There is no doubt that experience is important and generally far more important than certifications. After all, if one try hard enough, you can pass most certifications exams. But experience is based on the school of hard knocks. In my last job as the global director of a large project office, I never once hired a person just because of his/her certification.

But the challenge for most organization is that it is very difficult to evaluate the true value of experience. Certification is relatively objective, and this is where certification continue to be a major differentiators.

Perhaps, more important and in disagreement with the article, I do not believe the PMP exam is overwhelmed with IT exam questions. It is true that project management is very popular in the IT profession, but PMI has made a strong effort attracting other professionals. Project management, as I teach it in Montclair State, is viewed as an essential management skill in any industry. In fact, I am developing a course for even non-business and non-IT students in which project management is for everyone.

Te Wu’s comment on the below article:

Mark Howe for Sourceable.net writes:  While certification provides benefits for both individual professionals and organisations in the architecture, engineering and construction space, qualifications remain the most tried and reliable means for project managers to prove their chops and advance their careers.

According to David Williams, general manager of Engineering Education Australia, the qualification route remains the preferred means for projectmanagers to shore up their professional credentials, given that it attests to practical experience as opposed to just theoretical knowledge and understanding.

“Experience is the best way [to become a project manager] and the certification pathway is not about experience,” said Williams. “You can go on the certification pathway without any experience whatsoever because certification isn’t assessing your experience – it’s assessing your knowledge.

“The qualification pathway is the opposite. You cannot become qualified unless you are deemed as competent in the workplace – so it’s skill and demonstration-based.”

While Williams acknowledges the heightened understanding and knowledge that certification can confer, he believes these improvements alone are not sufficient to produce an outstanding project manager.

“There’s not doubt that certification gives the candidate lots of knowledge about methodologies and frameworks,” he said. “Doing PMI’s Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, for example, provides a good understanding of the language and terminology and so on, which is a definitely helpful as a project manager.

“However, it won’t be enough. They will need to gather experience on the job, and if they want to have that experience formalized, they will need to go down the qualification path.”  SNIP, the article continues @ Sourceable.net, click here to continue reading…..