PMP vs GWU MSPM ?

10 February 2016                                                                                             

Greetings and welcome to my first blog on Project Management topics!

As a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) since 2006, as well as a student in the Project Management graduate school program at The George Washington University, I’m often asked by peers and prospects if one should pursue the PMP certification, or if one should pursue the MSPM graduate degree at GWU.   This is a great question requiring introspective “soul searching” by evaluating what one truly seeks out of their career.  

Hopefully you'll find my explanation, below, abbreviated:

PMI’s PMP certification will not validate that you know “how” to be a project manager. It validates that you have a proficient-enough level of understanding of PMI’s key knowledge areas and their respective processes and procedures (inputs, tools, and outputs) as defined in PMI’s Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK).  

Realize that project management is much more than just learning the necessary inputs, tools, and outputs and requires knowledge and experience spanning various disciplines.   While Decision Sciences-based mechanics are very important in performing project management-type work, in the end project management is about communication, with the specific intent to monitor and control variance. The reason there is such desire to control variance is in order to mitigate or lessen both known and unknown risk!   The pursuit of mitigating (or eliminating) risk is paramount to the successful execution of work in order to conserve precious financial resources.

Through my pursuit of acquiring my MSPM from the GWU program of project management I have learned that GWU teaches a student not just the mechanics or tools of project management and Decision Science but more importantly how to apply these tools in order to make better critical decisions.  It's important for the project manager to make these successful critical decisions in order to ..you guessed it, monitor and control variance to, again, mitigate or eliminate risk and subsequently save financial resources (or sometimes even lives).

Therefore, if one is already a seasoned “project manager”, the pursuit of a PMI PMP certification may be a good path for them.  Individuals on other career paths may also benefit from acquiring the PMP as it offers a very good level of understanding of project management best practices and the mechanics involved in making critical decisions.  As previously mentioned, its pursuit will not validate that you are a “good” project manager.   One can only acquire that from real, hands-on experience--which brings me to my next point below.

Now, if one wishes to embark-upon the path of becoming a bona fide project manager by occupation, then the MSPM program at The George Washington University will indeed help them learn to become such a person.  This is as a result of the rigorous and in-depth hands-on project management-related experiences gained from doing the coursework and required assignments of each class, in addition to working with teams of people remotely--sometimes multiple time zone differences away!

In summary, one should also realize that even if they are already a PMP-certified project manager with a decade of experience, the GWU MSPM program will enhance and validate the knowledge and experience one already knows, and subsequently expand-upon it.  

Note:

These sentiments are my opinions based on my own personal experiences and were expressed without remuneration from GWU or the PMI.  

Respectfully submitted,

Nicholas M. Stavrakakis, PMP