Before we discuss Project Management Course or Project Management Certification or Project Management Training Programs that are available in the market and the deliverables associated with them, we need to understand the fundamentals.
Project Management is a domain or field, wherein one first needs to have basic understanding after which a decision can be made if one needs to be an expert in one of the various aspects of it. Several misconceptions and wrong assumptions about project management lead to its potential not being utilized completely.
Few points below probably will remove many of those misconceptions:
- Project Management is industry or domain agnostic
- Project Management is a life skill
- Project Management can be taken up as a profession by itself
- Project Management concepts can be applied successfully, beyond projects
- Project Management is not for only senior or experienced professionals.
It is a vast field and there are multiple courses and certifications available for the same. There are degree/diploma courses as well as professional certification courses offered by several recognized institutions.
Project Management Institute (PMI) is one of the highly recognized institutions that offers quite a few certification courses in Project Management.
To name the few:
- PMI-CAPM: Certified Associate in Project Management
- PMI-PMP: Project Management Professional
- PMI-PgMP: Program Management Professional
- PMI-PfMP: Portfolio Management Professional
- PMI-ACP: Agile Certified Professional
- PMI-SP: Schedule Professional
- PMI-RMP: Risk Management Professional
- DASM/ DASSM: Disciplined Agile Scrum Master/ Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master
- DAVSC: Disciplined Agile Value Stream Coach
Similarly, there are many other institutes like Axelos, several MBA Schools, Agile Framework based Institutions etc. 250+ Agile Certifications are available in the market alone.
Process to get certified might vary from one certification to another but is more or less the same: You have to attend a training session, understand the next steps, submit an application and get it approved, prepare for the exam, take mock exams, review your scores, improve your score and finally clear an exam. Application process may or may not be required based on certification that is opted for.
This calls for proper counselling to decide which course is best suitable for an individual and which one could help them to grow in their respective careers.
Every course has something unique but deliverable or output from any of these is the same: Knowledge gain. This one output leads to several other related or secondary outputs.
These project management courses educate you on the following topics:
- Tools and Techniques available to manage and deliver the project successfully
- Ethics and Compliance
- Standards and Regulations
- Policies & Procedures
- Options for tailoring & customization of standards
- Do’s and Don’ts
- Benchmarks
Few other important skills that one can learn from many of these are:
- How to hone one’s Interpersonal Skills
- How to develop Leadership Qualities
- How to analyze problems (Analytical Skills)
- How to address problems (Problem Solving Skills)
- Many life skills applicable beyond projects
Above points mentioned are taught theoretically in the courses. But for an individual, applying them practically, not succeeding and learning from mistakes is the only way to succeed. Hence it really becomes important for every individual who has gone through these courses to apply the learnings in practical scenarios and move through the Shu-Ha-Ri stages.
For an individual, the final deliverables are:
- Knowledge gained by an individual: This is the primary and foremost output expected from any course or certification. All the rest will be dependent on how effectively this is achieved.
- Credibility in the market and within the organization: A certified individual always carries with him/her a credibility that he can be relied upon for information. Maintaining that credibility once achieved with certification/course completion completely depends on the individual.
- Improvement in individual performance: A certified individual is expected to apply the knowledge learned and yield results. That is the eventual output expected and if not delivered will impact the credibility too. Performance of an individual is expected to improve post completion of the course/certification.
- Thinking out of the box: With several tools and techniques learnt and with the additional information achieved, an individual is also expected to think and try things out in a different way that might lead to better results.
- Clarity in thoughts and approach: With the knowledge gained, individuals are now expected to be able to make effective decisions and help others as well. SMART thinking is what is expected from a certified individual. (SMART: S – Specific, M – Measurable, A – Achievable, R – Realistic, T- Time Bound)
- Gain in self-confidence: With all the above falling in place, an individual is bound to be self-confident. It should show up in the individual’s action, speech and intent.
For an organization, the deliverables from Project management course should be:
- Improved Project Performance: Individual performances would lead to overall project performances.
- Project issues getting addressed: Most of these courses and certifications educate individuals about various
options and approaches (tools and techniques) to handle issues. With that knowledge in the team, issues must get handled more efficiently.
- Process improvement across the organization: After knowing about the best practices and recommended approaches/ tools and techniques, team members should be identifying areas of the project where delivery can be enhanced and better approaches could be implemented. This would lead to improvement in overall organizational efficiencies.
- Increase in organizational credibility (Brand value): With improved performance plus knowledge and motivated employees, results of organization are bound to improve giving more credibility in the market.
- New business opportunities: Higher credibility and confidence in the organization and employees managing it would lead to new opportunities to grow further.
- Increase of revenues & profitability: All of the above pointers, that go in vicious cycles, eventually help organizations to benefit in the growth of market share, revenues and profitability. And that is what is the ultimate goal of most organizations.
Most of the deliverables stated above are correlated and interdependent. Hence, we need to look at the bigger picture and see how all these pointers benefit both individuals as well as organization as a whole.
To learn more about project management concepts, explore our blogs on Project Management Certification.
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