To PMP or Not To PMP...

...that is the question!
Over the last few years, I have come across several professionals as well as organizations mulling over this question!
The individuals, without exception, happen to be senior folks, well established in their profession and now responsible for several client accounts with more than a few hundred people under them! And I am talking about individuals in 'project based' organizations!
There are several reasons why they feel they don't need this certification - mostly because their professional credentials, they feel, can get them a well paying job anyway! They don't feel the need to add another credential to their CV! Looking at the PMP certification purely from the point of view of employability, I believe,  is a very narrow take on this certification! 

Unlike a lot of other certificates, that certify your knowledge about a certain subject- I believe the PMP certification is beyond just a certificate of your understanding of the Project Management Knowledge Areas! Its a commitment to a discipline!

To me PMI/PMP is our professional body- our as in us 'Project Managers' - including management at any organization which primarily executes 'Projects'. It is therefore important that senior professionals who have spent a lot of time executing projects, become part of this group- not just to align their knowledge with the PMBOK, but also to review and add to the periodic update of the PMBOK. And last but not the least, to collectively work toward building good Project Management practices within the professional community!
The responsibility of preserving and advancing the knowledge lies with the practitioners! 

For the senior managers, its also an opportunity to understand the structure of the PMBOK and better communicate with the younger reports in a consistent manner!
Just like for a young Project Manager, the possibility of getting a higher paying job, however legitimate, to me is a poor singular reason to pursue her PMP; for a senior professional, the thought that she does not need any more credentials to show on her CV, is a poor reason for not joining the club! The individual and the community gets richer by the wealth of knowledge and experience that its members bring in!

This brings me to second set of doubters- the organization's. During my interaction with a lot of organizations here in India, I have sensed a certain degree of cynicism regarding PMP. To be more specific, I am talking about few IT organizations!

Anyway, a casual analysis(nope, I haven't yet interviewed people formally on this topic or done a delphi or drawn an Ishikawa diagram) of this led me to certain conclusions!
As the Indian IT/Off-shoring industry started maturing, the nature of projects started becoming more complex and larger in size. With this came the demand from a lot of client (primarily American) for certified project managers. Typical RFP/RFI would ask - 'How many certified PMPs do you have in your organization'. This lead to a sudden rush for internal PMP certification and hiring PMPs from the market. Sensing this, a lot of professionals who had not worked in a process mature organizations, but who genuinely had the required 4500 hrs of PM experience, took their certification.

But 'A 35 hour class and passing a test, does not a good project manager make!'


This sudden rush for certified PMs, perhaps did not turn out to be the silver bullet these organizations were hoping for! These organizations and their project managers continued to struggle with their projects!

This, perhaps (its my theory and certainly open to challenge!) led a lot of organizations and their HR managers to believe that a PMP certified PM does not bring any value over and above the non-certified PMs! Perhaps overlooking their own lack of processes and the organizations support to excellence in project execution! (Environment factors and Organization's Process Assets, after all are very key to successful project execution! For example in an IT services organization, without the organizations support for processes, a Project Manager would at best execute at CMMI level 2. But again, haven't we heard criticism of CMMI too!!)

I strongly recommend such organizations to relook at their own processes, while continuously investing in their Project Managers with PMP as well as other IT(domain) specific Project Management training programs!
Also, these organizations need to separate the learning needs of the first time Project Managers with the PMP certification mandate of the organization. They should nominate PMP certification only for managers who have more than the mandatory 4500 hours of experience, while not neglecting the training needs of the new PMs!
Having a separate, NON-PMBOK based training program for the new PMs, gives us more flexibility to focus on basic project management processes and practices for better utilization of workshop time!

PMP certification is not the end point for individuals or organizations pursuing project management excellence! Its about building over your existing knowledge, being cognizant of what are largely accepted good practices and a commitment to continuously adopting and adapting them!

Certification is only a key milestone- the real journey lies ahead!

The ENCORE! More intense more funfilled!

The successful completion of the first batch of PMP was followed by an Encore! More colleagues signed up for the second round of the PMP workshop!

The workshop had a very diverse group of participants! Participants, on one hand, with several years of management experience and wondering(at least initially) if they need another workshop on Project Management, were sitting with colleagues with very little exposure to project management(perhaps not yet eligible for PMP, but may be eligible for CAPM).

Having participants with a very diverse range of experience is always a challenge for a trainer - in terms of class dynamics - balancing the needs of the lesser experienced participants with the availability of time, as well as, keeping the session interesting for the more experienced participants.

The workshop was nevertheless a huge success with both novice and experienced managers!

Some of the senior managers, apart from sharing their experiences, showcased their actual project documents(project charter, affinity diagram) to the colleagues, to reinforce the concepts of the PMBOK. This was also an opportunity for them, to plug gaps in knowledge areas they had not been exposed to, like procurement management.

For the relatively new managers, the course was a window to the formal discipline of Project Management! What they lacked in experience, they made up with their enthusiasm- they ensured that they cleared their doubts by actively participating and asking questions at every stage!

Some of the participants had enrolled for the program not sure if they would actually take up the PMP certification- perhaps few of them would not yet be eligible given their lack of actual Project Management experience. However, this did not prevent them from adding significant learning for themselves! They are sure they would be actively applying, at least some of the lessons of the workshop in their day-to-day professional life!

As always, we all had a great time!

Intense, Action Packed Learning, PMP workshop at Bangalore

The first PMP workshop done by Celtem for this very large(annual revenue US$ 5 Billion) IT Technology and Services organization at Bangalore!

The sessions were intense and fun filled!

Ready to take on the Questions: Nitin getting ready to discuss the quiz(while Nabin took the picture)! Answers to the quiz questions are discussed and doubts clarified at the end of the quiz.

Picture of concentration: Seen in the picture are project managers immersed in the short quiz taken at the end of each knowledge area!

The workshop was a great success, with participants acknowledging significant learning, feeling confident to take on the PMP exam and above all enjoying the entire duration of the workshop!

How to read the PMBOK! And how many times?

One of the recurring question's posed to us by the PMP workshop participants is 'Do we have to read the PMBOK?' - expecting us to say 'No, now that you have come to our workshop- you don't need too!'. However, we end up disappointing them - Unfortunately there is no escape- you have to read it- and end to end too!

With that settled- the next obvious question is how many times? Well, regardless of individual abilities, I think anyone preparing for the exam will have to read it at least once...but would most likely end up reading it two or three times!

The thought of having to read the 400 odd pages of PMBOK two to three times, makes the idea of taking the PMP exam a non-starter!

However, its not that difficult!

One of the best practice that I followed, was to not ever look at the entire PMBOK as a single book. I took the copies of individual chapters and stapled them.(Please ensure you have a licensed copy of the PMBOK for your use!) On any given day I would keep 2 or 3 chapters in my laptop bag and try to read them in whatever time I could steal at work and then some on the weekends! Its not a bad way, time permitting, to take a break at work!

Some of the smaller chapters could be read during a single coffee break! You will see you can cover anywhere between 2 to 5 chapters in a given 3 day period. If you travel by public transport, your coverage could be even better?

Always keep a pencil in hand and underline the important sentences! During the second pass of the chapter, use the same printout, but now use a florescent highlighter!

It should not take you more than 2 weeks to read through the PMBOK once. This is not that difficult after you have attended the workshop, by which time you would be fairly clear about the structure of the BOK and the Input-T&T-Output won't look so daunting!

The PMBOK can look intimidating and overwhelming! The trick is to 'Divide and Conquer' !

Happy reading!

Team Celtem.

Celtem's PMP Preparation Workshop

Celtem has been conducting Project Management and PMP preparatory workshops for several years, this however is our first blog series about our workshops.

In this series of blogs, we will be talking about our approach to Project Management training, the challenges that we see for the participants and for us as trainers and the various training best practices and tools that we employ for making the training experience worthwhile for the participants.

PMP Preparatory Workshop - Yet Another Project Management Training!

Participants being working professionals with serious responsibilities, sometimes end up at our workshop due to their organization’s mandate. Each day spent away for training means extra work for them- because responsibilities as Project Manager don’t go down while they are in the classroom; work does not stop and day-to-day problems still have to attended to; This usually means extra stress on the Project Managers! Some of the more experienced Project Managers are outright skeptic as to why they need this certification in the first place!

PMP workshop is not a beginners program! It is a certification for practicing Project Managers and Managers of Project Managers! One of the central objectives of PMP is to ensure that the PM community across the world has unified view of the practices of this trade and speak a fairly uniform language!

I remember a long time back, as a new project manager and not yet certified, one of my Senior Managers, who had just joined my company, asking me ‘Is the WBS ready for your project?’. I had never heard or used WBS? Now I realize that some of the documents that we had been working on, very closely resembled what could have been a proper WBS for the project!

So regardless of your seniority and designation – I feel all managers within ‘projectised organizations’ should work towards their PMP certification!

This is our ‘Project Managers’ community – we need to be part of it!

Also, choosing the right training partner i.e. faculty who bring serious Project Management experience, can make the 35 hours spent worthwhile for the participants! Or else you can end up in a workshop just going through the Input-Output sections of each PM Process - and 35 hours of Input-Output can look like a very very boring, endless and wasteful exercise!

Its not impossible to pass the exam without fully grasping the spirit of the PMBOK- this of course would be a great underachievement!

Would I really learn Project Management in the PMP workshop?

Does a PMP workshop teach you Project Management or is it just a key to pass the PMP exam?

Project Management is a vast subject! You can’t learn Project Management in 35 hours! However, there is a lot that can be achieved within 35 hours! In any case, we at Celtem ensure that every hour spent in the workshop is useful! After all these are very expensive 35 hours of professional time!

Also, the participants, by requirement have to have 4500 hours of real project management experience! So they are expected to have a fairly wide real life experience of the project management processes! The workshop helps in bridging some of the gaps and exposing them to areas they may have formerly not delved in- the most common example being that of Procurement Management.

We believe, a good PMP workshop need to strike a balance between:

• Covering all the Project Management processes
• Reserving enough time for healthy discussion on real life scenarios and allowing the participants to share their own experiences in project scenarios!
• Devote some time on the nature of exam, the type of questions to expect and how to best approach your preparation for the exam!

Over the years, we at Celtem have been successful at not only ensuring the complete coverage of the PMBOK, but also managing enough time to discuss the professional experiences of our participants!

Participant’s sharing of their experiences is the real icing on the cake and helps in enriching and completing the learning process! I believe that without these discussions our workshop would be very dry and boring! Thanks to the participants our workshops are far from being dry and boring!

Also, during the past year we have had a few participants who, before attending our workshop, had earlier taken the PMP preparatory workshop with another provider, but for various reasons could not take the exam! Their feedback has been very encouraging for us! They have consistently rated us better than some of the other workshops (though I am sure there are a lot of very good PMP trainers)!

Our participants have constantly validated our conviction and approach that Project Management is not a theoretical subject and that each participant has a lot of learning to bring to the group- by active participation and sharing of real life scenarios to better understand and appreciate the PMBOK processes. Thanks to them, we are all richer!

Happy learning!

Nitin Kapoor, PMP

On behalf of Celtem PMP team- Nabin, Surasri and Nitin