re: Taking the Project Management (PMP) Certification. How was the Test?

There is a lot of PMP hate in this thread. So a few of you have had bad experiences with PMPs. Would your experience have been better with someone that did not have exposure to the concepts?

A PMP does not make someone a good project manager - period. But many companies value the certification and will pay a premium for it. The knowledge, if applied correctly, is very helpful to many types of projects.

It is sad that some people come on here and rip a dude for trying to progress in his career because they had a run-in with some slapstick in a completely unrelated scenario.

If your company will pay for it, I would go through the local PMI Chapter and take the prep course - there is a great pass rate and you can re-take the course for free if you don't pass.

I have had the PMP certification for the past 5 or so years. To be honest I manage lots of IT/Technical projects and my Job placed great value on the employees getting this certification almost at the same level as my PE license. I haven't seen it much recently but there was a time that many of the projects that we would bid on required the proposed Project Manager to have the PMP certification.

To answer he original question about taking the test my advice would be to memorize the "Project Management Process Groups and Knowledge Areas Mapping" table and you will well on your way to passing the test.

I got mine because the PM job I got required having it within a year of getting the position. We don't follow the standards listed in the PMBOK because the projects we manage are pretty standard deployments for customers.

The test was hard but passable if you just know the 5 Phases and the order that the 44 processes are under each phase. You will know the answer to a question just by knowing if something seems out of order.

In my experience the project management field has phase and a very broad range of types of duties that the PM will do. You will have some businesses that actually have PM's that follow and manage every phase by the book and others that kind of make their own project life cycle based on the company needs.

I think its pretty stupid to undervalue any certification by saying all you have to do is study and take a test. Well the same could be said for a degree or MBA. How you apply the knowledge you get from studying as an individual is what matters.