PMI Certification or I GANTT to Get it Done

It's been a while, taking time off for the holidays and vacation but now I'm ready to start back up again.

It was not a clear road to get a certification. The first thing I realized about getting PMI certification is that it can put you into a bit of a Catch-22 situation. In order to get clearance to take the test, you have to show you can manage projects but if you want to be a project manager to do that, many require you to have a certification. 

Now, I got very lucky. I was able to convert a lot of work I did with BellSouth and later with Equifax into projects. Further, I came along when there was a shortage of qualified PMs and Bank of America was more interested in people with experience than certifications. That I had.

After a couple of rough starts, primarily due to layoffs, I was finally able to get in a Program Management Office and get a couple of Design Team Leads (DTLs) with a lot of experience. This allowed me to really work on my project management skills. Also, the company I was contracting for, Genesis 10, encouraged our office to have Project Management Training classes at the office. This really helped me get through the book and understand all of the chapters. One thing I was able to get was an excellent spreadsheet that helped organize my hours and show where my time when so I could qualify to take the test. Another thing that helped was all of the yearly training I had to take with Bank of America as part of being a project manager. However, I think the biggest help was when my friend who pushed me into it in the first place sat me down on a weekly basis and had me go over the book with him, gave me his flash cards and notes, gave me mnemonics (I Saw The Current Queen Having Cold Rice Pudding Saturday). Had to add the last part in because between when he took the test and I took it, Stakeholders had been added to the knowledge areas. I also read the book through twice. The third thing I did was get to the point where I could write down the Process Group and Knowledge Area chart on a sheet of paper from memory. Because when you go into the test, that's the FIRST thing you do, then you start answering questions.

But before all that, you have to get permission to take the test. Basically you register with the Project Management Institute. While a membership isn't require, I recommend it, it makes things a bit easier and the test about $150 cheaper. If you kept your membership only for the test, overall you would save $50. Then you have to submit your paperwork showing your qualifications. If you have an advanced degree (Bachelors or higher) you then need to show 36 months of leading project within the past 8 years (there's that Catch-22), and 35 hours of training. Now that you have that training you have to submit your paperwork and it will come back one of three ways: Approved, More Information Required, Rejected. You will be able to see which result you have on their website on your dashboard when you log in. This is why you need to register with them. Rejected usually happens if you didn't fill out your paperwork correctly or couldn't show your work. If you went to an approved training class, which can cost as much as $3,000, you'll get an approval 100% of the time. I however, went the self-taught route. This is a toss-up. You might get approved right away or they may ask for more information. In my case, they asked for more information. Fortunately, I was able to show my training Bank of America training hours, as well as get my boss and several other to sign off on it. After submitting the additional paperwork, I was good to go in less than a day. 

Oh, and the test isn't easy. You don't cram the night before and hope you get luck. It's 180 questions and you get 4 hours to take it. Grading is quick since it's done on a computer but here's a key fact to remember a certain number of questions are just "thrown out" before grading starts. So make sure you know as much as you can because you don't know if they'll throw away your best answers or your worse ones. And at $550 ($405 for members) again it's not something you want to take lightly. When I took it, you had to schedule it in an exam office and pay for the test when you scheduled it. 

One thing I do highly recommend before you take the test is taking practice exams. This isn't so much so you'll know every answer, you won't but some of those questions might show up, but it's so you'll get a feel for how the test is written. In a nutshell it's like this: There are 4 answers. One you can easily throw out because it will obviously be wrong. Another one will be wrong after you think about the question for a moment; read the question and answer several times to be sure. The last two will be VERY close to each other and this is where your knowledge will be very important. Some answers might feel like they could fit in multiple categories. An answer talking about the stakeholders might fit in a Communication question. That's where you have to really see the differences and find the communication answer to that question. Also, one other hint is all the questions will be from the book. They don't go outside of the book, at least they didn't when I took the test.

So on February 9th, 2015 (my late father's birthday) I went to the proctored site, locked my phone, wallet, and keys in a locker provided by the sight, took 4 sheets of paper, 2 wooden pencils, and a basic calculator into a room, sat down, and began to write. I wrote out the matrix. Satisfied that I was close enough, I hit enter and began the test. One bathroom break and 3.5 hour later, I hit "yes" to the question "Are you sure?" (No backies!) While I waited they gave me a survey, as if that was going take my mind off of wanting to know the results. I whipped thru it say basically, "they were fine, where's my test result?" And there flash on the screen in all of it's black-and-white glory: PASSED.

I was ELATED!! All that work, all that time, all of those hours had boiled down to a single 7-letter word. I went outside with a smile on my face. The lady at the desk smiled at me and said, "Congratulations!" as she handed my a print copy of my results. When I logged into the PMI website, I was met with a congratulatory banner and a link to my digital certification. A real one arrived in the mail about a month later.

The beginning of my Project Management journey ended with my obtaining my certification. Now things were really going to get interesting. Going forward I intend to not only share some more stories, but things I have learned over the years about PMBOK and Agile and their use. 

But that's a blog for another day.