Project Managers - I need your input please

[GazCol]

Yes. That was the same page I got my data from. If you add up the number of tax payers you get to figure that 97.3% earn less than 55k.


Also from the same page:



Which is an interesting stat we can trot out next time someone says that life is better in Germany, France, Portugal etc.

How much higher, than the European Average, is Germany, France, Portugal, etc?

[tomtomagain]

Do you think income has increased evenly or do you think the top 1% has been increasing more quickly?

No idea. How can we tell if the income for the top 1% has increased disproportionately in relation to the remaining 99%?

What sort of effects do you think I should be looking out for? Increasing house prices in Chelsea? Rapid increase in the share price of yacht manufacturers?

[tomtomagain]

How much higher, than the European Average, is Germany, France, Portugal, etc?

That bit they didn't tell .... but more to the point how do you express a standard of living as a %age anyway?

My standard of living is based on a whole number of factors including my health, family, friends, commute to work, the work I do, hobbies, income, amount of times I go to the pub.

Obviously someone compiles some numbers based on a range of factors ... but I find life a very individual affair, what I consider important to my standard of living you may or may not.

[Old Greg]

Yes. That was the same page I got my data from. If you add up the number of tax payers you get to figure that 97.3% earn less than 55k.

Although the 95th centile is £68,500.

[zerointeractive]

Prince2 course is much more credible than OU courses

In my experience, a PRINCE2 certification makes the difference. I jumped in PM after a Foundation certification and additional learning about PMP principles and calculations (EV, SVP, etc..).
These 2 courses helped me landing important interviews, than is to you to excel during it!

[craig1]

In my experience, a PRINCE2 certification makes the difference. I jumped in PM after a Foundation certification and additional learning about PMP principles and calculations (EV, SVP, etc..).
These 2 courses helped me landing important interviews, than is to you to excel during it!

This is something that gets me annoyed. PRINCE2 is about as credible in certifying a project manager as Iain Duncan Smith is to good political leadership.

If you have PRINCE2 Foundation or Practitioner but haven't formally run a project then you're not a project manager. PRINCE2 is a methodology, as is PMI PMP. It's the equivalent of reading the Highway Code and thinking you can drive a car.

Conversely, the OU course actually requires you to put your training into a workplace situation, you may not be a project manager but the course will show you how to apply sound project management principles to a project. As someone who has had to hire PMs, I know which I'd respect more...

[tomtomagain]

This is something that gets me annoyed. PRINCE2 is about as credible in certifying a project manager as Iain Duncan Smith is to good political leadership.

If you have PRINCE2 Foundation or Practitioner but haven't formally run a project then you're not a project manager. PRINCE2 is a methodology, as is PMI PMP. It's the equivalent of reading the Highway Code and thinking you can drive a car.

Conversely, the OU course actually requires you to put your training into a workplace situation, you may not be a project manager but the course will show you how to apply sound project management principles to a project. As someone who has had to hire PMs, I know which I'd respect more...

This is true ... but any accreditation allows the hiring manager to differentiate between similar candidates.

Imagine you are looking to hire a project manager to run a $5M project. You put out a job advert that describes the role and states the core skills. How many CV's do you think you will receive? 10? 20? 30?

Last time I hired a PM I had at least 20 CV's to sort ( and that was after the contractor desk had pre-filtered ).

You only want to interview maybe 3 -4. So how do you pick the best candidates? Well systematically you go through each CV saying

Has he worked on a project of a similar size? In the same industry? Same technology? Are they PMI ( or Prince2 ) certified?

And after that you might have a few likely candidates .... the accreditation helps the interviewer select ... it shows that the candidate takes Project Management seriously and they are not just some ASP.NET programmer who thinks project management is the easy option.

[Antman]

If I was choosing between 2 PMs who had consistently delivered $5M projects I'd be looking at personality fit, I don't think certification would get much of a look-in. It'd be like asking a taxi driver stopping distances before getting in a cab, you either think s/he can get you to your destination or not.

Note: I've never hired project managers, just my tuppence.

[northernladuk]

If I was choosing between 2 PMs who had consistently delivered $5M projects I'd be looking at personality fit, I don't think certification would get much of a look-in. It'd be like asking a taxi driver stopping distances before getting in a cab, you either think s/he can get you to your destination or not.

Note: I've never hired project managers, just my tuppence.

That is the reality of it. The qualification really just get's you past the agent IMO.

[craig1]

That is the reality of it. The qualification really just get's you past the agent IMO.

Unfortunately that's too true. I've had know-nothing 18 year old agents tell me about how seriously they treat the PRINCE2 Practitioner qualification and how it's the benchmark qualification of a proper project manager.

In reality, it's a cash cow money making tool for the training providers and APM Group and was an utter waste of time and money as a course when I did it. The whole project management accreditation market is snake oil sales at its very worst. The only course that I've done that was worse than PRINCE2 was ITIL Foundation, have the book read to you for 3 days, take the book into the exam and tick a few boxes.

I'd like to see a proper certification come in for project management, don't care who runs it but it should be methodology neutral, you should be able to take in any methodology you want, even your own made-up one. An independent assessment that proves that you know how to start a project, how to manage through business case, requirements, scoping, design, build, test, deploy, handover and close as well as risk and issue management, matrix staff time management, stakeholder management, communications, documentation, accuracy of communication, diagnosing common problems and so on. I'd then have a senior grade where you have to register and every project you do for two years is externally verified for size and complexity, you'd only get your senior grade after the two years and a successfully verified standard of project progress.