Abstract

The authors of the paper endeavoured to find out key competences in IPMA standard for educational approaches in project management. These key competences may be used as a basis for project management university courses. An incidence matrix was set up, containing relations between IPMA competences described in IPMA competence baseline. Further, discrete-time Markov chain was used to calculate the weights from the incidence matrix. The authors later considered the most important competences whose weight sum equalled 50% importance. The article defines IPMA standard competence minimum. Since the minimum comprises the standard from more than its half, it can be regarded as minimum for the creation and development of project management teaching and learning. The structure corresponds to IPMA certified B level (excluding such requirements as experience etc.). In the discussion of this article the defined minimum of the standard competences was compared with recommended preparation for individual certification levels. The findings show that real distribution of competences in the IPMA standard based on importance and real IPMA standard requirements for non-purpose and complex project management education differ from the structure of basic certification degrees of the standard. The authors further say that the education as such should exceed requirements for professional certification. The students should benefit from a complex training with emphasis on such topics and competences that would help them make a successful foray into project management practice.

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