How the Praxis Project Management Framework can help your NHS Trust

The vision for the NHS Project Profession states that: “The NHS Project Profession attracts, develops and retains project professionals and practitioners; ensuring the NHS has the capacity and capability to deliver sustainable change to the system for the benefit of patients.”

In order to achieve this vision, project delivery professionals within the NHS need a variety of support mechanisms to ensure that they not only develop the necessary competencies but also apply those within the workplace. In this article we look at three reasons why we think the Praxis Framework will help you make a real difference and improve the success of projects within the NHS.

Since the sale of the government’s joint venture AXELOS to PeopleCert, the main source of government wide project delivery guidance is the Infrastructure Projects Authority (IPA). This organisation has recently published version 2 of the Government Functional Standard ‘GovS 002: Project Delivery’.

GovS 002 does not include the details of previous government guides but has the big advantage of integrating projects, programmes and portfolios (P3). It is a high level ‘policy document’ that depends upon more detailed material – like the Praxis Framework to fill in the gaps. We have created a detailed document showing how you can use Praxis to meet GovS 002 guidelines, mapped against GovS 002 section by section and it is available to download from the Praxis website.

Within the NHS, there is the Project & Change Capability Framework. This sets out the competencies and career paths that are needed throughout the organisation. The method, knowledge and encyclopaedia sections of the Praxis Framework provide knowledge and guidance that supports these competencies. We continually map government and NHS standards to the Praxis Framework to show how these work together.

Independent project management professional bodies have endorsed the Praxis Framework, confirming its quality and “value to the profession”. The Praxis Framework Bridging Course has for example been endorsed by the Australia's leading project management association (AIPM) and the UK's Association for Project Management (APM) recognises Praxis Framework as a route to becoming a Chartered Project Professional (ChPP).

For those whose HR departments are using Comaea, the Praxis Framework competencies and roles are currently being added to this software.

It is always vital that Government bodies use resources as efficiently as possible. Praxis is designed to make the initial investment in good practice highly cost-effective and also maximise the return on investment by ensuring that good practice is actively embedded in the workplace.

The first and most obvious benefit of the Praxis Framework is that it is fully available online, free of charge. No licence fees, no manuals to be purchased. This also means that the framework is always current. We are able to update and extend guidance using feedback from the Praxis community. There is no major update every five to seven years that can make prior knowledge redundant. By using Praxis as a reference our users are always up to date with what’s going on in the profession.

Praxis is the first framework to combine a Body of Knowledge with a Methodology. No more looking at methods like PRINCE2® or MSP® for process guidance and the APM Body of Knowledge for guidance on the functions that make up the discipline of project delivery. They are all in one place and fully integrated.

The website also goes places that no other guidance goes. The Encyclopaedia of models, tools and techniques complements the core guidance by ensuring that everything you need is at hand.

We even provide tools like Praxis Local: a free download that gets you started in tailoring the framework to your specific needs and integrating our generic good practice with your specialist in-house material.

Praxis is also integrated across projects, programmes and portfolios. No need for separate guides and training – and no more reconciling the different terminology across them. Because it is royalty free, the Praxis Framework is used as a primary reference by other bodies that incorporate it into their certifications schemes, such as PMO certifications. This also ensures that all the project delivery professionals in your organisation are speaking a common language.

Having access to good practice and actually applying it are two different things. Research clearly shows that a lot of investment in training and development does not have the desired effect. Transferring knowledge to the workplace is often more difficult than it should be. At Praxis Framework we seek to identify the barriers to embedding good practice and provide solutions.

Our checklists are the equivalent to those used in surgery throughout the NHS and globally. These have reduced surgical mortality across the world by 40% and we believe they are equally valuable in project delivery. Not only do they bridge the gap between training and implementation, they also work to spread good project delivery practice across the organisation because they are also accessible by Sponsors, Team members and Stakeholders.

Most project delivery guidance is ‘one size fits all’ in terms of the different personalities on a project delivery team. Team Praxis describes processes and functions according to personality type as determined by the DISC model, favoured by many personal assessment tools.

The Capability Maturity assessment tool is based on the checklists mentioned above. It enables organisations to maintain a real time dashboard of improving capability maturity. As a bottom up approach to organisational improvement it is faster and more cost effective than set piece assessments and improvement programmes.