No Better Time Than Now to Pursue That PMP Certification
I recently learned about a new twist on an old game: Corporate BS Bingo. 
Everyone creates their own bingo card with their most irritating corporate-speak terms. You know, those corporate terms that get so overused that they devolve into meaninglessness. Throughout the course of a meeting or maybe the course of a week, players put tokens on the squares when they hear each term. The first one to get a bingo shouts “BS” (or probably the more robust version of it).
Synergy is on my Corporate BS Bingo card – especially when someone talks about leveraging it. Leveraging synergy sounds like such a fabulous idea. What the heck does it mean?
What’s on your bingo card? Organic growth? Paradigm shift? Transparency?
Some words will never end up on a Corporate BS Bingo card. Take certification, for example. There’s no overusing that one. It was good yesterday, it’s good today, and it will continue to be good tomorrow as we all seek ways to reinvent ourselves to remain competitive in today’s highly global economy.
What does your next project management professional development step look like? If you see PMP® being added to your business card in the future, there’s no better time than now to pursue that certification. With the PMP® exam undergoing significant changes effective August 31, 2011, taking the exam sooner rather than later is well advised.
Some details are available now pertaining to the exam changes, and more will be forthcoming in the coming months from the Project Management Institute (PMI). In the meantime, we know that two key things will change:
First, Professional and Social Responsibility, currently tested as a separate section in the exam, will be integrated into the exam as a whole. One the one hand, that sounds like a huge change. On the other hand, it’s virtually impossible to test concepts around ethics and professional behavior without other project management context. I could be wrong, but I’m inclined to think that this won’t fundamentally change the exam experience from a test-taker’s perspective.
Of greater interest is the second key change which, according to PMI, will include new or substantial changes and affect approximately 30% of the exam content. I’ll be spending time trying to better understand exactly what that means and will be publishing what I find in the coming weeks.
What I do know is that “The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t,” and right now there is as much known about the current exam as will be known, and the new exam will be terra incognita for awhile even after its release.
In short, if you’re considering a redesign of your email signature to include PMP after your name, get busy! Develop a plan, commit time every day to doing something to prepare, take a class, and take practice exams. Lots of them!
An internet search will yield a cornucopia of online practice tests. They vary in quality, style, and organization. Some require you to answer all of the questions before getting the correct answers, for example, while others allow you to get answers for each question as you go. Make sure any test you use is pertinent to the 4th Edition of the PMBOK® Guide.
And remember that as with anything, you often get what you pay for, so shop around.
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Ready to earn your PMP Certification?
1) Visit the certification page on the PMI website for requirements and application instructions.
2) Check our our PMP Resources webpage.
3) Take our PMP Certification Boot Camp or subscribe to our PMP Online Study Exam.
Andrea Brockmeier, PMP, CSM, PMI-PBA, BRMP is the Director of Project Management for Watermark Learning. Andrea is an experienced trainer, facilitator, speaker, and project manager, with over 25 years of business experience. Andrea oversees certification and skills development curriculum in project management, business analysis, and leadership. She has been a speaker at IIBA® and PMI® conferences and is an active volunteer. She enjoys practicing what she teaches and has a steady stream of projects that she manages. Andrea is highly committed to partnering with her clients through projects, consulting, and training, and seeks to make every engagement enjoyable as well as valuable.
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