What's the Best Approach to Education for (an Eventual) Professional Certification?
Our advice for anyone seeking professional certification education is to avoid the 8-hours-a-day-for-a-week “big bang” type courses in a hotel. They meet the minimum recent education hours requirement for PMI applications, but your retention will be very low.
These intense sessions are OK for candidates (with a lot of experience, in all PM areas) as a refresher just prior to sitting for an exam, but are a terrible way to learn soft skills and complicated concepts in any depth. In the latest edition of PMI®’s PMBOK® Guide (PM Body of Knowledge), there are 5 process groups containing 49 processes with lots of inputs, tools & techniques, and outputs (ITTO's) to learn about. And there’s now an included Standard for Project Management plus an Agile Practice Guide to learn. So, you really need a supplementary textbook (not just the 964 pages of the PMBOK® Guide reference books!) to explain things and show examples, and some class-time and homework (not to mention on-the-job application!) to practice them for full understanding.
Rather, beginners and intermediates should absorb and apply the information gradually, over a long enough period of time to truly understand, apply, and relate it to their own environment, given their current level of experience and exposure.
Here's the recommended path for anyone seeking certification as a professional project manager:
First - Get an Introduction to the Profession of PM
Not everyone needs to start here (many are accidental PM's already!), but this is the starting point for those without much experience either working in or leading projects. It will give you an overview of the profession, the big picture of projects and programs in enterprise portfolios, plus enough understanding of the basic tools for how to get a small project started (Initiating), and get it organized (Planning), as outlined in PMI’s PMBOK® Guide (their Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge). An introductory course is necessarily short (much less than the minimum 35 hours PMI requires for the PMP level certification), and will only focus on a subset of the full-spectrum body of knowledge. But with it, you will know the path to where you want to go, and have some tools to apply right away to help you take on project management work tasks, gaining documentable experience toward a certification application. Foundational course(s) are structured for the beginner or intermediate to get you started, but stop short of dwelling on the breath of soft skills and techniques needed to execute and control larger projects successfully. Typically, months or years are needed between someone starting an introductory course, and sitting for a full PMP exam. ACC's 12-hour BMGT 1021 Introduction to Managing Projects is such a course.
Instructor: Bob Futrell (512) 663-8285.
Next - Take a Full-Spectrum Process-Oriented Practical Applied PM Course
This is a foundational course structured for the beginner or intermediate who is somewhat experienced and expects to be sitting for a professional certification within a year or so. It follows a start-to-finish procedural approach to learning the PMBOK® Guide’s 5 PM process groups containing 49 processes over 10 knowledge areas (Plus the included Standard for Project Management and Agile Practice Guide). It is solidly based on the PMBOK® Guide, and walks you through how to get a project started (Initiating), get it organized (Planning), run it well (Executing plus Monitoring and Controlling), and stop it (Closing), covering all dimensions of project management. Usually, this can't be done well in PMI's minimum 35 hours of required education. Note that PMI’s PMBOK® Guide process focuses on activities after a project has been decided upon, and stops when the deliverable is delivered. It does not get into issues that come up when running multiple projects from the same resource pool (that is what their PgMP® Program Management Professional certification does), nor does it focus on any domain specific life cycles (e.g. IT, construction, R&D, software development, healthcare, etc.). But of course, everyone comes from some kind of domain background, so you have to apply the concepts to your own experience.
Additional topics might include portfolio issues like ROI (Return On Investment) and enterprise resourcing, soft skills (management/leadership, negotiating, presenting information, personality models, team models, etc.), operations management (i.e. software sustaining), or domain specific methodologies (such as for IT or software development, healthcare clinical workflows, HIPPA, new business venture, research, procurement, finance, construction, biotechnology, etc.) focusing on a particular life cycle or approach (e.g. Scrum software development, or Agile tailoring and methods). This full-spectrum process-oriented approach is the kind of instruction in ACC's 48-class-hour intermediate foundational course (BMGT 1009 Applied Project Management), spread over enough time so you can absorb and digest it adequately, and practice it - typically about 8 weeks. Group project exercises are done in teams to help synthesize and apply the concepts learned. If a certification exam is further down the road for you, this is also a good platform for just generally increasing your knowledge and effectiveness with projects (which is why it is an intermediate level starting point), so you can fill-in the gaps in your full-spectrum knowledge, and continue to build the requisite experience hours needed to apply for the higher level certification exams later.
Instructor: Bob Futrell, PMP-6714 (512) 663-8285, plus several other specialist instructors.
Finally - Take a PMBOK-Oriented PMP Exam Review Course
This is more advanced, to build on the intro and intermediate process-oriented courses. It is best to schedule this course once you have successfully completed an application with the certifying organization (PMI or CompTIA) and know you can make an appointment with a testing center for your desired certification exam. It is structured around only the knowledge areas of PMI’s PMBOK® Guide (Project Management Body of Knowledge), and focuses on exactly what is necessary to pass the certification exams. ACC’s 40-Hour BMGT 1040 PMP/CAPM Exam Prep course is spread over 4 Saturdays, and it is generally scheduled to closely follow an intermediate course offering. It does not teach theory directly (you are assumed to know the theory and its application), but focuses on review and sharpening your knowledge of the PMBOK® Guide knowledge areas and processes to prep for the exam. This type of course typically includes a practice exam and tips and tricks for doing well on the current exam contents (which is constantly evolving). It is focused on the PMP level, but will greatly improve your chances of passing the CAPM and/or Project+ exams also. The instructor has taken (and passed!) the PMP exam several times, to stay current and give you the best perspective on how the questions will be presented in the current exam.
Instructor: Hari Thummalapalli (512) 796-9355, with assistants.
See the ACC’s Project Management Education Program Overview for more information.
See also A Student's Testimonial for this approach.
And, perhaps I Already Have PM Experience. Why Take a Foundational Course Before Exam Prep?