What is PMP certification? & When it should be important to you?

Similar to my previous post What is project management; this post is also targeted to the people who either have just entered the field of project management or wants to take up this field. As all new comers in this field sooner or later come to know about PMP certification, hope this post helps you to understand; what PMP is? And when it should be important to you? But before that I would like to clarify to every new comer that to have PMP certification is NOT a must have to take up this field; as a matter of fact, you need to have certain hours of experience of working on projects before applying for this certification. Its a myth that you MUST have PMP before taking up project management as a field of choice (especially in India). What is PMP certification? I will start with the basic definition, PMP stands for Project Management Professional this certification is conducted and governed by PMI (Project management Institute; www.pmi.org) across the globe. PMI published PMBOK (Project management book of knowledge) as the primary sources of knowledge required for PMP certification. In this post I will not talk about details of how to get PMP certification but about the concept of it. I would recommend interested people to visit

http://www.pmi.org/ to seek further information about PMP requirements, processes, etc. Now to understand the ideology behind this certification in simple terms, lets take example of driving a car. As you know that learning how to drive a car is not rocket science but it require regular practice. You would first have to learn, how to follow sequence and coordinate car controls to drive the car properly. Once you have learnt that, you would also need to learn about navigating the car in open spaces, in traffic, on congested roads and parking car properly, etc. Experienced drivers also recommend that one should have basic understanding about car engine how engine works, how to check engine oil and tyre pressure regularly and their impact if wrongly managed. Lets assume that the overall task of driving the car is project management, the car itself is project and the systematic coordination of car controls are the processes and knowledge areas of project management. As you need to learn different things before driving a car, similarly you need to learn and practice these processes and knowledge areas before driving a project. Knowing your car engine is similar to knowing the associated risks and issues with your project which could impact your project severely and if wrongly managed could lead to project failure (badly managed car has high chances of breaking down in middle of road).

Once you have learned everything that needs to be learnt and have practised knowledge of driving a car for some time, you apply for driving licence. Similar to this after learning and practising project management knowledge areas and processes while working on projects for a certain amount of duration, you apply for PMP certification. As driving licence certifies that you have required knowledge and skills to drive a car without being risk to anyone on the road, PMP certifies that you have project management knowledge, skills and experience required to lead projects successfully. As in real life its not necessary that people who have driving licence are all good drivers, similarly its not necessary that all the PMP certified project managers are good project managers. PMI checks individual knowledge based on PMBOK theory, which some people can easily memorize without even understanding a word out of it. This produces PMP certified project managers who barely have basic understanding of project management. In summary, I would suggest that if you are willing to take up project management field then dont worry about PMP certification in the early stage of your career. First make your basics strong by reading and understanding the theory and practising them in your projects. Earn the number of hours required to be eligible for PMP certification honestly and then apply for PMP certification. I believe that in long term, this make you a far better and good project manager compared to the ones who are PMP certified without having a clue about what project management is all about. Posted by vjdabas at 6:33 PM 1 comments Links to this post

Friday, February 4, 2011

What is Project Management?

Numerous times I have come across people/friends who want to pursue or switch to field of project management but struggle to understand what it is all about? If they try to look up information on internet then they are presented with the formal definition of project management or projects - which in my view doesn't help them much to get an answer to their basic question, 'what is project management? I strongly believe that everyone in their daily life does some sort of project management (knowingly or unknowingly). In this post - I would try to present an answer to this basic question by simple real life example; assuming that whosoever is reading this has been to at least one face to face interview so far.

Imagine a perfect job interview day, on which you have to reach your interview location at a pre-defined time. What do you normally do on such a day? You do project management from start to end without even knowing it. How? Let me explain Didnt you plan the previous night about waking up at a particular time in the morning so that you can comfortably get ready for your interview? What time you should leave your place to reach interview destination on time? How much time it would take you by car/ train? If you did then you did Time Management which is one of the knowledge areas of project management, in theoretical terms Time Management is described as management of different project tasks to achieve timely completion of project objectives. Wouldnt you think if you would go by your own vehicle or public transport? If you decided to go of your own then you would have checked if you would need to buy fuel for your vehicle or not? If yes, then which fuel pump you would buy the fuel from? If you decide to go via public transport then you would think about which bus stand to get the bus from? If you do all this, then you are doing procurement management which is another knowledge area of project management. On the same morning, when you are leaving for interview and your friend asks for a favour of giving him/her a lift in different direction from your destination, I am sure you would refuse if you do so, then you are doing scope management because dropping your friend might make you miss your schedule of reaching your destination at decided time. When you are thinking about all/any of the above, you are doing the planning (planning phase of project management). When its next morning and you are doing what you planned the night before, you are doing execution of this plan (execution phase). When you are leaving and your friend asks for a lift (which you refuse), you are doing monitoring and control phase. Similarly, once you are done with your interview and on the way back home, you are doing closure of this project (closure phase). On the same grounds, you can map other project management definitions to this example to get an understanding of project management, its knowledge areas and different processes. I assume this example will help you to understand that a project is A temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service or result (in theoretical terms). Similarly, Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements.

I have presented the above example on a very broad level taking in consideration that the people who would read this would have no/very limited knowledge about project management. For the veterans of project management this example could further be defined per phase, processes under each phase and knowledge areas.