Why get a Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification?

Above and beyond the fact that the PMP® is the most prestigious non-technical certification in the world, the certification is also proof of a lot of hard work, project management experience, and passing a very difficult exam – not impossible, but difficult. Why even enter it? Having one or multiple project management certifications shows your willingness to learn, try new things, and improve your organization's projects, which in turn provides value to the organization. Congratulations on taking the first step toward career improvement! Currently, project management is in high demand globally, and that growth shows little chance of slowing down. Project managers make anywhere between $70,000 and $150,000 annually, based on their location and targeted project management categories.

There isn't a one-size-fits-all approach to project management in any industry and much of the time, our organizational processes and corporate cultures influence our projects the most. But what if you had multiple tools and knowledge at your disposal to adapt and adjust as needed to meet the demands of your projects? What if you could adapt those best practices to conform to your organizational processes and industry? That would provide you with the knowledge and flexibility to determine what tools your project needs and allow you to make determinations and adjustments when certain techniques aren't working in your current environment.

You may see some things in this guide and in your exams that will not align with your organization's best practices or simply won't work in your current environment. That is totally okay! You will need that information to answer questions correctly in your exams and maybe as you progress through your career, you'll find a need for some of those best practices down the line.

Having a set of best practices that have been proven over and over again to work but that are adaptable to your environment is one of the main reasons why the PMP® certification exists. Throughout this guide, you will find that I compare perfect-world project management to real-world project management. The reason I'll be doing this is to help solidify content in a way that may resonate with your current experiences. Those experiences are potentially not a perfect world. I know, right? I've been there – actually, I'm still there! Where is this perfect world and how do I get there? I feel your pain.

There will be concepts that will need to be adapted to suit your current projects, and therein lies the importance of The PMBOK® Guide – 6th Edition. It isn't a step-by-step handbook; it is a guide to determining what will work within your own unique projects and what will not. Much like when you travel with a tourist guidebook filled with all sorts of things you could see and do, you have decisions to make along the way. Should we see this site or that site? You can't see them all, so you will need to decide what worked for your own unique travel experience. Project management is quite similar. Should we do this or that? The answer to that question depends on many different situations, industries, corporate cultures, and the like. Sometimes, you just wing it in the real world and hope it works.