The PMP Is Not a Panacea

It has been said that having a PMP certification is like knowing how to cook. Staffing your restaurant with great chefs will not guarantee that they will perform like a team and cook the food consistently.

The wisdom required to be a great project manager comes from understanding the differences between the textbook situations and real life practices. case in point, only a few management teams will accespt an estimate which contains separate budgets for risk and contingency and management reserves. Many would simply delete these items from the project budget and consider that they had done a good job for their organisation. To counter this, project teams are including the contingency in each project estimate, effectively padding the estimate. This is contrary to PMI teachings but is often necessary to comply with the performing organsiations culture.

Having a PMP is more like knowing the definition of the terms in the cookbook. That’s not the same sa knowing how to cook.

PMP helps the PM to nourishes the required skills. And, more over keep work ethics.
As in the case of any certification, it has its own value.
Can any one point out a certification which will guarantee that the person is super natural, just because he is xxx certified.

Nice to hear another heretic speak out! It seems that many companies trying to get to grips with improving their project performance lean on the PMP certification in the absence of knowing what other questions to even ask.

Having repeatable and consistent project delivery requires the addition of Portfolio Management to provide business-level forecasts, constraint management and cross-project leverage of best practices. It also requires Business Process Management to effectively institutionalize these best practices and cross-project controls as well as solid Customer Service skills to ensure that the projects fit the customer needs as a whole.

While OPM3 from PMI addresses many of these aspects, it is having trouble gaining traction - perhaps due to the perception that PMP alone is the panacea. Now THAT would be ironic!

The expectation when I add the PMP keyword in a job description, is that the candidate has an interest in project management as a career path.

The PMP certification does not provide assurance that a person can lead or manage.

If the terminology in the PMBOK is different than the current organization’s process, then having a PMP is more like showing an interest in cooking.

Interesting exchange. I find it curious how easy it is to find posts and discussions dismissing or minimizing the value of the PMP certification instead of acknowledging it as a valuable fundamental component of a well-rounded and effective project manager’s portfolio.

Thanks for all of your comments. Just to clarify mine:

I view the PMP as a highly valuable (critical) resource put to poor use in this scenario. The PMP is the right tool to apply to a standalone project, but like all tools, it exists for a particular purpose.

PMP’s are human (in rare cases), and humans aren’t designed for consistency, but instead for adaptability.

Machines and procedures are designed for consistency.

Ask humans to follow a process and they’ll produce a consistent outcome (even a PMP). What’s really powerful, is that those humans will immediately begin to adapt that process to better perform. Humans (PMP’s) and procedures are a marriage made in heaven when you need to achieve best in class quality and performance.

RE: minimizing the value of the PMP certification instead of acknowledging it.

Like owen, I’m not minimizing the value of PMP certification, just in favor putting it in the context of all the other things that have to be considered (but are often overlooked or ignored) when creating a project-driven organization.

To further emphasize my support for PMP and its ilk, I would also add that having a solid PM methodology is absolutely necessary for a successful project driven organization. It is the common language that all the other components build on.

However, PMP is just one of several choices for that methodology. Others include Prince2 or CCM. ITIL, 6-sigma, TQM and Lean also have relevance. To say one is better than the others is like saying cheddar cheese is better than Provolone or Brie, or that a hammer is better than a screwdriver or a saw. They all have their part to play.

Of course there are many truths in this article, but many times i hear such stories that arise from a sort of frustration from the author. A certification, nice sounding words, good self-promotion do not outweight quality actions.

Dears,
i am a investor willing to establish a PMO in the Saudi Arabia, i need some advise from experts if it is worth to go through it and what is the min requirments for establishing this office, what i under stand that the results of the PMO will show up on the long run

your help will be a higly appreciated.
R.J

RJ - feel free to reach out to me through http://pmosoft.com and I will be glad to speak to you.

RJ,

You may want as well to check the Building your PMO series on PM Hut.

Interesting set of observations from I beleive a set of practicing project managers.

Imagine what a company has in mind for a role when it announces that for it’s marketing&communication func. it needs to set up a PMO for a period of 3-6 months (maybe to begin with) in order to set up processes, dashboards, quality assurance activities, metrices, config mgmt, and conduct audits and in the same breath mentions ‘good to have’ PMP certification.

I am not clear what a PMP certification will help achieve here. anyone who could throw their thoughts on this?

Some great discussion here and I have seen this topic come up a lot lately. I agree that a certification does not make an expert, I didn’t get my PMP until 10 years in and an employer told me to and paid for me to do it. A few points though…

1) Hiring managers have hundreds of resumes to look at and in the PM space, why not get down to half the talent pool by searching for PMP? Then review further experience and such from there. I think we all agree that the PMP is a nice add-on to one’s professional portfolio, yes?

2) To say that a PMP means someone has remembered terms leads me to believe someone has not actually taken the PMP exam, although I have been wrong before :) The exam does ask some basic definition questions, but many ask how you would react in this situation or figure out the float on this, identify the critical path of that, etc. Not deep stuff, but certainly not regurgitation of facts.
3) I would say the PMP and its framework is just that…a framework and methodology that provides tools, techniques, and guidance to manage projects. Whereas ITIL is more of a Service Delivery approach (not so much a development process) and LSS/Six Sigma has great tools for improving efficiency and speed of current processes and operations, but again is not a new product or service development process. Not sure they are so like for like as Swiss and Provolone. (Maybe Prince and PMI). I believe a strong PM can leverage the tools within the many different methodologies and develop a true best practice

4) The key is continued development in the space…reading white papers, joining webinars, etc. http://bit.ly/aLt9Te

Great discussion everyone!