Is Chartered Project Professional (ChPP) Right for Me And Am I Ready for It?

For many professions including Legal, Financial, Construction and Engineering becoming Chartered is seen as an important step in your career progression and so it is no surprise that the Chartered Project Professional (ChPP) standard has grown so quickly.

Launched in 2017, the standard has grown to include over 4,000 Chartered Professionals throughout the world since then and this number is expected to more than double in coming years.  Reading this article, you could be thinking – Should I apply now?  Should I have already applied? And, more importantly, am I ready to apply and would I be successful?

In order to apply for ChPP you must satisfy the standard in two main ways.  Fundamentally, ChPP is awarded in recognition of your professional competence, which of itself is assessed in two ways, however your professional competence must have been demonstrated in a complex delivery environment ie your projects (and this includes programmes or portfolios) must have been sufficiently challenging.  This is assessed too.

So, the question above must be answered in two separate parts.  Are my projects complex and do I have the competence.

Are my projects suitable?

Any project, programme or portfolio that is included in your application must satisfy the assessment process that it clearly demonstrates four characteristics. For each project you will need to ask yourself the following:

1. Were there any areas of the scope of my project that were fundamentally incompatible and did this make the project more challenging? For example, did the project have to be delivered to the lowest cost and yet to the highest standards? These things don’t often go together and can be considered conflicting objectives.  Did each of your example projects have similar incompatibilities?
2. Was the level of risk higher than you would normally be comfortable with and this question could also be asked of your project sponsor and organisation?
3. Were there multiple elements of the project all happening at the same time creating a number of moving parts and deliverables?
4. And were there multiple interested parties involved in the delivery and outcome of the project? Did these stakeholders span organisational boundaries and/or have different perspectives?

If you can answer yes to each of these questions, then there is a pretty good chance that you have been working in a complex project delivery environment and your projects would pass the ChPP Assessment.  The APM will also want to be sure that your role in each of your project examples made a significant contribution to the outcome and this will be assessed too.  Now we can move on to the next question.

Do I Have The Competence?

Fundamentally, Chartered Project Professional assesses your competence in two ways.  Firstly, an assessment of your professional experience in practical delivery and secondly an assessment of the breadth of your technical knowledge.

Unless you can demonstrate a prior assessment of these elements that is recognised by the APM you will be assessed against both in order for ChPP to be awarded.

Each of the ChPP competences is defined in two ways, a set of Professional Practice (PP) indicators and a parallel set of Technical Knowledge (TK) indicators.  PP Indicators define the things a competent person would have done to demonstrate their competence and TK indicators define the things that a competent person should know.

So, for each competence, from Budgeting & Cost Control to Transition Management, you should firstly ask yourself – do I have good, strong examples of my personal contribution to delivering this aspect of the project.

You are unlikely to have the required evidence for every competence and from 26 available you only need to select 12.

Then, secondly, you should ask yourself do I have a broad theoretical knowledge of this subject together with the tools and techniques that are generally used to deliver it.  Again, here the theories are vast and you will not be expected to know all of them just enough to confidently explain some alternative approaches.

If you are satisfied that your projects are suitably complex, your role made a substantial contribution and that you possess both practical evidence and broad knowledge to demonstrate your competence then you should be suitable to apply for Chartership.

To make a more detailed self-assessment you can review the official ChPP Guidance here.  Alternately, why not use our ChPP Readiness Self-Assessment Tool and let our us help you to determine whether this is right for you.

Changescope.  The project leadership people.

We have helped many people through this process before.  Why not contact us to learn more about how to plan, structure, draft and submit your ChPP application. enquiries@changescope.com