José Antonio Caminero, a person linked to sports since childhood and currently working at the Sports Service of the University of Valladolid., has presented his Master Thesis titled “Adaptation of the PM2 Methodology to the Organization of Sports Events”.
In his Master Thesis, Jose Antonio proposes an extension and adaptation of PM2 (the Project Management methodology developed by the European Commission) for the management of sports events. The thesis includes relevant innovations for managing these events and could be extended to any other kind of event. He claims that any event could be considered as a project. He suggests two important improvements in the PM2 methodology, being the second one never be considered before in the management of projects. First, he proposes a new governance model overlapping some of the layers proposed by the original PM2 model. Second, he recommends splitting the execution phase into a couple of phases: the disposition (or arrangement) phase and the “fast” execution phase. Usually, sports projects take place in a short time period (for instance, one morning for a marathon, few days for a world athletic championship, etc.), but there is a lot of previous work to arrange all the activities taking place during the “D day”. For this reason, Jose Antonio suggests using two well-differentiated phases, each one with its own activities and documents. The thesis shows how PM2 can be applied to the management of sports and other kinds of events projects, because of its simplicity and action-oriented philosophy. Additionally, the methodology integrates the marketing orientation widely accepted in sports management literature.
The Master Thesis is currently available only in Spanish, but we will spread the main innovations in scientific-technical papers and we will post the improvements in LinkedIn and other social media.
Several Spanish institutions have shown their interest in the model, as it could allow them to plan sports events in an easy and simple way. Specifically, Carlos, the organizer of the “Desafío Canal de Castilla“, a cycling event of more than 150 kilometers around an emblematic Castilian Canal built in the 18th century, has shown his interest in knowing more about the PM2 methodology. “I cannot spend hours and hours writing project plans as suggested by some PM methodologies, but the simple PM2 swimlane diagram and the leadership of Jose Antonio could allow us to improve the organization of the event”, Carlos said.
The Master in Project Management is a postgraduate program at the University of Valladolid (Spain), one of the older universities in Europe. During this term, the sixteenth edition of the program will take place in Valladolid.
Master in Project Management Graduation Event. José Antonio Caminero, first left in the photo.
