Harvard Guru Prof. Michael Porter backs Project Management.

According to Harvard Professor Michael Porter, the founder of the modern strategy field and one of the world's most influential thinkers on management and competitiveness, “Project Management is now a core discipline of management – it is the preeminent method for making things happen and implementing change in the world.”

This indeed is a weighty endorsement from a man who has influenced more executives –  and more nations –  than any other business professor on earth.

Projects, programmes and portfolios are at the forefront of change in the world today. Projects drive the development of new products and services, investments and expansion, capabilities, the implementation of new strategies and a new generation of infrastructure.

The professionals of tomorrow will be judged by their ability to deliver products or services that align with short and long-term strategies to deliver benefits.

A major challenge facing organizations is the inability to convert strategy into action. This demands that the strategy be decomposed into projects and programmes that need to be successfully implemented. To achieve this requires the intervention of competent people and the application of processes and tools.

Organizations need personnel with the requisite competences to manage:

• Individual projects 

Such individuals may be deployed in the “nuts and bolts” of managing individual projects without having the essentials to manage the wider context.

The Institute’s Certified Project Management Diploma is specifically designed to meet this profile. It provides candidates with academic and professional body (IPMA) accreditation and prepares them to develop and execute the project plan in real life comprehensively.

• Programmes and portfolios
  

Moving from knowing how to manage a single project to managing a basket of strategically important projects demands confidence and understanding that only comes from knowledge and experience.

The Institute’s Strategic Project Management Diploma is unique and the only such programme available to meet this challenge. Focusing on the higher-order concepts of Strategy, Programmes, Portfolios, PMOs, and executive leadership also provides candidates with academic and professional body (IPMA) accreditation.

Successful delivery of projects requires the alignment with organisational strategy, fostering the skills and attitudes required and moving from managing to leading.

With the increasing recognition of project management as a profession, competence and certification have become key driving forces, both at the organisation and the individual level.

The good news for the Project Management community is that a recent survey (The Project and Portfolio Management Landscape 2016, presented by Innotas) showed a staggering 71% of organizations lacking the proper resource capacity to meet project demands.