Project Management Certification
After months of studying, I could finally accomplish an old dream: be a certified project manager. I work with projects since the dawn of time. I create personal and professional projects often. Big and small. For myself, with teams, and for the company.
Despite liking dealing with processes, my goal was never to be in a process-driven career. Personally, the part I like the most about processes is their implementation or optimization projects!
And I genuinely try to enhance my abilities, by studying, researching, and training. I’m an agile advocate at my job long before it was a thing. Now they are all project-flying and agile-ing all major parts of the business processes.
But one thing is to know you are good at something. Another thing completely different is to convince someone about it. Here comes the certification program. PMI is the de-facto institution regarding project management. I read their main material many, many years ago and followed their general guidelines ever since. But the certification itself, nope.
Better later than never. I decided to finally apply for the certification exam. Here’s a motivational tip: first apply for an exam then start to study for it. It’s much more effective, psychologically speaking, to have a fixed deadline to be engaged and motivated. Studying for a “to be defined” date is prone to procrastination.
I bought an online course. The instructor was very clear: each exam has its quirks and style. He will exploit PMI’s style to deliver a laser-focused course with the only goal being to facilitate passing the exam. No philosophical discussions. No discussions at all. Just the pure content. Delivered with the precise method.
It was both effective and efficient. It took me just a week of classes and an extra one to review and consolidate the knowledge. PMI requires that one should have not only a previous experience in the field but also a minimum amount of formal education, so the classes could not be shorter even if possible.
I did the online exam. Man, it was equally scary. Some dude had to check our computer screen, I had to turn on the camera all time. And any movement or sound, I was called upon.
The questions were super generic. It’s the downside of being a generic Project Management certification. It was not about construction or software development. So the online course was right. After a couple of hours, exhausted (I had to do it after the business hour, so I was extra tired), I finished.
Days after, the good news: I did it! One old dream checked! And it’s on my Linkedin, of course!
