aPRO for is for Educators

aPRO is for Educators

The Opportunity
Universities, your students, and enterprises and government entities in your communities can benefit from a new organizational project performance assessment standard that asapm, the American Society for the Advancement of Project Management, has developed, and is making available.

The Background
Universities know that every organization in your community is trying to improve their performance, and successful projects are the best way to manage that type of organizational change initiative. And yet, far too many projects fail to achieve their intended benefits, in all practice areas, and all organizations. Ironic, that the discipline that should be most-powerful in enabling organizational performance improvement is not fully implemented in most organizations.

One reason? Developing competent Project Managers is just a part of the solution. The full solution involves a more holistic assessment of every facet of the organization that touches upon project and program success. It also includes identifying the practices that support success, while highlighting and improving those that do not.

Organizational assessment has been a popular subject for over 30 years, with such breakthrough initiatives as the US Department Of Defense-mandated SEI-CMM (Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model, or more recently, CMMi). This initiative has been so successful that it has also spawned hundreds of "project management maturity model" assessments—few of which have done much to improve PM Performance.

Enter asapm, the American Society for the Advancement of Project Management, focused on improving organizational and individual PM Performance. We decided to play a key role to fill the gap in increasing the effectiveness of all projects. We launched a project to study the business needs, identified current options, evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of key offerings, then defined, designed and delivered a new US Standard for Performance Rated Organizations in project and program management.

The Educators' Opportunity
We see a range of opportunities for mutually beneficial involvement from Universities in improving PM performance :

Use the aPRO standard in advanced classes to perform organizational assessment of project management strengths, which can provide University outreach to your communities, equip students with an enriching experience, and help increase the economic potential of organizations in your circle of influence.
Mine the aPRO database (rich with insights, and cleansed of organization identity) of organization assessments to analyze key trends and differences between organizations across sectors, while correlating their project management performance.
Participate in the establishment of asapm standards or guidelines for project and program success. One of the outcomes of our research is our assessment of the weaknesses of most measures, which focus too often on project-only measures, and fail to relate to longer-lasting organization benefits.
Publish findings in mainstream media and juried Journals, and present at USA and World Congresses on project management, through asapm (IPMA-USA), and IPMA, at the global level.

Your Role
This is a unique opportunity for advanced collaboration between not-for-profit professional associations, Universities, and businesses and government agencies in your sphere of influence. You can provide clear economic benefits to organizations that wish to improve their project and program management performance, and their business results. All this, while providing a richer learning experience for your advanced-degree candidates, and adding a new arena for relevant research. You can participate in this program by contacting asapm at Educator Interest.

aPRO Links

aPRO is for Educators