President/Founder of DPCI

As President and Founder of DPCI, Joe directs business operations, all innovation initiatives, and business development activities of the company.

Joe enjoys writing and speaking about various trends in content technologies, on project management best practices, and also on his insights into the operations of running the business of DPCI.

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August 31, 2011

Do PMPs make Good IT Project Managers?

I was recently asked a question about whether it is important for IT project managers to hold the PMP certification. More specifically, are great project management skills correlated with PMP certification?

Having kept up my PMP certification for over 10 years now, and also having run an organization that follows the PMBOK as our project management lifecycle, I can honestly say that the PMP's we have hired don't necessarily make the best project managers. I like to think of myself as a good project manager, and yet the two areas of PMBOK that, to me, are the differentiators of a great project manager are risk management and earned value management -- two disciplines that I almost never see practiced by any IT project managers anywhere - certified or not.

A number of years ago we only would hire PMPs - or, we'd require new employees to sit for the PMP exam to prove to our customers that we took the certification and discipline seriously. Most of our customers really could care less, I'm afraid.

One mistake that a lot of companies make is to assume that PMP-certified project managers are also excellent functional analysts – that they have the training and expertise to elicit and document business, stakeholder, and solution requirements (both functional and nonfunctional). As it turns out, the PMBOK does not adequately prepare project managers for this kind of work.

In my opinion, the fledgling project manager should look to more specialty training and certification, perhaps 6-sigma/LEAN black belt, or IIBA Business Analyst certification. That along with the PMP makes for a very powerful career foundation. If the young trainee is limited in time or funding for certifications, I would minimally focus on becoming excellent in risk management and earned value management skills. Those - to me - are the great differentiators.

Posted at 01:37 pm by Joseph Bachana

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digital asset management solutions, online collaboration software, custom development, multi-channel publishing systems, andworkflow management solutions.

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Ten Best Practices in Requirements Analysis 10/06/2011 - 01:55
Observations in IT Best Practices: Involving your Stakeholders 08/30/2011 - 15:43
Critique of Adweek article by Erin Griffith on "CMS Woes" 08/22/2011 - 23:26
Article on CMSWire.com about Adobe's Aspirations into Customer Experience Management 08/20/2011 - 00:34
Observations in IT Best Practices: Aim Before You Shoot 08/01/2011 - 12:46
On Innovation, Research and Development, and Passion 07/29/2011 - 14:59