Project Management Professional (PMP) credential

I started to take a course for the PMP but my local college had only the on-line option and I dropped it in the second week. It's not a walk in the park by any means and I hated hated HATED the on-line learning. I may try again when I can take a class in person but it's not easy by any means.

 

I've taught project management (mostly the heavily technical parts, like PERT and EVA) at the MBA/undergrad level. The certification can't be that hard, because that material is simply not that difficult. It is a pretty broad body of material (Lord only knows how many times I've stumbled across this or that document that purports to tap some portion of the PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge)).

I suspect that PMP certification is probably not going to provide as much of a leg up on the competition as it simply signals that you're at some minimal level of competence. Nothing wrong with that, but it's probably not going to be a career turnaround that some might suggest.

 

dq - I suspect it's not that hard if you're a business major but more difficult if you're coming in without that background. Or maybe I'm just an idiot.

 

I suppose I should know this since I work for a big corporation and run projects, but what does a project management professional do?

 

LOL ... I was PoliSci/English as undergrad*. You're not an idiot ... I do think too many folks have a phobia when it comes to more technical/numerical things, though. Perhaps you're one of them?


*I teach plenty of people in the business majors who have 'nary a clue about business.

 

Get everything bogged down in process rather than actually doing things.

Here is what a PM does.

Create a flow chart to dentify gaps in process.
Create a task list based on the flow chart.
Create weekly meetings to update the task list.
Create self serving e-mails to celebrate the project that was never a project being comple when people could have just done the work without needin gto update the douche with the task list.

 

There's a little more to it than that, but I will agree that it's not the science that some people make it out to be.

That said, having the PMP certification will, at a minimum, get your application with certain companies at least one more step away from robo-rejection.

 

I'm actually not bad with numbers (and certainly not afraid of them). I think the on-line learning was my biggest issue. I remember faces much better than names so trying to collaborate on assignments, etc with people I couldn't see was really really strange. As I said, I may try again in a real classroom setting. Or maybe I'll just try harder to get a singing job.

 

A good PM is an invaluable resource, bad ones actually make things worse.

 

I thought this thread was about spending cheese up on B.L.A.D.E.'s in the N.Y.C.

 

Does Whitlock have his PMP certification, or does he work his corners in more of an ad hoc manner?

 

Exactly this -- and spend a lot of time putting crap into Microsoft Project and classifying things as red/yellow/green in the most arbitrary way possible.