management seem to have developed on an ad hoc basis and may be inconsistent with some of the formal developments of the occupation.

The organizational foundations of the occupation are built around different forms of interaction and communication than those that characterized the face-to-face organizational development of traditional professions.

There is little consensus among practitioners regarding the question of legal control of the practice of project management, certification, and registration.

Ownership of the Name. What's in a name? Claims to occupational status and privilege require that members of an occupation be able to clearly differentiate themselves from all others. All established professions strive for a legal monopoly on the use of their name. “Psychologist” is a controlled label; counselor is not. Psychologists charge a lot more, experience less unemployment, and receive more recognition than counselors do.

As long as the use of the name is uncontrolled:

Its market currency will be minimized.

The development of an occupational community will be inhibited.

It will be difficult to develop an occupational culture.

It will be difficult to find consensus on political matters relating to the occupation.

The lack of a unique common identity will make it very difficult for project management to evolve as a recognized “professional” occupation. Development of the occupation requires a differentiation, in name, between those who occasionally manage projects and those who have devoted their occupational lives to this work. The “professional project manager” must have a different name than transient and possibly untrained “accidental” project managers.

We see progress in this area through association certification processes such as PMI‘s PMP designation and the recognition it is gaining in organizations. However, there is also growing recognition that the PMP examination is of necessity restricted to the fundamentals of project management, excluding the complexities of practice necessary to be considered a “proficient” practitioner. There are two important issues arising from this:

There will be implications for maintaining and controlling the entrance requirements for such certification in the face of demand from an increasingly varied potential membership.

There will be implications around a global standard and ownership and administration of that standard.

Knowledge: Process vs. Content. The sine qua non of the “professions” is knowledge. Claims to the exclusive mastery of a systematic body of esoteric knowledge are a requirement of every successful transition to professional designation. The recognition and privileges granted to the occupation are based upon this “knowledge” claim. Thus far, all successful claims to professional status have been based on a mastery of a substantive knowledge base; the claim of professionals to possess a monopoly on understanding their domain of knowledge has formed the basis of their negotiations with both their publics and various governmental agencies. Some occupations, such as psychology and psychiatry, have combined substantive claims with claims of mastery of process—therapy techniques. Project management is an occupation built upon process. Project managers claim their special status primarily on the basis of their mastery of process, not of substantive knowledge. This is rather unique; the claim requires a working definition of “project” and specification of the knowledge base.

Work in the area of standard setting begins to address this issue. At the same time, we concur with Cabanis’ statement that “Standard setting … can be both intellectually stimulating and divisive.” The issue for the fledgling profession of project management is how to deal with the divisiveness of standard setting in a milieu that has traditionally erred on the side of inclusiveness.

The Project. The concept of the “project” is crucial to all aspects of the emerging occupation, most certainly to questions regarding core knowledge and skills. Definitions of what constitutes a project vary between associations and specialists, but this variance is expected and unavoidable. There is no obvious cluster of objects in the universe of human endeavor that self-selects as “projects” for the purpose of project management. This is not unique to project management. The core knowledge and practice of medicine, for example, is determined politically in an ongoing struggle between the various categories of health care workers; doctors, chiropractors, naturopaths, nurse practitioners, and homeopaths are defined in the context of registration and certification, not in the halls of academe or the meetings of like-minded individuals.

Answers to questions of competence and qualifications for project management will be determined through definition of the boundaries, shape, and variance of the “project” and the title “project manager.” It is impossible to define the boundaries of the occupation of project manager without having first defined the core practice. What are the projects that are part of the world of the career project manager? Are these defined by complexity, concreteness, size, or scale? What projects are not of interest to “professional” project managers? Doctors don't deal with everything that is health related. Lawyers don't deal with everything that is related to the law and the legal system. The practice limits of project management must be defined if the occupation is to take shape as a defined entity in the world of work. A reasonable working definition of project, in the context of the full-time occupation of project manager, will assist in the systematic pursuit of the definition and specification of core competencies and specializations.

Knowledge. The project manager title is often applied to a temporary position within an organization. At present, there are no requirements that people designated project manager possess any special knowledge, training, or skills. Many who carry the occupational title cannot lay claim to command of any significant body of knowledge. The focus here, however, is on the emergence of an occupation called “project manager” whose incumbents do lay claim to command of a significant body of systemic knowledge and associated skills. This occupation is increasing in importance as many more organizations adopt a “projectized” structure and create permanent project management positions.

The definition of a knowledge occupation requires specification of the core knowledge requirements for all practitioners, then sorting the emerging specializations and concomitant knowledge requirements. Knowledge analysis in project management is complicated by the debate within the occupation over how much, if any, “domain or technical knowledge” is required for successful practice. It is further complicated by the role of general management knowledge and skills in the definition of core competencies and related project management requirements. At present, the consensus within the occupation is that virtually all of the domain and technical knowledge base belongs primarily to other occupational realms; it is not the primary realm of the project manager.

Knowledge discussions in both academic (research conferences and refereed publications) and practitioner (listserves, discussion sites on the Web, practitioner publications) circles identify concerns with:

Process knowledge and competence— the heart of project management knowledge and skills

Technical knowledge and competence—the world of the engineer, software developer, and others

Domain knowledge—the world of the end users; residents, application users, and others

General management knowledge and competence.

These “knowledge” discussions include consideration of substance and process. They also question whether project management is built predominately upon a specific combination of project management knowledge and skills or whether it blends in with general management. How are project management and general management differentiated? Does project management require some technical or domain knowledge and, if so, how much of what kind and when? Questions regarding the knowledge and skill base of project management are reflected in the diverse locations of graduate degrees in project management; management, architecture and design, engineering, and computer science faculties are among those that provide homes of one sort or another for degree programs in project management. This discussion of knowledge, then, is related to a consideration of the role of the project manager. The role specified for the project manager in the organization ties directly to questions of knowledge and skill requirements, suggesting that the new occupation may need more explicit definition before questions of skills and knowledge required can be successfully evaluated. If the project manager is part of the team that defines the project and assumes a lead role in planning the project, determining the schedule, budgeting, and staffing, the knowledge requirements will extend significantly beyond defined process considerations. If the project manager, on the other hand, enters after all the significant strategic and operational decisions have been made, the knowledge scope is narrowed and then the focus is on process knowledge and skills. If the project manager is part of the general management team, domain, business, and technical knowledge become important. If the project manager is part of the team that provides specifications for the project, the domain world of the end user is important, as is the technical knowledge associated with the project.

We propose that the future of project management is dependent on how members of this occupational set choose to handle some of the same questions that were dealt with by the classic professions such as medicine, law, accounting, and engineering, and partly on how they deal with some new and emerging conditions.

As long as these types of questions are front and foremost, developing command and control of an esoteric and systematic body of knowledge is unlikely. Resolving these issues and laying out the boundaries of the profession will be an important exercise on the road to professionalization.

Specializations. There are now more than 30 separate specific interest groups (SIGs) associated with the Project Management Institute, illustrating the extension of project management and project managers into every corner of the world of work. Institutional and technological differentiations are also both clearly reflected in PMI‘s SIGs. These specific interest groups have developed along technical, institutional, functional, or other “interest” lines. The SIGs emerged from informal groupings of practitioners in the early days of the development of the occupation to share common concerns and interests. Most of the SIGs have not developed along lines intrinsic to project management. The development of the occupation is not revealed in the specializations identified. Manufacturing, Aerospace & Defense, and Automotive are separate SIGs, but they could all be engaged in manufacturing. This type of differentiation (and fragmentation) has the effect of retarding the development of the occupation as it directs attention away from divisions that are inherently practice related and which would then have the effect of creating community among practitioners who shared interests based on those specific dimensions and forms of project management.

A comparison of the PMI SIGs and the application areas listed by the International Journal of Project Management (IJPM) reveals some overlap of definition of specializations but also considerable discontinuity between the two. The IJPM lists strategic planning, system design, leisure projects, agriculture, and restructuring among its defined application areas; these are not identified in the SIGs of the Project Management Institute.

The emergent occupation of project manager, or rather the cluster of specializations that emerges, will have to develop a basis of internal differentiation that is tied to the process of project management or it will never be able to lay claim to some kind of differentiated professional status. To develop such a basis, however, will require considerable, concerted effort by all interested parties.

Organizational Base. Project management is growing up within the corporate world rather than the public world, as has occurred for doctors and lawyers. In the past, face-to-face interaction was the basis for the development of “occupational community.” Doctors and lawyers practiced within a community that provided opportunity for daily interaction. Practicing professional engineers worked in firms, which created conditions for daily interaction on joint projects, boards, and in associations. This difference in itself is not a limitation but only a circumstance that must be taken into consideration in the journey to professionalization. Project managers have traditionally been less likely than their professional counterparts to work in project management organizations or in close proximity to a significant number of other project managers on a daily basis. This may be changing, as evidenced by the growth in project management consulting and project management offices within corporations; however, the majority of project managers continue to work for organizations whose primary function is not to manage projects. Thus, project managers are more dependent on occasional meetings such as local professional association meetings and on communication at a distance—the Internet being extremely important in this regard. The professional associations, which grew out of the 19th century, depended upon their members to take time for interaction and thus developed a common occupational culture. The days of serious community building have disappeared rapidly in our fast-paced age of change and globalization. Practitioners of project management have little opportunity to form a classical professional culture and community.

Existing professional associations attempt to fill this role through monthly local meetings and annual research and training symposiums; however, the day-to-day interaction, socialization, and mentoring of working in groups of professionals continues to be lacking. Web initiative such as Gantthead.com and PMWorld.com attempt to fill this void through chat rooms and commercial mentoring/consulting services. The issue here is who will fill the important socialization role in project management?

Legal Control and Certification. The traditional professions are licensed occupations, with practice controlled by certifying organizations, governments, and professional associations. The classic professions arose either through a grassroots movement, as was the case in England and North America for several of the professions, or through government imposition of controls, as was the case in Germany and in law for all countries. The classic professions are characterized not only as knowledge occupations but also as occupations that are essential to the well being of the people they serve. Professions serve the vital interests of the people, and members claim they deserve special attention and privilege to ensure these vital services are provided, while governments, in turn, ensure their qualifications to do it.

Project management is a knowledge occupation and competent project management is increasingly more important to the well being of the societies it serves. As our world becomes more process oriented the well being of the infrastructures of modern systems is often found in the hands of project managers. If project management has become a process that provides an essential service, then what is the prognosis for project management becoming a registered and licensed occupation? There are several reasons to believe that in spite of the qualifications previously outlined, professionalization in the traditional sense, will not take place:

Project management lacks the cohesiveness of knowledge and community base required to push for mandatory certification.

Governments seem unwilling to impose certification on the new occupations. The closest project management has come to achieving this is in Australia, and even this initiative remains a strictly volunteer registration.

Practitioners seem unwilling to push for mandatory certification. This is reflected in the lack of lobbying for mandatory certification by any professional association to date. The reliance of these associations on voluntary certification seems to indicate a lack of support for mandatory certification within their membership.

The market is good, so there is no compelling economic need for project managers to push for mandatory regulation.

The mix of backgrounds and experience combine to make the notion of certification, like the notion of standards, threatening to many.

Many discussions about project management explicitly recognize that only a minority of people functioning as project managers are full-time project managers. Many of those managing projects at any given time are people pulled out of somewhere else to occupy the project manager position and temporarily assume the title. While this may be changing with the growing emphasis on and use of project management in organizations, this seriously inhibits any concerted efforts to develop standards within organizations or the occupational community in general.

Discussions also frequently deal with the distinction between personal behavior and occupational requirements when professionalization is under consideration. It is often noted in these types of discussions that the title does not guarantee quality performance and the lack of title does not preclude excellent work. The quality of practice varies among practitioners of any occupation. The argument does not revolve around guarantees that all practitioners are superb performers; it is built around a claim that the practitioners are trying to eliminate incompetence and raise the general level of practice. This self-regulation of the occupation is a key component of professionalization that is as yet missing from project management.

WHAT, THEN, IS THE FUTURE for project managers who have embraced this occupation on a full-time basis and who seek to improve practice and receive reasonable recognition for their skills and knowledge?

Our intent is not to deny the perception prevalent in PMI‘s membership that project management is a profession, nor to denigrate the significant efforts PMI (in particular, and other professional associations) has made in moving the occupation toward a recognizable profession. Rather, we seek to highlight some of the next steps required and to generate discussion around the pros and cons of some of these actions. We propose that the future of project management is dependent on how members of this occupational set choose to handle some of the same questions that were dealt with by the classic professions such as medicine, law, accounting, and engineering, and partly on how they deal with some new and emerging conditions.

To return to Turner's 1999 question of whether project management is based on knowledge or faith—a profession or a vocation: Those occupations that follow the knowledge definition and receive governmental recognition of their status tend to be powerful, profitable, and commercially important. Those considered more of a vocation, while often considered professions by many (that is, academics, faith leaders, and so on), receive respect but very little else from society. As project management matures, those involved in shaping its future need to resolve a number of issues, some of which we've outlined above. We hope we have contributed to the development of the “profession” by providing insights into the development of traditional professions.

From this sociological analysis of project management's development, we conclude that project management is not (yet) a profession, that it has the potential to become a viable profession, but that it faces some serious roadblocks in continuing the professionalization journey. It is our hope that providing insight into these remaining roadblocks to professionalization will assist the occupation in determining the steps it wishes to take (or not take) to attain this goal. Who knows? In the future the study of the development of the “new” professions may be led by analysis of project management's road to professional status. ■