What is the professional advantage of having a PMP

[Nilesh Deshpande]

Sorry to ask this dumb question

1. What is the professional advantage of having a PMP?
2. What is the eligibility criteria for the PMP exam?


Thanks,
Nilesh

[Paul Michael]

Originally posted by Nilesh Deshpande:
Sorry to ask this dumb question

1. What is the professional advantage of having a PMP?

Thanks,
Nilesh

Taken from Certification and the Job Market

� It elevates the status of PMP holders on projects, within organizations and within the global project management community

� It allows organizations that employ PMP holders to reference the ISO 17024 certification as a qualifier for competence and capability of their employees

� It assures those professionals considering PMP certification that PMI's certification system is recognized in the global business community

Originally posted by Nilesh Deshpande:
2. What is the eligibility criteria for the PMP exam?

See Obtaining-Credential
[ December 04, 2007: Message edited by: Paul Michael Laborte ]

[Ilja Preuss]

Originally posted by Nilesh Deshpande:
1. What is the professional advantage of having a PMP?

Here is an interesting article on the topic of certifications: http://me.andering.com/2007/11/05/make-more-money-get-not-certified/

My guess is that you get the most benefit out of a certification if you take it as a personal feedback regarding your skills.

Relying on a certification to be a replacement for individual education and experience is likely to be counterproductive.

[Billy Tsai]

I know project manager with PMP and MBA who performed poorly as a project manager in an IT project; has no respect for programmers and developers, unstable emotional outbursts at fellow team members, very poor time management and quality control, had no knowledge of the methodologies and processes in an IT project.

[Sal DiStefano]

This is true for all certifications. You can have the good without certifications and the bad with them.

The Professional advantage is that most likely someone with the certification will find their resume higher up on the list than someone without. I'm not saying I would not consider someone without the sert, but many places use it as a way to weed out candidates.

In my experience it helps in a few ways. One it shows initiative on the part of the person with the certification. Continuing education should be an important part of every career. Second it helps to determine gaps in your experience and education. There are many areas of PMP which many PMs never work with directly, but should be aware of.

The PMI certification not only requires verifiable experience but also Continuing education credits, which helps to raise the bar a little.

Sal

[Mostafa Ahmed]

There are two categories of people who can pursue PMP certification. The first category is for those who have college degrees. People in this category must have 4,500 hours of continuous, non-overlapping project management experience for 36 consecutive months within the past five years. The second category includes those project managers who have not attended college. People in this category must have 7,500 hours of continuous, non-overlapping project management experience for 60 months over an eight-year period. Both categories must also prove that they have participated in 35 hours of project management training within the past ten years.

Project Managers who meet either category must file an eligibility application with PMI. Once PMI reviews an application and determines if a candidate is eligible, they release an eligibility letter. A candidate then receives the eligibility letter to take the PMP certification exam.

[Andrew Stellman]

The other responses do a good job of summarizing a lot of advantages of the PMP certification.

But I want to point out one really important thing: understanding the material in the PMBOK(r) Guide and on the PMP exam can actually make you a better project manager. If you take the time to understand things like how to manage your project's scope, cost and schedule, how to improve the quality of your project's deliverables, techniques for managing people, etc., and if you apply them to your projects, then you'll definitely see an improvement in your projects' results.

Now, that doesn't mean that a project manager with a PMP certification is automatically better than one who doesn't have one. And there are many very, very good project managers (and programmers who understand how to run a project well!) who are very good at making sure projects come out well. But it shouldn't be too surprising that a lot of the tools and techniques that they use to make their projects come out well are things that you'll see on the PMP exam.