Discussing competence development

The question initially asked was: how does project competence evolve over time?

Based on the empirical material presented, I will make some suggestions about how the PM team competence developed.

7.4.1 The competence level transformed

The recruitments of the PM team and the rest of the project participants were based on specifications of operational competence to solve the particular task at hand. At the outset, project participants and initiators of the project perceived the project to have the required competence. As the nature of the task changed, the perceptions of competence were altered in the sense that the team felt a lack of competence. I have described how the PM team and its sub-divisions acted on the task to identify what it was about and how it could be solved. The team undertook what it hoped was adequate actions but without knowing much about the consequences. It seemed the team members acted to see what would happen. This activity resembled the principle of learning by doing, as it was described by Dewey (1938) and learning by trial and error (Bandura 1977). The activities of the PM team that I observed resemble what March described as knowledge development through exploration.

"Exploration includes things captured by terms such as search, variation, risk taking experimentation, play, flexibility, discovery and innovation"

(March 1991:114).

Through these activities the PM team seemed to increase its knowledge and skills in operational and relational activity. This suggestion regarding exploration is supported by a notion from the sense making perspective about knowledge as “an activity in which the subject partly interacts with and constitutes the object”

(Weick 1979:165, drawing on Gruber and Vonèche 1977). Although the activity was fumbling at first the team had a steep learning curve, and thus I suggest that the team also had talent for these activities. It seemed that the team obtained extensive operational and relational competence⁴⁷.

7.4.2 The competence content changed

I can rarely determine the project’s initial level of relational competence, but the project manager has indicated that it was limited. He explained that little was said about who the involved parties were or how these parties should be drawn in the

47 Several qualitative studies of project groups have come up with similar findings, for example Bragd (2002), Lindberg (2002) and Engwall et al. (2003) have described project groups’ learning through exploration.

project. In my early observations, the PM team’s relational work appeared fumbling. Eventually, the team seemed to become efficient in these matters. It seemed that as the PM team enacted the task as relational, it started developing competences on the relational activity. This argument is in line with the suggestion above regarding how the PM team developed competences through learning by doing (Dewey 1938) and exploring (March 1991). The expansion of competences seemed to evolve in the teams’ awareness as vital questions with regard to the task solving:

o Who are the actors that we have to consider to develop the task?

o What do these actors expect from us?

o How do we act to give them the perception that they get what they expect from us?

o How to act to affect these actors?

My observations have indicated that altering knowledge and competence seemed to be an ongoing process that was highly related to the participation in activities and relations. Wenger (1998:4) has pointed out that knowledge is actually knowing and

“knowing is a matter of participating (…) of active engagement in the world"

(Wenger 1998:4). I believe that this was the case for the project I studied.

Moreover, Wenger (1998:13) has proposed that learning as social participation reproduces and transforms the social structure where it takes place. This seemed to be the case for the PM team, who applied the enacted competences of relations in its further interaction and thereby altered the pattern of interactions. In addition, the team’s relational competences evolved from abstract to concrete, from an idea of who the stakeholders were and how these could be handled, to hands-on guidelines for further action (Weick 1995). As the different patterns of interaction between the project and its stakeholders emerged, the relational competences became increasingly fine-grained and fine-tuned. The project’s relating to various actors seemingly developed as shared histories of learning where situated competence was developed (Wenger 1998:87). The relational competence development will be further explored in Chapter 8.

I suggest that the PM team developed extensive competence in how to handle both operational and relational matters. This means that the team’s competence areas expanded, from being merely technical to also being relational.

7.4.3 The competence work altered

In the beginning of the project the PM team worked extensively with problem solving dialogues and activities to develop knowledge and competence. I have suggested that the PM team engaged in learning by doing (Dewey 1938). Even though the team had been composed to possess the required competence, it was engaged in extensive exploration (March 1991). As the team acted and made sense of the actions (Weick 1979), the team members were able to develop shared

patterns of beliefs and cognitions (Argyris and Schön 1996 and Weick 1979). I have described how sensitivity emerged over time regarding what possible solutions could work and how interfaces could be handled. From mainly being based on trial and error logic, the PM team’s dialogues grew to contain more experience-based reflections. A number of experiences had been gained and the competence work came to be about maintaining these competences for the future by embedding them into routines and manuals by re-writing the procedures.

Broadly speaking, one might say that the competence work of the PM team developed from emphasis on direct task solving, using the strategy of trial and error, to working more with refining and maintaining the competences required.

One might also say that the team, as it had developed knowledge through exploration, could exploit this in its further activity. Additionally, I suggest that the team’s work with developing codes, routines of operations, and manuals might facilitate other actors’ exploitation of the knowledge and competence that had been developed⁴⁸. One example of the latter suggestion was the team’s rewriting of procedures for design work after new practices had emerged as the involved parties worked with design. The activity of the team in re-writing strategic procedures resemble what Argyris and Schön (1996) describes as double-loop learning. Not only were practices for operation developed but also the more fundamental procedures and values were revised.

7.4.4. Propositions on project competence development

In accordance with the empirical material and the theory presented, I have developed two propositions about project competence development.

Proposition 2: The project competence increases as the project explores its task and, over time, it becomes highly relational and situated, while learning what actors it must consider, what their expectations are, and how to meet these expectations.

Proposition 3: The project competence experiences changes as project conduct evolves; from exploration and inquiry at the beginning, it increasingly includes embedding knowledge into codes, manuals, and routines of operation.

48 The team’s activity to store knowledge resembles what is often described as important for organizational learning (Argyris and Schön 1996).