Advanced PMI Certifications in Project Management

hi George, and yes a good question (as with any profession that requires certification) the same could be said about my CPA. Just because he/she is a CPA does that mean they are the best CPA for me? How do I know they are the best person to do my taxes?

Getting your professional certification is the first start. That proves to future employers and clients you "know your stuff". Now, does that mean they can handle a multi-million dollar portfolio from the start? Uhm, no. Getting your certification is one thing. What you do after that is another. There are many folks out there 20+ years of experience with out a PMP that are exceptional project managers and never saw the need to get certified. Then there are folks just 2-3 years starting out that get PMP certified so that they get a good start to their career. If I were hiring manager, for sure get minimum years experience 7+ and PMP to start, but what do they specialize in? What is their success rate? What is the client feedback? How do they socialize/brand themselves? If all you do is look at whether a person is certified, you are no way sure if they are completely qualified with enough proper experience to handle the work successfully that you want them to do. (And I went through three CPAs before I found the right one for me).

If "every body is a PMP these days" why is that a bad thing? Firstly getting certified is no small feat. Did you know that there are folks with many years of project experience that are not able to pass PMP exam? The more people that care to get certified and do the extra work to get certified. then that turns into better potential for success on projects because everyone is working from the same playbook. And if someone has 20+ years experience and then gets PMP then they have an exceptional amount of expertise behind them that a PMP with 2-3 years experience simply will not have. In addition, how would you start to identify what Advance PMP is? Having 100thousand hours of project time? Having managed 50 projects worth $X millions of dollars? If you could get PMP, Prince2 and IPMA certified would that be advanced enough? At what point is "chasing cert" to prove expertise too much?

My point is... it's not the cert that makes you exceptional, it is who you are, what you did , what you do and how do it that makes you the top of your field. The PMP cert is just another tool in your Experts Toolkit.

I hope I did not convey the message that it's a bad thing having many PMPs... I used that statement to start the conversation, and I'm definitely glad that it triggers reactions. The certification provides a certain level of confidence that the person at least knows the vocabulary, the processes, what should be done... and of course it does not guarantee that the person will actually do what needs to be done.

On the other hand, simply having 20 years of experience does not guarantee that the person is actually proficient at managing projects. So every time a project manager is hired the employer has to go try to respond the best they can to the questions you mentioned in your post, and others - hired PMs myself, so I struggled with these questions as well.

I'm not advocating chasing certificates either, too many seems to project a lack of career focus - but wouldn't it be great if there was something to provide some indication about the PM's efficiency and competence, on top of what's being said in the interview and without spending hours digging in someone's past (because to me references are useless, people will list as references only those that will praise them).

I agree it's not simple at all, but there are certifications out there that include things like peer reviews, 360-degree assessment etc - not just an exam that tests your knowledge and not how you can apply it in real life. Would it be possible to define something that somehow quantifies the PM's capabilities and experience?

I personally don't know, so I'm asking the community to see what others think...

Hi George,

I am very interested in this topic and want to express my opinion. First, project management is not a profession like doctors, civil engineers, architects which need to professional licenses to do their jobs by laws. Second, use of project management practices, methodologies, or skills might not be specific to even the same situation, which means practices in project management can be differently selected by different teams or managers to suit to their project situations. And it might be applicable to the different phases in the life cycle of the project.

It might be hard to find out the best approach to deal with difficult situations based on the experience or knowledge which project managers possess, which means many times a junior manager who has less experience in the project management might propose better solutions than a senior manager who has a lot of experience in this field and we don't know the consequences of each solution until the end and vice versa. I saw many project managers who don't have PMP credential but leaded their projects to their successes. They were not all experienced. In addition, uncertainty and chance might play a major role in this field whatever we take precautions or preventive actions in advance.

However, PMI may introduce advanced certificates which are more domain specific like PMI-PBA, PMI-SP and PMI-RMP and which are different approaches like PMI-ACP. And also PMI may introduce advanced PMP certificate to existing PMP holders by taking additional and in-depth examination or one to one interviews. PMI may limit their qualifications to certain period of experience like at least 15 or 20 years as PMP holders.

But I can't personally distinguish Advanced PMP from PMP to deal with uncertainties and largely rely on chances based on experiences without guts or application of theoretical approaches in different specific domains.

Regards,

Park

hi George as a hiring manager I see your point ...they are PMP and have references, now what? I will however go back to my earlier point, how do they socialize/brand themselves? Just having references is "old news", important to have but not the only thing a candidate should bring to the table. Every major project that candidate worked on should be highlighted in a portfolio (as done in LinkedIn) and have strong recommendations. Perhaps...(just thinking here) there could be a use of badges to allow someone to show their expertise and career milestones met that would show in the PMI.org and PM.com site that could perhaps use the peer/client recommendations to help exclaim efficiency, expertise and competence (assessments seem more of an employer/employee thing) ...but I get your point. Perhaps messing with the certs program is not the way to go...but perhaps a way to elevate and differentiate your expertise is.

It may be indeed that a certification has too many variables to be useful... Part of my consulting practice we do personal competence profiles for PMs to assist the organization to define personal development plans for their staff. We use PMCDF as a base, tailored to the specific organization, so maybe that's the best that can be done - and chasing a generalization into an organization-independent certification is a white whale....