Beyond the value of the diploma in itself, I think that preparing a PM certification is very valuable for the Project Managers who accept this big challenge for the following reasons:
- to encourage the person to look back and document the experience acquired with projects managed in the past few year,
- to gain access to and learn from standards and best practices in project management when preparing for one of the certifications/exams (PMI®; IPMA; Prince2; ...), i.e. to improve their skills in the many dimensions of project management: managing costs, resources, schedules, suppliers, teams; scheduling activities, negotiating with stakeholders, presentation skills, interpersonal skills, team dynamics, quality management...
- to understand and analyze prior successes and failures in light of the above best practices and establish improvement plans for current and future assignments,
- to acquire a terminology (a common language) together with a more in depth understanding of the project management processes and how they are interlinked. This will be very useful when communicating with project stakeholders and other project managers,
- to join a community of passionate professionals in project management,
- to increase their market value as certified PMs are in high demand,
- to establish their credibility as PMs (internally and externally),
- to progress in the profession,
- to land a job at a company that truly values Project Management.
What's in it for businesses?
businesses should value Project Management certification in order to:
- deliver projects on time, budget and scope with much greater predictability,
- maintain a good level of project management capabilities and experience in the company,
- facilitate PM's recruitment and ensure fastest integration for new hires,
- establish project management development path for internal PMs
- be able to respond to more Requests for Proposal for which certified PMs is a pre-requisite (ISO/IEC 17024 accreditations).
I've been leading IT projects for more than 20 years at telecom and computer manufacturers: Thomson Sintra, Digital Equipment, NCR, Nortel Networks, Orange Business. My passion is Project Management and leadership and I run a blog on the PM best practices at http://dantotsupm.com/