How will PMP Certification help me in my work?

Your career will grow when you implement project management knowledge in your work.

The proof of the pudding is in eating it. It is not PMP Certification that helps you in the work, it is the knowledge you gain when you go through training and prepare for certification. The preparation for certification is more helpful than the certification itself. It does not mean that PMP Certificate is not important. It is definitely a star on your resume. However certification is not necessary to gain the knowledge. If you go through a training by a good training (A good trainer is a trainer who teaches you project management and not just focus on PMP Exam), you will get valuable knowledge which will help you in your work and if you have really taken it rightly, it will changes your way of managing projects significantly.

PMP Certification is for practitioners not for beginners. You should have some project management experience to go through a training and apply for certification. Experience is not mandatory for training but if you have some experience, you understand the concepts better because a good number of concepts are situational. You understand them better if you have seen or gone through these situations.

Many people think that PMP is the ideal way of executing a project, while it is a very practical way of doing a project. What is documented in PMBOK Guide (The book which is the base of the PMP Exam) is not a proposed methodology by PMI or someone else but it is a document of best practices. A best practice means a process which is in practice and has consistently given good results. Then why people think, it is an ideal (not so practical) way of doing the project? First because these practices focus on long term gains at the cost of short term gains while we often have less patience tending to take shortcuts protecting the short term gains. Second common practices are generally not best practices. Third not all practices are applicable to all the projects in the same way as they are described in PMBOK Guide. Selecting and tailoring are important steps which we often do not do so religiously making processes bureaucratic.

The first benefit I see is understanding the whole spectrum of the project management. I do PMP training regularly and observe that most of the participants were unaware that this much was their responsibility. So the training give them a better sense of responsibility. Even if they are not implementing (for several reasons), they know they are not doing and they know the repercussions also.

Second they become more systematic. At least they know a systematic approach even if they do not do it. Third they become more measurement oriented. At least they know what they are not measuring. Fourth, they understand difference between common practices and best practices and their benefits. They do more detailed planning, their communication become better, they are more quality conscious, team management become better, their knowledge about tools and techniques improves and they intend to use them, they become better in identifying risk and planning for them and they are more receptive to lesson learned. Now tell me if a project manager who is doing all this, why he will not become an asset to his company, his customers or future employer?

Third when you pass the PMP Exam, you get a star on your resume. This may help you to sell yourself, your company selling you to its client or you finding a better job. Most of the positions for project managers are advertised today as PMP mandatory or PMP preferable.  Even if PMP is preferable, the candidate having PMP Certification has a better chance of getting interviewed first. If 50 people apply for a job and 5 are PMP Certified. Chances of these five candidates get interviewed first is high. If you have really focused on understanding and implementing project management, you may not find it difficult to sail through interview to win the position. So as PMP, you have a better chance of getting the job you really like and enjoy and needless to say a better salary.

PMP Certification helps in many ways. Real win is not just getting certified, the real win is in implementing it in the projects to complete them on time within budget with high customer satisfaction.