It used to be that when you bought a project management system, tens of thousands of dollars were spent on training.  Nowadays, training included with a project management system is usually zero.  What has been the impact of less pm training with modern day project systems?

PM Systems originally included training

It doesn’t seem that long ago, at least not to me.  It used to be that when you purchased a project management software system, there was always extensive training included.  Some of that training was software feature oriented of course.  After all the project management software of 10 to 15 years ago wasn’t that user friendly.  If you’ve ever seen the old character-based airlines reservations systems, you can get an inkling of what using those early scheduling systems might have been like.  Having some kind of training was obviously essential to users being able to get any value out of their new purchase at all. 

Costs of project management software in the mid-70′s and early 80′s was usually measured in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars.  When purchasing a $200,000 scheduling system, people thought nothing of budgeting anywhere from 20% to 30% towards training and implementation.  Well, $40,000 buys a bunch of training and implementation assistance.  Beyond the regular features to be trained in, basic project management training was virtually always included.  The result?  schedulers and project managers who were part of project management software implementations in the 70′s and early 80′s are among the most trained project managers available today. 

What makes an expert?
So what makes an expert?  There’s no doubt that training for project schedulers and project managers has existed for a long time but the availability of that training over the years has become harder not easier for pm systems users to come by. 

It’s true of course that there have great strides in some elements of the pm training process around the world.  PMI has made a great success of PMP certification but remember, that PMI itself does not sanction an official course of study.  There are course materials centrally available but courses are more likely organized at the local chapter level than through a centrally organized certified-instructor type of course.  After all, the PMP certification is designed to provide a consistent manner of evaluating the acquired skills of project managers.

How do new project management systems users get access to this level of skill?  Presumably they will engage in self-study or in one of the many chapter courses offered as a preparation for the PMP exam.

There have also been huge strides in the last few years in University level courses where certificate programs and both graduate and undergraduate courses in project management can now be found in a number of recognized Universities.

There is no doubt that this contributes to the overall number of skilled project manages in the world.  The thing that is missing; that has changed is the availability of project management training as part of your systems implementation. 

Part of the problem is the respective values of software and training.  The costs of project management software has tumbled incredibly since 1980.  The analysis that used to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars is now available for hundreds of dollars and includes an interface that is graphical, friendly and features for reporting that simply weren’t available in 1980 at any price.

The costs of training a project scheduler or project manager?  Well, they’ve certainly not tumbled.  In fact, in real terms, they’ve increased over time as wages and consulting costs have risen.

Worse than this is the ratio of software to training costs.  If you were willing to budget 20% to 30% of your software purchase towards pricing in 1980, you might have received as much as 60 days of training and implementation consulting.  If you keep the same ratio today, your training budget now tumbles to a couple of hours of such services.  Even the most ardent of training aficionados find it difficult to budget $500 for software and $5,000 for training in it.

Yet the total number of project schedulers and project managers has increased incredibly since the early 80′s.

Virtually millions of copies of MS Project are in circulation
By all accounts, there have been several million copies of MS Project sold, making Microsoft the most prolific vendor of project management software.  Microsoft has been credited with being a significant factor in making project management a mainstream recognized practice.  Yet, there are only a few thousand PMPs and less than 100,000 PMI members in total.  Obviously the purchasers of Microsoft Project have the intention to use their software to manage projects, yet while PMI has increased its membership, there has not been the geometric increase in membership that MS Project has had in users.  Why not?

Users have been enticed to project management software with promises that training is not required.  Certainly, the software of today includes more on-line help, on-line tutorials and on-line assistance than anything that could have been imagined twenty years ago yet does this make up for the kind of training that was once delivered with such products?

It’s also fair to say that the expectations in the industry of who can be a project manager or project scheduler has decreased thanks to desktop pm tools like Project but does this serve the market or not?

What is the expectation of output from a pm system?
Has the expectation of scheduling systems diminished at the same pace as the skill levels required to run them?  Afraid not.  It’s just the same as it’s always been.  Management looks at a schedule or risk assessment and presumes that the data is the subject of expert, professional analysis.  The increased ability of project management systems to generate beautiful reports and graphics of all kinds only serves to make people feel that the analysis involved must be of equally high caliber.  Do project management systems reports have disclaimers in the footers saying “This report was generated by a new project management user who has been using their project management software for less than 8 hours.”  Of course not.  The very thing that makes desktop tools so attractive, can leave management with data that has not been professionally assembled or analyzed. 

It’s time for PM Software publishers to get back involved in project management training
Poject management software vendors have supported institutions like the PMI for years and the training available for use in their software is obviously essential.  Yet there is much more that these types of firms can offer to the market.

First of all the support of pm software vendors in setting training standards for project management systems and, more importantly in project management concepts would be incredibly beneficial.  As publishers of systems which take years to create, these companies contain resources which are at the leading edge of our profession.  PMI forms a perfect rallying point for such companies as they are regularly brought together by PMI events as exhibitors.

Implementations of project management systems should allow for training – lots of it
If you’re working on a project management software implementation you should be thinking about not just getting the software working but on what will be coming out of it.  You should be thinking about training in a couple of contexts:

• In the tool itself.  Learning to use the tools you’ve purchased is only sensible and many, many people don’t even do that. 
• In the concepts that the tools is based on.  A lack of basic project management training makes using project management software dangerous.  Many new project managers have been put into project management without any understanding of the underlying principles behind the tools they’ve been given then told that the fate of the company rests on their ability to manage the project at hand.  No pressure there huh?
• As part of an implementation process.  Implementing project management or changing the manner in which projects are managed should be a corporate exercise where some forethought occurs from all the stakeholders.

Remember, a new system or an upgrade in an existing system used to be a great excuse for additional training and implementation.  It can be again.  After all, whether you are the end user or the manager trying to improve the project management process, you can always blame the additional training required on the software being implemented.