Review IPMA Organisational Competence Baseline – for developing competence in managing by projects, version 1.1

IPMA OCB offers insights for all interested in understanding how to improve the way projects, programmes and portfolios are managed in an organization.

The IPMA OCB provides a standard for organizations to analyse their context, to identify relevant trends and to develop their strategies, processes, structures, cultures and project, programme and portfolio competences.

The IPMA OCB describes five groups of of organisational competence:

• Project, programme and portfolio governance
• Project, programme and portfolio management
• Project, programme and portfolio alignment
• Project, programme and portfolio resources
• Project, programme and portfolio people’s competences

Each competence is divided into three or four competence elements and are explained in detail.

Appendix A provides a more detailed description of the competence elements including the intended users and their responsibilities and some key questions that organizations should consider.

Appendix B provides an outline of a competence development programme.

The IPMA OCB is one of the three standards used as reference models during the IPMA Delta maturity assessment: the IPMA Individual Competence Baseline (IPMA ICB) to assess selected individuals, the IPMA Project Excellence Baseline (IPMA PEB) to assess selected projects and/or programmes, and the IPMA Organisational Competence Baseline (IPMA OCB).

IPMA Delta uses the concept of competence classes to help assess the current project management state of an organization. IPMA Delta follows a similar approach as other assessment systems like CMMI (initial, defined, standardized, managed, optimizing).

As a result, the assessment report shows the class of competence for each IPMA OCB competence cluster. The actual class and the difference (“Delta”) to the desired competence class, combined with detailed findings, can be used to derive development needs and a long-term strategy for organizational development of project, programmes and portfolios.

Conclusion. Like all other IPMA standards a very relevant standard for those who want to strengthen their project, programme and portfolio competences and need a baseline. When I look at those organizations with permanent agile teams, I think this standard needs an update to show the impact of these agile ways of working on the organization’s project, programme and portfolio competences. 

To order a printed copy of the IPMA OCB (or to get a free Ebook): IPMA World