We Need Competency Based Certification !
On "Perceived " vs "Real Value"
of Professional Credentialing in South East Asia
Paul D. Giammalvo
Having lived and worked in South East Asia for over eleven years , and have been actively involved with professional credentialing with both the Project Management Institute's Project Management Professional (PMP) as well as American Association of Cost Engineers Certified Cost Engineer (CCE)
...As a result I have observed disturbing trends between the "perceived" value of professional certifications versus the "real" or true value. The real value of obtaining professional certification has yet to be "proven beyond a reasonable doubt", resulting in a "gap" between the "real" value and the "perceived value". Failure to close this gap will hurt the image of professional credentialing..
An example of the danger of this "perceived value" of the PMP was published in the Beijing Youth Daily (circa 2000) that the "three golden tickets" for a good job with Western corporations were the MBA, MPA and PMP. While the article did not equate the PMP to having a Masters degree, the headline was sufficiently misleading as to create that impression. To their credit, the Project Management Institute asked the responsible Chinese state agency, the Training Center of State Administration for Foreign Expert Affairs (TC-SAFEA) to be more accurate in their communications. But the fact remains the PMP, CCE and similar "knowledge based" credentials have a "perceived value" that has yet to be proven or validated through the better execution of projects.
In the developing nations, obtaining a "globally recognized" credential such as the PMP, is a "ticket" to a higher paying job in another country. This is a shared perception amongst many practitioners, and substantiated by actual examples.
...Obtaining certification has been transformed into a highly competitive event for the sake of passing the exam only, rather than benchmark oneself against your peers and increase your knowledge. This difference is a disturbing trend, and is evident through the proliferation of study guides focused not on learning how to be better project managers but on the single objective to pass the exam only....
The second "driver" behind the "perceived value" of professional certification relates to the mobilizing and maintaining expensive expatriate staff in a foreign country combined with the need for multi-national companies to remain "politically correct" by demonstrating a solid commitment to "technology transfer". This results in a push towards getting local professionals "up to speed" as quickly as possible so they can take over the responsibilities of their expatriate mentors. Professional credentialing programs such as the PMP enable multi-national companies to achieve this objective with a degree of confidence, provided the nationals can in fact execute efficiently and effectively
The fact is, that obtaining one's PMP or other certification has overshadowed the importance of actually running better project's, is a disturbing trend that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.
...The solution is to transform the PMP, CCE and similar knowledge based certification programs into full blown competency based test models...
The solution should follow the well-proven and tested approach adopted by the Professional Engineer (PE) program, where an initial test (EIT or Engineering in Training) validates the knowledge of an individual, but recognition as a fully qualified practitioner does not follow until some sort of "apprenticeship" or "internship" has been served. That is, the practitioner must prove his/her capabilities under "live fire" conditions. This would take much of the pressure off just "passing the exam" and cause the focus to be better and more appropriately focused on "executing projects better".
Paul D. Giammalvo, CDT, PMP, CCE, MScPM
Jakarta Pusat
INDONESIA
About the Author:
Paul D. Giammalvo, CDT, PMP, CCE, MScPM, is Director of the ASEAN Project
Manager's Center of Excellence, Inc. (APMX) For over 12 years, he has been
provided Project Management training and consulting throughout SE Asia.
He is active in the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering
International, (AACE); Construction Specifications Institute (CSI); Construction
Management Association of America, (CMAA) and serves on the Global Project
Management Forum Steering Committee. Email
Paul
G. Giammalvo or visit
Paul's Website