The Brexit Project according to IPMA - a Project Management Case Study

First, some personal background: I've worked as a project manager in a department developing new energy management/demand response applications (basically, matching energy consumption with the highly variable energy production of renewable energy sources) for four years. Getting involved in project management was actually a semi-accident - I had applied for a different job at the same organization, but the head of the Energy Management department got hold of my CV, liked what he saw, and offered me a job in his department when I came in for the interview.

In the beginning there was still some discussion whether my work should focus on pure project management or involve software development as well. After a while, I decided to focus on the former - my reasoning was that my development skills were not as good and up-to-date as those of the full-time developers, and if I split my attention between development and management I'd never catch up with them anyway. So the most efficient approach would be to focus on all the administrative, bureaucratic, and frankly political aspects of the projects, take care of the overall planning and keeping an eye on the big picture - and thus ensure that the developers could carry on with the jobs they were trained and paid to do instead of being distracted by all sorts of other stuff that had nothing to do with software.

All in all, this approach worked quite well - the developers appreciated it that I had their backs and let them do their work, and to my surprise I quite enjoyed being the ringleader of the Circus. Sadly, it was only a temporary position, and while I did get a two-year contract extension a third one was not possible for internal reasons.

Since then I've been on a job hunt, and earlier this year I decided to take the opportunity to get some additional training in the field of project management - while four years of project management experience is not insignificant, most of it was "on-the-job training" and "learning-by-doing", and I had realized during several job interviews that the interviewers were fishing for specific project management terms and phrases that I simply hadn't been familiar with until this point. I mean, of course we did "Stakeholder Management" at my old department, we just never called it that - it was just - "keeping our partners and customers informed and doing damage control whenever they were worried about a particular issue".

When deciding which project management certification course to take, I learned that there were three main types of project management certification:

• PMI (originating in the United States)
• PRINCE2 (originating in the UK)
• IPMA (originating in Europe)

While there are certification courses available in Germany for all three, I decided on getting an IPMA Level D certificate. One reason was that various people I had consulted claimed that the former two focused almost exclusively on project management processes, while IPMA (while not neglecting processes by any means) also had a large focus on the human element, such as team building and leadership. Another reason is that to get an IPMA Level D certification you need not only regurgitate key facts during written and verbal exams, but actually put them into practice - by writing a 50+ page document examining a real or fictional project according to the project management standards and practices established by IPMA (I am told that these days only the German branch of IPMA requires this thesis). And from my long experience in academia on both sides of the lecture room I know the difference between "memorizing stuff" and "actually putting it into practice".

I received my certification in July, but I think it's a good idea to refresh my knowledge from time to time. My work on the fictional project was very useful to get a grasp on all the assorted aspects of project management, and thus I want to tackle a new project as a case study. And now I have decided on a case study:

The Brexit.

You might interject: "Isn't it a bit presumptive of someone who has only an IPMA Level D certification and only four years of project management experience to tackle one of the single biggest projects out there?" But frankly, it's hard to see how I could do worse. Immediately after the Brexit vote it became clear that no one in the UK political establishment (with the possible exception of Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish National Party) had planned for this outcome, and much of the time since has been spent flailing around and making mutually contradictory statements about what the Brexit means and how to proceed. Even after Theresa May got rid of her competitors for the office of Prime Minister with almost Merkelian efficiency the outlook remains exceedingly murky.

Thus, it's time someone approached the Brexit as a project management case study and examine its various aspects from the perspective of established project management standards. What are the actual goals of this project - in terms of results, costs, time schedules or social effects? Who are the assorted stakeholders, and what are their goals - and how do their goals and views affect the project? What are the associated risks, and how can they be managed? How should the project be organized? What are the project phases and milestones? How should the individual work packages be planned?

And so forth - there have been lots of statements what the Brexit ought to mean, or not to mean, but there has been little debate on how to put it into practice. If nothing else, maybe this series of posts will help encourage some people to start thinking in the right directions. And, along the way, I will try to explain what project management is actually about - useful for anyone considering shifting their career into that direction, as well as those who have experienced project management from the perspective of being managed.

Some further notes:

• I strongly welcome feedback from those with greater expertise than mine in the fields of UK politics, European politics, and project management. I do not expect to know everything I need to know going into this series - indeed, I expect I will do a lot of revising as I learn more. But this is the way of projects - they always get more complicated as you go in.
• I am basing my elaborations on project management mostly on my IPMA course material - which is in German. I will try to use the closest English-language terms, but I might pick the wrong phrase from time to time. If you note any discrepancies, please correct me!

The IPMA course material

An index of all Brexit Project-related posts can be found here. And if you know of any company in need of a certified project manager - especially one with strong expertise in the field of renewable energy/energy management - I am still available, and here is my CV!