Why should I take the Managing Successful Programmes (MSP®) course with Maven?
The number of people sitting the MSP Foundation examination was up 7%
in the first quarter of this year with 1886 candidates compared with 1761 candidates in 2010. Based on informal discussions with those attending Maven Training MSP courses, the reasons for this growth appear to be
equally split between organisational demand for the training and the
desire for personal development.
Examples of organisational demand include:
- Senior management deciding to run a programme for the first time and then realising that there is little or no knowledge of programme management processes in the team or department
- Desire to improve the way work is done, often driven by a significant failure of a significant piece of work, where lessons learned indicate that had the work been conceived, managed and governed as a programme the likelihood of failure would have been significantly reduced.
- Realisation that having lots of projects that are all being managed separately is causing peaks and troughs in resource usage and is not providing an ability to manage the inter-dependencies between the projects or reduce duplication of work across the projects
- Need to prioritise and put order around the chaos of multiple projects and change initiatives. There is strong budgetary pressure which is driving the need to make tough choices about what ideas are given the green light and there is a strong desire to control the delivery and realise the benefits to ensure that what is promised is actually being delivered.
- Establishing a PMO (which is a growing trend this year) and needing to include the processes, documents and standards for programme management as well as project management to ensure the PMO can deliver added value across the organisation
- If the organisation is in the public sector (central government department, local government, NHS) or works closely with the public sector, then MSP® is an almost mandatory qualification for those working in projects and programmes
Examples of personal development include:
- People taking MSP courses are also responding to the increase in opportunities to become involved in programmes in their organisations. There is no budget for hiring ‘expensive’ external programme experts so project managers are being asked (or expected!) to step into the breach.
- Wanting to feel more in control at work , realising that some of the larger projects would be better run as a programme, rather than trying to control them through project management
- Need for the qualification to support job hunting, either as a result of redundancy or contractors coming to the end of a contract or using the qualification to make their CV stand out from the crowd
- People that already have a PRINCE2 project management qualification and are looking for further development
- Being offered a PMO role but realising that without a wider perspective on PPM and the programme management toolkit offered by MSP® it will be difficult to successfully achieve the requirements of the role
