HR should put PMP in proper perspective

The feedback I hear from project manager job seekers is that some HR organizations are weeding out any applicants who don’t have their Project Management Professional (PMP) certification. I think this is a lazy hiring practice. I understand that these organizations sometimes get 10,000 applicants for one position, but HR might be overlooking great project managers with years of successful experience leading projects simply because they don’t have this certification.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t think the PMP is a valuable certification; I believe that any certification is good because it shows dedication to your profession. However, not having a certification doesn’t automatically mean you aren’t a good candidate to manage a project.

So, to put the cert in more concrete terms, this is what it takes to achieve the PMP certification:

• 35 hours of verifiable project management-related training
• 5 years of verifiable hands-on project management experience
• Successful completion of the PMP certification exam (must correctly answer 61% of scored questions)

Stocking PMOs with PMPs

Many companies don’t understand and sometimes misuse the PMP. IT executives want to accumulate PMPs in their PMO because they think it will bring a common language and make collaboration easier and, therefore, make their PMO more successful. I agree with the common language; I partially agree with the collaboration aspect; and I wholeheartedly disagree with it making your PMO more successful.

Common language
There is no doubt that if a company stocks its PMO only with PMP-certified project managers, it will have a common language. Everyone will talk the PMBOK language and use fairly common methods to manage projects. And if the PMO is built on those methods, then having the project managers incorporate those processes into their daily activities should be relatively easy. The learning curve for an incoming PMP-certified project manager (with respect to PMI practices) should be less in this type of organization than the learning curve for a non-certified project manager (though don’t discount the effect that extensive experience has on the ability to quickly understand logical project management processes and good practices).

Collaboration
While common PMI practices documented in the PMBOK and used as organizational standards should help enable good collaboration practices throughout the organization and project teams, it is not a given. Remember that years of experience (not a certification and passing a test) go in to making a project manager a good project manager; the ability to lead a team and collaborate on projects with the team and customers requires experience, leadership, communication, and knowledge.

Making a PMO more successful
Stocking a PMO with PMP certified managers will never be the key to PMO or project success. There is no guaranteed formula for success when it comes to PMOs, but organizations can help increase a PMO’s likelihood for success by doing the following things:

• Stock it with good project managers. This requires experience, a good HR department, and well-laid-out hiring criteria. Once the organization has some experienced and successful project managers in its PMO, the chances for project successes and increased customer satisfaction increase.
• Get executives involved. Executive leadership must be on board with the PMO activities. I recommend periodically inviting the CEO to weekly internal PM meetings, routing project dashboards to executive leadership, and inviting them to lunches and kickoff meetings with important project clients. When executives are involved, it makes them interested in the project’s processes; it makes the PMO more visible; and it helps ensure that the CEO won’t send important projects to “his own people” elsewhere in the organization, thus circumventing the PMO processes already in place.
• Put a good leader in place. The PMO director must be well connected in the organization, as well as ready to manage resources and processes. If HR tries to fill the PMO director position with an acting project manager who also gets to lead the PMO, the organization will suffer in oversight, PMO visibility, project management training, and good project manager hiring. The PMO director can and will be involved in some projects but should not lead many (if any) projects. The PMO director needs to focus as much time as possible on running a good PMO. It’s fine to periodically be involved in highly visible or critical projects and even troubled projects — that’s the PMO director’s job — but the focus needs to be on making the PMO infrastructure successful.

Conclusion

My objective isn’t to settle the long-standing debate about whether the PMP is a meaningful cert or just a job hunting tool. I simply want HR to put the PMP certification in the proper perspective. The PMP helps to standardize language and understanding in a PMO, but it can never replace real-life successful project management experience.

So, to project managers who are dedicated to their profession, I still think it’s worth your time to get the certification. To HR managers, I say wake up and use better practices to hire the best candidates and not just candidates who might look good on paper. Our customers deserve it.