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Survey reveals that Project Management Practitioners prefer classroom training

Picture of Tony Martin

Tony Martin

Tony is a project management practitioner with over 12 years experience of designing, implementing and managing strategic and tactical, competence development programmes around the world. He has delivered practical and innovative solutions from concept to delivery and has worked with many national and international organisations such as: GSK, BAA, NHS, BT, BA, Logica, Fujitsu and many more. Tony is now working to further develop QA’s project, programme and portfolio management training and consultancy services maximising the use of technology and blended solutions, as well as driving thought leadership from QA’s expert delivery team.

Posted by Tony Martin
on 14 August 2012

With the rise in alternative modalities for training, it is still the more traditional classroom setting which appeals to the project management profession, according to Arras People’s May Ten in Ten Survey.

The survey results tell me what I already know to some extent, as I am a great believer in using the right delivery method for the right training. Borne out from many years rolling out learning and development programmes globally, there is a time and a place for each method of delivery, driven by the type of content, the target audience and the desired learning outcomes.

For project management practitioners, the preference highlights that the need to share real life experiences with their peers is a major factor in the way they learn both knowledge and behaviours. Project management is no longer an art form, practised by the few in silos within their own industry sector, the skills are becoming more transferrable from industry to industry and so many lessons learned from other industry sector projects can now be transferred across the divides.

The anecdotes and war-stories shared in the classroom with like-minded professionals can be discussed and analysed amongst the group, giving the individuals a better understanding of how things can be better applied in real life. So I can see why project managers prefer classroom training, and why organisations should be relaxed about the extra investment in time and money.

An organisation I worked with a few years ago told me that only 4% of their staff were Project Managers, but they controlled about 80% of the organisations revenue. On that basis, they are worth the investment I reckon.

So what of the other delivery methods? The second most popular was a blended approach - a mix of delivery methods. Again this proves my mantra of: the right training, in the right format, at the right time. Self study and eLearning were next, with virtual learning the least popular for project managers.

I would have liked to have seen the survey results for different levels within the project management career structure. At the junior levels, I have found that the self-study and distance learning options are popular as many younger project management starters have been brought up with the online culture and are happy to learn the core knowledge this way. Senior Project Managers prefer on-the-job training through mentoring and coaching as they want to be able to learn and demonstrate best practice and behaviours in the workplace.

To me what this survey proves is that we all learn in different ways, and an organisation that wants to improve it's project delivery capability needs to provide a range of learning options for it's project managers.

A key factor that is worth considering is how do you get your project management community to gain the benefits of the classroom - that is the collaborative approach to learning - more regularly? Maybe some "lunch'n'learn" workshops or a PM Community Newsletter is a start.

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