Soft Skills

Understanding project management certifications

Ulhas Samant highlights the difference between various project management certifications.

The other day, I was talking to an HR professional. He has worked extensively in software development as a manager. When I told him that I am a PMP, he was curious to know what that exam was all about. In the recent past, I came across a senior professional who is working as a SAP consultant with one of the Big-5 consultancies. He happened to have heard this word (perhaps his boss was appearing for this exam). He wanted to know what this exam consisted of and how can it benefit him. I thought of writing this article to elucidate the topic. In the meantime, I also observe that there are good numbers of other Project Management certifications like PRINCE-2, IPMA, Project +. An effort has been made in this article, to discuss about these also.

The first question which comes in the mind of an experienced professional is: “Why is a certification important?” Because, we see a lot of people practicing project management without a certification. Perhaps, some of you have been promoted and have reached senior positions without going for any certifications. However, having a certification will help you in following ways:

• Help you to identify any skill gaps
• Understand the project management lexicon
• Gain recognition in your organisation for your project management capabilities, in addition to your domain expertise or technical capabilities
• Identify project management as a path for your career progression
• Gain a competitive advantage over other non-registered project managers

If you are in a services industry like IT and ITeS, then perhaps the first two points are very important. Mostly these are services offered to customers, globally. The overseas customers expect you to understand the jargon and speak in the same language when it comes to project management.

PMI and PMP

Established in 1969, the Project Management Institute (PMI) represents the world’s largest professional community engaged in the promotion, maintenance, and advancement of project management practices worldwide.

PMI has identified two project management certifications i.e PMP and CAPM, which are based on the PMBOK guide. PMBOK stands for Project Management Body of Knowledge and represents good practices accepted and followed in the project management profession. A subset of this is documented in PMBOK-guide. The first PMBOK guide came out in 1996 and the current version of the PMBOK guide is PMBOK 2004 or the third edition.

According to PMBOK, project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements. Project management is accomplished through the application and integration of the project management processes of initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, controlling and closing.

Knowledge areas and process groups

According to PMBOK, there are 44 processes in these five process groups. There are nine knowledge areas e.g. scope, cost, time, quality, risk, HR, communications, procurement and integration, to which these processes belong to. A project manager has to be familiar with these knowledge areas. For example, in addition to drawing a schedule, you may be responsible for identifying risks or managing staffing if you are a project manager. These three processes belong to Time, Risk and HR management knowledge areas respectively.

While Both PMP and CAPM exams are based on the PMBOK guide, the questions you face may come from real life scenarios. The stress is on how would you be applying the principles learnt through PMBOK guide to your project management related work. In a PMP exam you may also come across computational questions related to risk analysis, schedule-networks and critical path, etc.

PMP (Project Management Professional) grants an applicant with a globally recognised designation that serves as the foundation from which they can competently practice as a project manager leading and directing project tasks. PMP certification aspirants have to fulfill certain educational and professional experience requirements made by PMI before they can take this certification.

For a person with bachelor’s degree, 4,500 hours of project management experience spread over 36 months duration (non-overlapping) is essential to appear for PMP examination. Applicants also need to have 35 hours of project management education. This does not mean that the training should be a preparatory course from a PMI registered provider. It can be an in-house training which was taken by you, related to project management.

If you are a project team member with less experience or an entry-level project manager, you can opt for CAPM. It can help you in your work by establishing clear directions and turn out to be a stepping stone to the PMP certification. However, demand for CAPM certified professionals is not very high.

The PMP certification exam consists of 200 multiple choice (objective type) questions. 25 of these 200 questions are pre-test questions, which do not affect the score of the candidate. Pre-test questions are placed randomly in the exam and they do not affect the score of the candidate. They are there to effectively increase the number of questions for future PMP exams. The exam is of four hours duration preceded by a separate 15 minutes tutorial. You need to get 106 answers (of 175) right.

The obvious question one gets is whether it is worth spending time and money for a PMI certification. Does it have such a market value? PMP had around 250,000 members by 2005. The University of California at Berkeley, in a study, has pointed out that a company’s RoI (return on investment) on PMP is in the range of 20 to 30 percent. The average salary of a PMP professional in the US is $100,000 to $300,000 per annum. In China, a PMP professional working as a project manager earns up to $50,000 when compared to a non-PMP one earning around $10,000 per annum. Financially, for an individual it is worth investing in the PMP. That’s how PMP has been ranked fourth in most sought after certifications by a worldwide survey.

PRINCE 2

PRINCE is the UK de-facto standard for project management developed by the government used by both private and public sectors. The acronym stands for Projects IN Controlled Environments. The ownership lies with Office of Government Commerce (OGC) and is managed by Association of Project Managers group, UK.

What differentiates PRINCE2 from PMBOK? PMBOK is a framework of Project Management. A framework will tell you what’s to be done, in a broader context.

PRINCE2 is a methodology. It tells you how it is to be done and provides you with templates, check-lists, etc. Another important aspect is PRINCE2 does not stress on the soft skills (like communication) required for project management.

To be continued next week

Ulhas Samant is a project management trainer from Pune.