Project managers are the backbone of every workplace endeavor: when they do well, so does the overall business. A wise employer therefore knows that they are worth giving heavy monetary investment if there is good reason to think it will improve the effectiveness of their work. Getting your top project management employees PMP-certified promises to significantly improve their performance and grow your profits at the same time.

What is PMP?

PMP is an acronym that stands for Project Management Professional, a designation that is awarded to project management workers who successfully obtain the credential of the same name. The Project Management Institute, a non-profit globally recognized professional organization for individuals trained in project management, governs the program.

The PMP credential is awarded to project managers who successfully pass the appropriate exam. In order to be eligible to sit for it, though, one must have logged 35 hours of project management education as well as a generous amount of previous experience working in the field (4,500 hours spent managing projects for those with a post-secondary degree, 7,500 hours for those without one).

Once a person has met these requirements, they should move on to studying the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK), as that will be the primary source of exam material. This can be done on one's own or as part of a class curriculum (the second is generally more advantageous, as we will discuss).

Ultimately, exam writers must answer 175 multiple-choice questions that are scored proportionally to their difficulty. It's known to be a fairly challenging exam with an initial pass rate of just 3 in 5, so those who wish to attempt it must be prepared to put in plenty of work in order to succeed.

Standardizing Methods to Boost Results

As an employer, you only hire the best candidates for your project management positions. However, if your current project managers are not PMP certified, they may not be living up to their full potential. PMP standards call for the use of proven methodology that has been collected and vetted by one central authoritative body and has been shown to correlate strongly with project success.

When everyone is using the same expertly formulated standards and practices, not only can you count on consistent positive results - you can also more easily compare levels of performance between individuals and determine each worker's strong points. This level of organization makes for a much more efficient business.

Additionally, you can count on this training process to greatly speed up the professional development of newer recruits with less well-rounded careers. The PMP curriculum is composed of the collective knowledge of many of the world's leading project management practitioners and includes a solution for every known roadblock those trailblazers have come across. Because of this, PMP training can be very helpful in rounding out the skill set of a project manager who shows great promise but still occasionally stumbles in the face of uncertainty.

Classes vs. Individual Study: Seeking the Best Outcomes

Testing for the PMP credential technically does not require any classwork - candidates have the option of doing all exam preparation on their own time if the educational requirements are met in some other way. That said, there are some significant downsides to opting out of this training that must be considered during the decision-making process.

Because the certification requires that candidates have previous project management work experience to be eligible to test for it, PMP students are necessarily also people who have developed some of their own methods of getting things done in this field.

PMP coursework will reveal the ways in which these ingrained habits are not necessarily optimal, but it can be hard for students to make the change without outside support - simply reading about the utility of a new practice does not always highlight why that practice is superior to the one you are used to.

With an instructor on hand to help explain some of these new principles, however, PMP concepts become much more accessible. Students have the opportunity to ask whatever questions are necessary to help them get a better grasp of the material and its importance. Further, instructors are almost always former project managers who have first-hand experience using the methods they teach, so they can explain things in practical terms that transcend mere theoretical descriptions. For these reasons, formal training is the single best way to prepare for the PMP exam.

Turning your project managers into certified PMPs is a critical task, but it doesn't have to be a complicated one; Infotec is here to help you make it happen. Our PMP prep course satisfies the 35-hour educational requirement for the PMP credential application and ensures that your employees have strong chances of success from their very first examination attempt. Connect with us today to learn about how you can set up this invaluable training opportunity for your project management staff.

For more information about Infotec or any of our programs click here: http://www.infotectraining.com/ or https://ops.infotecpro.com/course_schedule/course_schedule.cfm.