I taught my first week long PMP Exam prep class last week. I recall when I first learned of these boot-camp style classes and my original thought. “Great, you learn how to pass a test. Did you learn anything about project management?” I often comment on my study experience that I learned more in studying for the PMP then I did in a 9-month university certification course and prior experience. The challenge for this course became to incorporate true learning into the crash course – to motivate the students to see how the processes, inputs, tools and techniques, and outputs would make their projects more successful.
I scheduled one-on-one briefings on the last day of class. One student, Marcus, talked of his father who had recently passed the PMP while in a long career in project management. We also had a few “seasoned” project managers in the class. Marcus questioned the value of the PMP for these folks with the reasoning that they had been successful project managers in their careers without the PMP. “Have they been successful with a reported project failure and challenged rate of 65%?” The bottom line is that even a successful project manager can learn new ways of doing things based on industry best practice and increase the chance of project success. There is no room for complacency in managing projects with millions of dollars at stake and an unstable economic market. Learning is the number one benefit of achieving the PMP.
Marcus went on to asked about case studies to support the benefit of PMP. I suggested that PMI would have plenty of information published through pmi.org and offered up the two following books for further exploration.
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The Lazy Project Manager: How to be twice as productive and still leave the office early– How projects should work when applying project management best practices
– How projects should work when applying project management best practices- Rescue the Problem Project: A Complete Guide to Identifying, Preventing, and Recovering from Project Failure
- How projects often work when best practices are skipped
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- How projects often work when best practices are skipped
Remember this next time a non-certified project managers claims that a PMP is not beneficial -
Never become so much of an expert that you stop gaining expertise. View life as a continuous learning experience. Denis Waitley
Disclaimer: I do not profess that someone who has a PMP is superior to someone who does not. Only that one will have learned and demonstrated more knowledge than before attaining the PMP. See The Chef or the Cook: Choosing the Right Candidate
Additional Resources
Related articles by me
- Secrets of the PMP Exam
- How I Passed the CBAP
- Embrace the Knowledge of Those Who Came Before guest post an Ah-Ha-Moments.net
