The way an enterprise promotes project leaders determines what delivery capability it will have several years from now.
An engineer becomes technically exceptional. The organisation wants to reward progress, so the next meaningful promotion is into project management. A successful project manager reaches the top of the project ladder, so the next step is line management. A specialist who does not want either path eventually leaves because expertise has no equivalent status.
Each decision appears personal. Collectively, they shape the organisation's capability architecture.
Career systems determine which skills are retained, which assignments develop future leaders, what behaviour is rewarded and whether scarce experts are forced into roles that do not fit their comparative strength.
For project-intensive enterprises, career architecture is therefore a strategic design problem.
The Strategic Context
Bredin and Söderlund's comparative study examined project-manager career models in ten large, mature project-intensive firms in Sweden. The researchers identified differences in number of career levels, assignment complexity, formal requirements, training links and how project managers were matched to work.
They also proposed two broad archetypes.
The competence strategy model uses project career architecture primarily to support the organisation's evolving strategic capability needs. In the studied firms, this orientation connected career structures to future growth areas, resource allocation and project assignment.
The talent management model emphasises individual development opportunities and a visible career within project management.
These are not mutually exclusive prescriptions. They reveal two different starting points: What capability does the enterprise need, and what development path does the individual need?
Strong career architecture must answer both.
What Leaders Commonly Misread
The first misread is that career frameworks are mainly retention tools. Retention matters, but the strategic question is whether retained people are developing toward the capabilities the enterprise will actually need.
The second is that certifications equal career levels. Bredin and Söderlund found professional certification used in several firms, but training, certification, assignment complexity and career levels were not always tightly integrated.
The third is that project complexity can be reduced to budget size. A large budget may be straightforward. A smaller project may carry difficult stakeholder, technology, regulatory or integration complexity.
The fourth is that every strong technical specialist should have a management future. The study explicitly notes that several companies were strengthening specialist-engineer career paths to avoid pushing talented experts into management simply because management offered greater status.
Reframing the Issue
A career model is a long-term capability allocation mechanism.
It determines:
- who gains experience on complex assignments;
- how future project leaders are identified;
- which specialist knowledge remains deep;
- what constitutes evidence of readiness;
- how the organisation matches project difficulty to leadership capability;
- whether people can progress without abandoning their strongest discipline.
Related article: Capacity Is a Strategic Constraint: Match Ambition to What the Organisation Can Absorb
Start with the Future Portfolio, Not the Current Organisation Chart
A competence-strategy approach begins with the work the enterprise expects to undertake.
If strategy implies larger defence programs, digital transformation, major capital works, international expansion or complex product integration, the organisation can infer the future leadership and specialist capabilities those portfolios will require.
That should shape career development now.
A company that expects to run more cross-enterprise programs may need leaders skilled in governance, commercial judgement, systems integration and stakeholder influence beyond formal authority. A business moving toward technically integrated products may need stronger systems-engineering and technical-authority pathways alongside project management.
Career architecture becomes a strategic supply chain: future work creates capability demand; assignments and development create capability supply.
Assignment Is the Real Development Currency
Training matters. Certification can create useful standards. But difficult project leadership is learned substantially through assignments.
Bredin and Söderlund found that firms varied in how formally they classified project complexity and linked it to career levels. Some relied on qualitative judgement or experienced “gut feeling”. Others used more systematic classifications but did not always integrate them with the career model.
This exposes an important governance gap.
If advancement depends on managing increasingly complex projects, the organisation needs a defensible way to determine what “more complex” means. Otherwise, access to developmental assignments can depend on visibility, sponsorship or availability rather than deliberate capability building.
A useful complexity view should consider more than financial size. It can include technical novelty, number of interfaces, strategic consequence, organisational reach, stakeholder conflict, external dependency, regulatory exposure and irreversibility.
Dual Ladders Protect Enterprise Knowledge
The study's discussion of specialist careers is especially important for engineering and technology organisations.
When status, pay and influence exist mainly in management ladders, the organisation creates a predictable incentive: excellent specialists move away from specialist work.
That can weaken the very capability projects depend upon.
Dual or multiple career pathways allow progression in project leadership, people leadership and specialist expertise. The paths should not be cosmetic. Equivalent seniority should carry credible recognition, compensation and strategic influence.
The enterprise needs both integrators and deep experts. Career architecture should not force one to become the other.
Related article: The Portfolio Manager Is an Enterprise Integrator, Not a Senior Project Manager
Formalisation Has a Trade-Off
Formal career models improve clarity. They show people what development looks like, what the organisation expects and how assignments relate to progression.
But Bredin and Söderlund also caution that excessive rigidity can create lock-in and reduce broader learning. A career model can become a checklist that narrows experience rather than expanding it.
This is why career levels should define evidence and capability bands without pretending every strong career follows the same sequence.
The goal is structured mobility, not bureaucratic certainty.
Decision Framework: The Project Capability Architecture
Build the career system through seven linked decisions.
1. Future demand
What project, program and specialist capabilities will strategy require over the next three to five years?
2. Role architecture
Which distinct career families are needed: project leadership, program leadership, portfolio leadership, people management, engineering authority, commercial leadership or other specialist paths?
3. Complexity classification
How will the organisation assess assignment difficulty beyond simple budget or team size?
4. Progression evidence
What must a person demonstrate to move levels: outcomes, behaviours, stakeholder complexity, risk ownership, commercial judgement, technical integration, benefit delivery?
5. Development mix
Which capabilities are built through formal learning, coaching, certification, rotations and actual assignments?
6. Assignment governance
Who decides who gets developmental projects, and how are readiness and risk balanced?
7. Succession resilience
Where is the organisation dependent on one or two individuals for critical project leadership or specialist authority?
From Strategy to Execution
Immediate action is to map current project leaders and specialists against the complexity of work they can credibly lead today, not just job title or tenure. Compare that map with the next three years of strategic demand.
Medium-term capability building requires linking training, assignment, mentoring and progression. If a person completes advanced training but never receives a correspondingly complex assignment, the organisation has created knowledge without demonstrated capability.
Long-term strategic positioning means making career architecture part of portfolio planning. Before approving a future transformation portfolio, leaders should ask whether the enterprise has enough people who can lead that level of complexity and enough experts who can provide technical authority without needing to become managers.
Signals to Monitor
Warning signs include technical experts moving into management primarily for status, senior project roles filled repeatedly through external recruitment, unclear differentiation between project-manager levels, promotions based mainly on tenure, complex projects assigned to whoever is available, and high-potential people unable to explain what experience they need next.
Positive signals include visible multiple career paths, deliberate matching of assignment complexity to development, growing internal succession depth and specialists who can progress without leaving specialist practice.
References
- Bredin, K. & Söderlund, J. 2013, 'Project managers and career models: An exploratory comparative study', International Journal of Project Management, vol. 31, no. 6, pp. 889–902.
Questions for the Leadership Team
- What project-leadership capability will our strategy require three years from now?
- Are we developing that capability deliberately or hoping the labour market will provide it?
- Which technical experts are being pushed toward management because specialist progression is weak?
- How do we determine that a project is sufficiently complex to develop a more senior leader?
- Who gets access to the assignments that create future executives, and how is that decision governed?
- Where do we have single-person dependencies in project leadership or specialist authority?
- Do our career frameworks serve enterprise capability, individual growth, or only administration?
Closing Perspective
Career architecture is strategy with a long delay. The project leaders and technical authorities available to the enterprise in several years will be shaped by the assignments, pathways and status systems leaders design now. Treating project careers as HR administration is therefore too narrow. The stronger question is whether the organisation's career system is deliberately creating the mix of integrators, leaders and specialists its future portfolio will demand.
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