Measuring the impact of a major project management educational program: The PMP case in Finmeccanica

This work aims at providing evidence of the impact of project management training programs. The research focuses on the impact of training effectiveness (higher learning) on the project managersʹ competencies (applied behaviors). Data have been collected within PMP-Project Management Program: a corporate training program developed and delivered through an academic–industrial collaboration between Politecnico di Milano University and the Education and Human Resources Development Department of Finmeccanica SpA. The program started in 2007 and has involved more than 2300 participants worldwide so far. The empirical analyses are based on an extensive survey conducted one year (rolling) after the training activities. The analysis of the relationships among the different variables provides evidence of the positive impact of training effectiveness on project management competencies. Moreover, the results show that two other variables, role-training matching and environment factors, have a strong conjoint effect, significantly increasing the impact of training on the project management competencies.