Swedish approach to project excellence creates international recognition

During a meeting of the International Project Management Association (IPMA) in Lisbon last week Svenskt Projektforum/IPMA Sweden presented a unique approach to project excellence to other IPMA member associations. Based on the IPMA Project Excellence Baseline (PEB) Sweden has been in the forefront of developing new services for delivery assurance of projects and programmes.

The service called Project Excellence Preparation (PEP) facilitates regular and systematic improvement activities for organisations to achieve better projects step by step focusing on most critical improvement areas first. The Swedish experience has been validated by both private and public organisations with the help of 6 pilot customers and already 55 persons have been trained for coaching and assessing on-going projects. The next step is to apply their knowledge by using these tools in practice.

In Lisbon a full day workshop was held with Sovnet/IPMA Russia to explore common development of this and similar services based on IPMA baselines for individual (ICB4), project (PEB), and organisational competence (OCB) in managing projects. The meeting was concluded by signing a MoU for future cooperation, similar to a MoU signed with IPMA Korea during the previous IPMA meeting in Sydney.

To further explore how this success could be replicated in other markets, as well as being integrated as a preparatory step to existing IPMA services such as individual certification, Project Excellence Award and IPMA Delta (assessment for organisational competence in managing projects), a number of international participants will join the next regular 3-day PEP assessor training to be held in Stockholm on 9-11 May.

Erik Månsson

Head of Project Excellence and Member of the Board

Svenskt Projektforum / IPMA Sweden

erik.mansson@projektforum.se