Competences of a Project Manager?

Yes, of course you are a manager too, at least you are managing your own life, but ..... do you know the difference between a 'Project Manager' (PM) and a 'Project Cycle Manager' (PCM)? We observe lots of confusion between those two functions.

To reduce wasting of public funds and disappointing expectations with projects we are interested in establishing a better understanding on the differences and inter-relations between those two functions and in raising their competencies.

We have joined a research project in a partnership with 6 organizations spread over Europe called the KEYLINKS project to study this topic (funded by the Gruntvig Lifelong Learning program of the European Commission). (see the names of the partner organizations below)

In this project we like to determine what competencies each of these functions need to acquire to become a good Project Manager or a good Project Cycle Manager. At the end of this two year project we aim at a model curriculum for each of those functions and strive to have this curriculum adopted by the different training institutions in Europe.

If you feel you could contribute to this project either as a Project Manager or as a Project Cycle Manager or if you are working at a training institute providing courses for these two functions or at a donor institution distributing EU funds, we invite you fill the survey (only 10- 15 minutes) by visiting the web site of this KEYLINKS project.

On the FORUM on our web site we explain the differences between those two functions using a very practical example and we encourage a discussion there. If you are interested to read about this and join the discussion please click here.

Education Centre for Non-profit Organisations, Banská Bystrica, SLOVAKIA

MERIG, Multidisciplinary European Research Institute, Graz, AUSTRIA

Siauliai University, Vilnius, LITHUANIA

European Center for Quality Ltd., Sofia, BULGARIA

Jyväskylä Institute of Adult Education, Jyväskylä, FINLAND

PCM Group, Process Consultants & Moderators, Brussels, BELGIUM