Project Management qualifications....

[Wilmslow]

As a permie I may as well make the most of paid courses in company time......

What are thw respected project management ones to go for? Working in QA as part of governance I work closely with PM's, so, seems reasonable to get a qualification in that area....

Heard about ISEB project management Prince II.

We happen to use End2End - is there a recognised qual for this?

Will put me in much better stead for my planned return to the dark side in a couple of years.....

[malvolio]

Prince2 is admired by agencies, but largely disregarded in the real world as being too easy. Lots of qualified people out there who couldn't PM a trip to Tesco. Never heard of End2End after 15 years in PM, nuff said...?

People are starting to ask for PMI these days, and HMG jobs will often look for MSP

[TykeMerc]

Prince2 is admired by agencies, but largely disregarded in the real world as being too easy. Lots of qualified people out there who couldn't PM a trip to Tesco. Never heard of End2End after 15 years in PM, nuff said...?

People are starting to ask for PMI these days, and HMG jobs will often look for MSP

The ones that I know are regarded by employers as valuable (I reserve the right to not voice my opinion on their real world value to a proper PM) are:-

Prince2
PMI (although this seems more popular with US based clients as it's originally a US qualification)
APM
MSP

Admittedly MSP is somewhat targetted at Programme rather than Project Management on large programmes although a good PM can Programme Manage with little trouble.

Like any professional qualification they are only indicators that someone can pass exams and while I have a fair collection of passes myself I don't believe that they're any kind of substitute for real project management experience, they're a crowbar to open the clients door and nothing more.

There are loads of PM approaches which have been given names by large corporates and represent parts of their governance, BAES for instance call theirs LCM and apply it from anything as small as a 100k budget IT project to tendering for, building and comissioning an aircraft carrier including its through live support.

[Clippy]

The ones that I know are regarded by employers as valuable (I reserve the right to not voice my opinion on their real world value to a proper PM) are:-

Prince2
PMI (although this seems more popular with US based clients as it's originally a US qualification)
APM
MSP

Admittedly MSP is somewhat targetted at Programme rather than Project Management on large programmes although a good PM can Programme Manage with little trouble.

Like any professional qualification they are only indicators that someone can pass exams and while I have a fair collection of passes myself I don't believe that they're any kind of substitute for real project management experience, they're a crowbar to open the clients door and nothing more.

There are loads of PM approaches which have been given names by large corporates and represent parts of their governance, BAES for instance call theirs LCM and apply it from anything as small as a 100k budget IT project to tendering for, building and comissioning an aircraft carrier including its through live support.

How comprehensive a qual is PMI?

I work in the Service Delivery field and thought it may be useful gaining the Prince 2 Foundation qual to gain an appreciation/understanding of what is involved.

If it's value is diminishing, is PMI worth doing instead?

[Wilmslow]

How comprehensive a qual is PMI?

I work in the Service Delivery field and thought it may be useful gaining the Prince 2 Foundation qual to gain an appreciation/understanding of what is involved.

If it's value is diminishing, is PMI worth doing instead?

Ditto - looks like PMI and Prince 2 are both useful for different reasons. My dilemma is which one to plump for first.....

end2End is being deployed by a mob called Project 1 - apparantly End2End is very similar to Prince 2, but, as I do not know Prince 2 I cannot say either way as yet!

Here is the End2End blurb... http://www.projectoneconsulting.co.uk/E2E.asp

Lets just say that using it is rather entertaining......

[BolshieBastard]

.......................and HMG jobs will often look for MSP

Ha! Twas HMG that introduced PRINCE in the first place!

[thunderlizard]

Here is the End2End blurb... http://www.projectoneconsulting.co.uk/E2E.asp

an excellent diagram and one which perfectly describes how project management works in most places I know.

An autonomous island that sits in the middle, while all the other stuff happens around it, without ever actually touching it.

[malvolio]

Actually I'm old enough to have learned PRINCE proper, rather than this new-fangled lightweight Prince2...

However, you can do a basic Prince Foundation course which will give you the basics and let you decide if you need to take it further. Certainly anyone that wants to head for management needs to understand (if not actively practice) some kind of PM methjodology as well as ITIL. PMI is more heavyweight but underneath it follows the same core principles (after all, no matter what you're building, you have to understand what you need to do to deliver the damn thing!). MSP is more about bigger projects that are run through a gateway review process.

At the end of the day though, I'd take someone who has actually delivered to time and budget over anyone with qualifications that say they could.

[HermanDune]

I also have a few passes under my belt but not sure if I could pass them again based on retained knowledge. Therein lies the problem. They prove you had knowledge on the subject but not whether you still have the same knowledge.

[TykeMerc]

Wilmslow odds are very high that End2end is a bespoked version of Prince2, that being said Prince2 is merely a methodology not a method and you're supposed to use the bits that you feel are appropriate to your specific project and bin the rest.
A Prince2 course will NOT teach you how to manage projects, it will teach you the names of the bits of the methodology, a bunch of buzzwords and assuming your trainer is any good some ways in which to apply the methodology to example project scenarios.

In reality most of the PM qualifications centre around unavoidably common concepts which any PM worth his salt will apply anyway no matter if he's attended 0 or 10 courses.