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February 2011 Project Management Journal DOI: 10.1002/pmj 31
INTRODUCTION
T
he establishment of a new research discipline, with agreement on the
concomitant body of knowledge, is a process rife with opportunity for
scholarship and discourse. Included in the evolution of many new
disciplines is the official credentialing of initiates/adherents to said
discipline. This credentialing process goes beyond mere membership; it pur-
ports to signify attainment of a specified set of skills and experiences along
with an understanding of a core body of knowledge. We use the term certifi-
cation to denote mastery of these skills, experiences, and knowledge. The
issuance of a certificate by a national or international oversight board is writ-
ten evidence that the incumbent has met specified requirements. Being cer-
tified is similar to being endorsed by the official standards keepers; one
might think of it as human (as opposed to product) quality assurance. Given
the significance attached to professional certification, it becomes incum-
bent upon the granting organization to ensure that professional standards
and instructional content reflect best practices within the discipline. This is
no small order, as an emerging discipline is, by definition, a work in
progressnot easily nor definitively captured. Project management, as a
scholarly discipline, has exhibited such growing pains, with a plethora of
perspectives employed to describe and analyze the process. Not surprising-
ly, the breadth of perspectives and the rapid production of new discipline
knowledge create a continual challenge for credentialing organizations. This
research looks specifically at the Project Management Professional (PMP

)
certification and its valuation by IT executives as a core PM competency and
as a correlate of project success.
The PMP Credential
Many have argued that A Guide to the Project Management Body of
Knowledge (PMBOK

Guide; Project Management Institute, 2008) is the

global de facto standard for those engaged in project management. The
PMBOK

Guide was first published as a standard by the Project Management

Institute (PMI) in 1996 and has been revised several times since then, most
recently in 2008. The stated body of knowledge consists of five Project
Management Process Groups (Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring
and Controlling, and Closing) and nine Knowledge Areas (Project
Integration, Scope, Time, Cost, Quality, Risk, Procurement, Communications,
and Human Resources). The PMBOK

Guide is one of many areas assessed

and acknowledged via the PMP

certification credential. Although PMI

PMP Certification as a Core
Competency: Necessary But
Not Sufficient
Jo Ann Starkweather, Department of Information Systems & Technology, Northeastern State
University, Tahlequah, OK, USA
Deborah H. Stevenson, Department of Information Systems & Technology, Northeastern
State University, Tahlequah, OK, USA
ABSTRACT
This research seeks to investigate the relation-
ship between project management certification
and established project management core com-
petencies in the IT industry. This study was con-
ducted in two phases, the objective being to
first identify those characteristics most com-
mon to the successful hire of project managers,
from the perspective of IT recruiters. Once iden-
tified, the study sought to determine preference
for these characteristics from the point of view
of corporate IT executives. Two hypotheses were
tested in an effort to determine the valuation of
Project Management Professional (PMP

) certi-
fication as a core competency and as an indica-
tor of project success. Both hypotheses were
rejected, as results indicated that PMP

certifi-
cation was the least valued of 15 core compe-
tencies and that there was no difference in proj-
ect success rates between PMP

-certified project
managers and uncertified project managers. In
addition, recruiters and IT executives sugges-
tions for improvement in the delivery of the
project management body of knowledge are
discussed.
KEYWORDS: project management; PMP

certification; IT executives; PM competencies

Project Management Journal, Vol. 42, No. 1, 3141
2010 by the Project Management Institute
Published online in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/pmj.20174
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32 February 2011 Project Management Journal DOI: 10.1002/pmj
PMP Certification as a Core Competency
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offers several types of credentials
related to project management, the
gold standard is certification as a
Project Management Professional

.
The PMP

was initiated in 1984 to rec-
ognize an individuals demonstrated
understanding of the knowledge and
skills to lead and direct project teams
and to deliver results within the con-
straints of schedule, budget, and
resources (PMI, 2009). In addition to
an individuals educational background,
eligibility requirements in-clude signifi-
cant project management experience,
35 contact hours of formal education
specific to project management, and a
passing score on a 175-item test.
Currently, exam questions are allotted
to content areas, as indicated in Table 1
(PMI, 2009).
Project Management Training
Literature
Assessing the structure of in-house proj-
ect management training programs in a
sample of six organizations, Thiry (2004)
concluded that organizations need to
identify specific strategic goals for the
training prior to the inception of training
and measure the value-added for the
established strategic goals subsequent
to content delivery. Of specific note to
the present research endeavor, Thiry
mentions a lack of communication
between the strategic and tactical levels,
as exemplified by managers measuring
training transfer, whereas the sponsors
thought there was no such measure
(2004, p. 15). Taking a more granular
look at the training curriculum content,
scholars have been addressing this area
for three decades. Reviewing relevant
articles from the 1980s, Loo (1991) states
that authors advocated an emphasis on
application/tools rather than theory and
mastery of a core body of knowledge
that can be generalized to projects irre-
spective of industry type. In the early
1990s, Wirth (1992) notes the need for an
emphasis on integrative skills (e.g., coor-
dinating and facilitating, communicat-
ing, planning, and conflict resolution),
along with boundary-spanning skills
(e.g., business negotiation, legal aspects,
and community, public, and institutional
relations) within project management
education. These emerging skills were
encouraged in lieu of an emphasis on
technical management skills that could
be delegated to staff with computer
expertise. The integrative skills emphasis
is a theme that has been advocated by
several other authors (see, for example,
Belout & Gauvreau, 2004; Belzer, 2001;
El-Sabaa, 2001). By the late 1990s,
researchers were concluding that effec-
tive project managers evolved with
experience, suggesting that initial proj-
ect training and assignments should be
straightforward, emphasizing the tools
and techniques of project management,
whereas later projects and training
should address skills such as managing
people and conflicts, strategy, and lead-
ership (Wateridge, 1997). Within this
genre, the dynamic baseline model for
project management (DBM) was pro-
posed by Seely and Duong (2001). The
model posits a learning curve within
project management that includes four
phases. Initial learning/training address-
es management by rules (MBR)for
example, organizational rules, policies,
and procedures. The second phase,
management by methods (MBM),
emphasizes learning appropriate man-
agement processes and procedures (e.g.,
the work breakdown structure [WBS],
knowledge of the responsibility assign-
ment matrix, cost/schedule perfor-
mance control, and monitoring and
configuration management). In phase
three, management by objectives
(MBO), the trainee learns to establish and
maintain project objectives. Maturation
to this phase assumes mastery of the
rules, policies, and procedures from
the first two levels and the ability to
amend these as needed to achieve proj-
ect goals. Finally, mastery of level four
knowledge, management by values
(MBV), produces a practitioner with
the requisite skills and knowledge to
move the project successfully through
the project life cycle with sensitivity to
corporate values.
More recently, articles addressing
project management education rein-
force the continued need for training
focused on the development of human
skills along with the requisite technical
knowledge germane to a given industry
(Cheng, Dainty, & Moore, 2005; Pant &
Baroudi, 2008). In an attempt to answer
the question of What makes a good
project manager? Cheng et al. (2005)
promote the use of behavioral and job-
task competency frameworks. They
developed a list of 14 job-task compe-
tencies for project managers that
address areas such as delivering the
job to client satisfaction, maintaining
budgetary control, quality assurance,
communication with the project team,
promoting continuous improvement
through team learning and develop-
ment, and promoting and sharing
knowledge. The behavioral model iden-
tified 12 competencies: achievement
orientation, initiative, information seek-
ing, focus on clients needs, impact and
Domain Percentage of Questions
Initiation 11%
Planning 23%
Executing 27%
Monitoring and Controlling 21%
Closing 9%
Professional and Social Responsibility 9%
Table 1: PMP examination blueprint.
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February 2011 Project Management Journal DOI: 10.1002/pmj 33
influence, directiveness, teamwork and
cooperation, team leadership, analyti-
cal thinking, conceptual thinking, self-
control, and flexibility. A comparison of
these behavioral competencies with
those identified in other studies of proj-
ect managers showed that required
competencies for various industrial sec-
tors are similar but differ in the termi-
nology used. However, the content
of these competency statements reveals
that common core behavioral compe-
tencies include achievement orientation,
initiative, teamwork and cooperation,
team leadership, analytical thinking,
conceptual thinking and flexibility
(2005, p. 32). Thus, Cheng et al. recom-
mend using available psychometrics to
screen potential job candidates at the
recruitment level. Once hired, this same
competency framework can be utilized
to determine training needs, measure
performance, and allocate rewards.
Additionally, the need to create a
training environment that fuses the
knowledge of practitioners with that
of academicians is proposed by Berggren
and Sderlund (2008). They advocate
an adaptation of experiential learning
theory where:
(A) key assumption in the theory . . .
is that knowledge is produced in the
context of application. In other
words socially robust knowledge
is superior to reliable, traditional
science-based knowledge because of
the intensive testing and re-testing
in the contexts of application. This
means that co-production of knowl-
edge, between academics and other
actors and practitioners, becomes
increasingly important. It also
addresses the importance of the
articulation of context and new ways
of validation as critical components
for the development of socially
robust knowledge. (2008, p. 289)
Drawing upon the work of Nonaka
and Takeuchi (1995), the authors
emphasize the need to assess manage-
ment learning as it occurs at the individ-
ual, group, and company (organization)
levels. They state that in order to move
beyond the limited learning of training
programs that only provide individuals
with new knowledge, there is a need for
turning lessons learned from the
course into organizational and corpo-
rate practice development (Berggren &
Sderlund, 2008, p. 290). Similarly, the
scholarship of Turner, Keegan, and
Crawford (2003) addresses the impor-
tance of experiential learning in the
project managers successful profes-
sional development.
In terms of training methodologies
at individual, group, and organization
levels, several suggestions have been
made relevant to project management
education. At the individual and group
levels of learning, Loo (2002) advocates
the use of reflective journaling as a proj-
ect management learning tool that facil-
itates critical self-assessment and project
team cohesion. At the organizational
level, Archibald notes, The significant
advantage of internal training efforts is
that specific project teams can be
trained together using current projects
of importance to the sponsoring organi-
zation. The classic training problem of
transfer of the new knowledge and skills
back to the daily responsibilities of the
participants is largely overcome in this
manner (1989, p. 200). This sentiment
continues to be endorsed, as witnessed
by the recommendations of Berggren
and Sderlund (2008) for organizational
actions such as sponsored projects and
top management assignments as a
means to articulate new knowledge
acquired during formal training and
education environments.
Specific to IT project managers,
scholarship by Wateridge (1997) empha-
sizes the need for continuous, phased
training to enhance the probability of
achieving project success. From a career-
path perspective, he suggests that mas-
tery of technical and administrative
skills is an initial asset. Importantly,
these types of skills are readily accessible
and assessable through formal training.
They comprise a critical base for the IT
project management initiate. With these
tools in hand, one is prepared for entry
into the project management environ-
ment where experiential knowledge is
added to the IT project managers skill
repertoire. At this later stage, formal
training is enhanced by project manage-
ment experience, and the skill set
emphasized becomes more refined.
Specifically, Wateridge notes that project
manager maturity facilitates the ability
to enhance skill acquisition in some of
the softer areas such as staff develop-
ment negotiation, team building, and
project politics. In the final stage, the
seasoned project manager should have
the accumulated training and experience
to successfully demonstrate leadership,
delegation, and conflict management
skills along with the requisite skills to
manage multiple projects, affect business
strategy, and be knowledgeable regarding
the legal parameters within which s/he
operates. Wateridge states that it is incum-
bent upon the organization to develop an
individualized training plan combined
with phased project management experi-
ence to increase the probability for IT
project management success (1997).
Theoretical Underpinnings
of Project Management Body of
Knowledge
With the proliferation of project man-
agement throughout industry and the
maturation of project management as
an academic discipline, several per-
spectives have emerged to provide the-
oretical frameworks that facilitate the
construction and testing of hypotheses
regarding the nature of project man-
agement. For example, a recent article
by Koskela and Howell (2002) suggests
no fewer than nine different theoretical
perspectives as appropriate frame-
works for PMP

research, depending
on the level of analysis (organizational
or individual) and the project life-cycle
phase. The demonstrated theoretical
richness of the project management
arena mirrors the evolution of project
management from its origins primarily
in the engineering/construction sector
to a standard form of work organization
utilized in all industries and sectors of
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PMP Certification as a Core Competency
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government. As a result, both academi-
cians and practitioners have a vested
interest in codifying the project
management environment. Each con-
stituency recognizes that a rigorous the-
oretical framework is necessary to
establish the validity of a body of knowl-
edge and the reliability of a prescribed
organizational structure and human
resource pool. The ability to construct
testable hypotheses regarding organiza-
tional and human resource criteria is a
condition that must be addressed to
verify espoused best practices in project
managementthat is, those criteria
critical to eventual project success. In
response to this situation, several theo-
retical perspectives have been adapted
from more mature management and
organization management disciplines
and utilized in scholarly project man-
agement research. A recent review of proj-
ect management research by Bredillet
(2007a, 2007b, 2007c, 2008a, 2008b,
2008c), identifies nine major schools of
thought utilized in project management
research. It is suggested that there is a
growing need to clarify project manage-
ment research trends to support the
development of bodies of knowledge,
professional certifications, educational
programs, and ensuing competencies
as a source of performance and creation
of value according to the current socio-
economic context and management sit-
uations organizations have to face
(Bredillet, 2007b, p. 5).
The plethora of relevant theoretical
perspectives may be viewed as merely
illustrative of the state of flux within the
discipline and serves to demonstrate
the healthy discourse within project
management as a profession. The het-
erogeneity of theoretical perspectives
also suggests that there is great latitude
in the choice of theory, and that factors
such as the unit of analysis (organiza-
tional or individual) and the stage in
the project life cycle will have an impact
upon the eventual theoretical frame-
work adopted for a given research
endeavor. As this research is specifically
concerned with the valuation of project
management education and training, a
knowledge flow perspective is used as a
framework for the construction and
testing of hypotheses. A brief review of
tenets from this theoretical perspective
is presented below.
Snider and Nissen (2003) address
the limitations of the project manage-
ment body of knowledge taxonomies by
advocating a knowledge flow approach
to project management theory. By
acknowledging and assessing both
explicit (BOK) knowledge and tacit
knowledge, it is believed that the
dynamic nature of project management
is captured. As discussed by Snider and
Nissen, the knowledge flow perspective
has been operationalized in two general
forms: (1) knowledge as commodity and
(2) knowledge as socially constructed.
In the case of the former, technology is
frequently used to facilitate knowledge
flow. Examples of knowledge as com-
modity include the use of groupware
among team members to provide real-
time solutions to problems or the digital
archiving of critical experience for
future use as an information resource in
the PM environment. The social con-
struction of knowledge flow emphasizes
the creation of knowledge as an out-
growth of informal social interaction
focused on a problem. Knowledge is
created and shared through informal
exchanges such as discussion of the
problem, argument, and negotiation.
Four knowledge flow dimensions iden-
tified by Nissen and Snider (2002)
include: (1) the degree of explicitness of
the knowledge; (2) the extent of knowl-
edge proliferation throughout the proj-
ect team/organization (reach); (3) the
flow of knowledge across the project life
cycle (creation, organization, formaliza-
tion, distribution, application, and evo-
lution); and (4) the time it takes for a
given piece of information to be dis-
seminated across the enterprise.
Schematically, Snider and Nissen (2003)
depict various knowledge flows as verti-
cal graphs and workflows as horizontal
graphs.
Figure 1 illustrates the three dimen-
sions of life cycle, explicitness, and reach
with project management knowledge
flow vectors superimposed representing
on-the-job training (OJT), communities
of practice (CoP), and conferences.
Snider and Nissen note the first three
knowledge flows (indicated by dashed
Tacit
Interorganizational
Reach
Explicitness
Conferences
CoP OJT Life Cycle
E
A
F
B
D
E
v
o
lv
e

A
p
p
ly

D
is
t
r
ib
u
t
e

F
o
r
m
a
liz
e

O
r
g
a
n
iz
e

C
r
e
a
t
e
Individual Group Organization
Figure 1: Explicit and tacit knowledge flows (Snider & Nissen, 2003).
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February 2011 Project Management Journal DOI: 10.1002/pmj 35
lines) illustrate sources of tacit knowl-
edgeOJT at the individual level, com-
munities of practice at the group level,
and conferences spanning the spectrum
of reach. These knowledge flows are
contrasted with the bold, solid trajectory
depicted for the general project man-
agement body of knowledge, beginning
with tacit knowledge from the experi-
ence of individual project managers
(point E) to the production of formal
taxonomic documents based on the col-
lective experience of a group of project
managers (point F). Over time these
documents comprise an organization
body of knowledge (point B), are distrib-
uted throughout the profession (point
D), and are applied (point A) by individ-
ual project managers, thus coming full
circle.
Ideally, lines for the flow of knowl-
edge throughout the enterprise would
complement workflow linesthat is,
the information (knowledge) needed to
accomplish a particular task at a given
point in the project life cycle would be
readily available to the appropriate
constituencies at that point. Consider,
for example, the knowledge flow line for
knowledge gained from in-house train-
ing in project management. The explic-
itness line would be at the highest level
(i.e., as evidenced by tangible docu-
ments such as textbooks, scholarly arti-
cles, and lecture notes). The reach line
for in-house project management train-
ing could be operationalized as the pro-
portion of project management staff in
attendance or the number of con-
stituencies represented in the audience.
The material that follows will dis-
cuss the application of the knowledge
flow perspective to the current research
endeavor and the resultant hypotheses
to be tested.
The decision to employ a knowledge
flow approach to the operationalization
of project manager competencies has
face validity in that there is an assumed
learning component, as opposed to
innate quality, as regards the develop-
ment of competencies. That is, one
might be exposed to knowledge by
means of some form of formal education
(explicit) or one might gain knowledge,
for example, through experience as a
member of a project management team
(tacit). Content validity is likewise
claimed, as the initial enumeration of
project management competencies will
be derived from the expert opinions of
IT recruiters. The establishment of cri-
terion-related validity (Does the opera-
tionalization behave the way it should,
as you would have predicted?) will
be determined when the competencies
are subjected to statistical analysis.
More specifically, applying a knowledge
flow framework to the current interest
in the salience of PMP

certification,
two research questions emerged. The
first is the significance attached to
PMP

certification as a core competen-

cy, and the second is the valuation
of PMP

certification as an indicator of
project success. Thus, the following
hypothesis will be tested:
H1: PMP

certification is a highly
valued project management core
competency.
The theoretical link regarding PMP

certification is viewed as encompassing

both explicit and tacit knowledge. That
is, the delivery of the project manage-
ment body of knowledge in the form of
formal classroom hours is direct evi-
dence of explicit knowledge. Further-
more, we will subsequently test the
efficacy of PMP

knowledge flows with

the following hypothesis:
H2: PMP

-certified project man-

agers experience more project
success than uncertified project man-
agers.
The derivative hypothesis stated
above is based on the theoretical
assumption that PMP

certification
does indeed provide opportunities for
both explicit and tacit knowledge flows
and that, all other things being equal,
these knowledge flows should result in
higher rates of project success for certi-
fied project managers contrasted with
project success rates for uncertified
project managers. The section that fol-
lows will provide an overview of the
methodology employed to enumerate
project-manager hiring criteria used by
professional IT recruiters and the valu-
ation of these hiring criteria as project
management core competencies by IT
executives.
Research Methodology
This study was conducted in two phas-
es, the objective being to first identify
those characteristics most common to
the successful hire of project managers,
from the perspective of IT recruiters.
Once identified, the study sought to
determine preference for these charac-
teristics from the point of view of corpo-
rate IT executives nationwide. At this
point, a clarification note regarding the
choice of terminology used in describing
these project management attributes is
in order. The term project management
hiring criteria is employed in the discus-
sion of the identification of project
management attributes used by IT
recruiters to screen potential candi-
dates for project management posi-
tions. Once these attributes have been
identified and subsequently assessed by
IT executives in terms of their impor-
tance, the term core competencies will
be used as the IT executives are
responding based on their exposure to
the conduct of project managers in their
employthat is, based on their percep-
tion of those attributes that have been
most critical to the successful conduct
of project managers. The two phases are
discussed in the sections that follow.
Phase 1
The objective of Phase 1 was to identify
a core set of hiring criteria used by IT
recruiters to screen applicants for proj-
ect management positions. While it
would have been easy to assume the
presence of some characteristics, such
as education, work experience, and so
forth, it was thought that the validity of
this item list would be increased with
the responsibility of identifying these
criteria left to the IT recruiters them-
selves. Similarly, the use of established
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competency indices with known relia-
bility and validity was foregone in
lieu of the opportunity to determine,
from an IT recruiters perspective, the
characteristics/attributes that must be
present to ensure an applicants consid-
eration for project manager employment.
Through personal contacts and
Oyas recruiter list, 32 IT recruiters were
sampled nationwide, using online ques-
tionnaires and phone interviews. Each
recruiter was asked to then identify
which characteristics employers looked
for in project manager hires. The list of
responses was compiled into the Hiring
Criteria Index (HCI), as shown in Table 2.
Phase 2
The second half of this study sought to
examine what core project manage-
ment competencies or characteristics
IT managers valued nationwide. A
questionnaire was sent to 3,258 IT
managers and executives, asking them,
through a seven-point Likert scale, to
identify the relative importance of each
of the 15 criteria in their evaluation of
project manager candidates for their
organizations. An open-ended category
was included to allow IT executives to
suggest additional competencies con-
tributing to success in project manage-
ment. Basic demographic information
was collected, such as respondents age,
years in IT, years with the company,
workforce composition, and budget
allocations for project management
training.
Analysis
The purpose of this analysis was to
investigate the significance of PMP

certification, as well as other established

project management core competen-
cies in companies across the United
States. Prior to the analysis of the rela-
tive importance of these criteria,
Cronbachs alpha was run to determine
the reliability of these items as a valid
measure of project management hiring
criteria itself (Table 3). Only the original
15 items were included in the reliability
tests since just five respondents wrote in
the Other category, and three of those
write-ins were represented in the origi-
nal list of items. Strong reliability of the
15 attributes was indicated with a
resultant Cronbachs alpha of 0.917.
Subsequent index analyses were run to
determine if omitting any one of the
items from the index would significant-
ly improve the Cronbachs alpha. In no
case did the item omission result in a
significant improvement. Thus, all 15
items were retained. Achieving an alpha
at this level with 15 items provides per-
suasive evidence of the coherence of
these items gleaned from professional
IT recruiters in Phase 1 of the study
and provides evidence for the claim of
criterion-related validity. Having received
an empirical endorsement for the viabili-
ty of these hiring criteria as core project
manager competenciesas critical to
project management success (according
to the perception of IT executives)we
refer to the index from this point forward
as the Core Competency Index.
In analyzing the hiring criteria data,
education, and experience emerged as
the most valued, with 87% of recruiters
stating that education was an important
criterion for hire, as well as 70% indicat-
ing a preference for experience. The
data also indicated, however, a mixed
valuation for PMP

certification, with
52% of IT recruiters stating that it was
an important competency, as opposed
to 48% stating that it was not.
This difference of opinion can be
gleaned from the comments that fol-
low:
In my opinion it gives them a formal
methodology to follow like making a
cake. Projects get completed with
less downtime, quicker, less money
spent, and less hair lost by executive
management over the project.
PMP

is basically worthless. There is

no correlation between a good proj-
ect manager and certification based
on my 15 years of experience.
I think any standard certification is
important because it means that
List of Criteria
Ability to communicate at multiple levels Length of prior engagements
Ability to deal with ambiguity and change Past team size
Ability to escalate PMP

certification
Attitude Technical expertise
Cultural fit Verbal skills
Education Work history
Experience Written skills
Leadership
Table 2: Hiring criteria index.
Cronbachs Alpha Based
Cronbachs Alpha on Standardized Items No. of Items
0.912 0.917 15
Table 3: Cronbachs alpha 15 core hiring criteria.
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they have the basic knowledge and
thus most likely are going to be
more effective.
PMPs

need to be debrained from

most of the stuff taught by PMI for
IT projects. It is useful background
info, but fresh PMPs

want to ram
that knowledge down clients
throats and clients are not willing to
pay for it.
In Phase 2 of this study, IT execu-
tives were asked to rank each of the 15
characteristics on the following Likert
scale:
1 Extremely Unimportant
2 Unimportant
3 Somewhat Unimportant
4 Irrelevant
5 Somewhat Important
6 Important
7 Extremely Important
While the raw data indicated a prefer-
ence of soft skills over technical, the
authors of this study were surprised to
find that these executives viewed PMP

certification as irrelevant at 34.6% or mar-

ginally important at 30.8%. In an effort to
isolate a core set of competencies that
were deemed most important, the cate-
gories of important and extremely
important were aggregated and then
ranked by frequency of response.
H1
o
: PMP

certification is a highly
valued PM core competency.
In testing the first hypothesis, it is
clear from the data in Table 4 that PMP

certification was the least valued by IT

executives at 15.4%, indicating that we
must reject the null and conclude that
the PMP

certification is not a highly

valued project management core com-
petency. It is important to note that
whether the classifications were aggre-
gated by Important and Extremely
Important or Somewhat Important
and Important and Extremely
Important or simply analyzed by
Extremely Important alone, the
results were identical. PMP

certifica-
tion was the least valued of the 15 core
competencies.
In an attempt to understand this
lower valuation of PMP

certification, a
series of cross-tabulations were run. Of
particular interest was whether the sta-
tus of the respondent as PMP

-certified
(or not) would change their assessment
of the importance of the 15 core com-
petencies in general and their valuation
of the PMP

certification in particular.
To accomplish this, respondents were
dichotomized as PMP

-certified or not
and the seven response categories
measuring importance for each of the
core competencies were collapsed into
a dichotomy as close to the median as
possible. None of the cross-tabulations
yielded statistically significant differ-
ences between the two groups of
respondents. An additional effort was
made to determine if respondent certi-
fication affected the assessment of
importance for the 15 competencies by
looking for mean differences on each
item (uncollapsed response categories)
for the two groups of respondents
(certified/not certified). The results of
these t-tests were similarly not statisti-
cally different. Thus, it would appear
that whether the respondent was
PMP

-certified had no statistically sig-

nificant effect on their valuation of
PMP

certification. This result suggests

a disconnect between the screening cri-
teria used by IT recruiters and the valu-
ation of same by IT executivesthat is,
despite half of the recruiters mention-
ing certification as an important hiring
criteria, only 15% of the IT execs
accorded it any importance.
Finally, five pairs of questions were
presented where respondents were asked
to indicate what percentage of projects
have been termed successful as man-
aged by uncertified project managers
Important and Extremely
Competency Important Percentages
Leadership 94.8
Ability to communicate at multiple levels 93.5
Verbal skills 87.2
Written skills 87.1
Attitude 85.3
Ability to deal with ambiguity and change 82.9
Work history 68.9
Experience 67.1
Ability to escalate 66.3
Cultural fit 57.2
Technical expertise 46.1
Education 37.7
Length of prior engagements 23.0
Past team size 18.0
PMP certification 15.4
Table 4: PM core competencies.
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38 February 2011 Project Management Journal DOI: 10.1002/pmj
PMP Certification as a Core Competency
P
A
P
E
R
S
versus PMP

-certified project managers.

Ten response categories were offered in
increments of 10% each (that is, 10%,
1019%, 2029% . . . 90% and higher).
Common dimensions of success (see,
for example, Agarwal & Rathod, 2006;
Wateridge, 1995) presented for valua-
tion were:
cost/within budget,
on schedule,
quality/met technical specifications,
quality/met client-defined business
requirements, and
client/user satisfaction.
To determine whether IT executives
perceived a difference in the overall
success of certified versus uncertified
project managers, a second hypothesis
was derived for testing:
H2
o
: PMP

-certified project man-

agers experience more project success
than uncertified project managers.
As presented in Table 5, paired t-test
analysis revealed no statistically signifi-
cant mean differences between PMP

-
certified contrasted with uncertified
project managers for the five success
dimensions.
Although there was not a statistically
significant difference in the means,
PMP

-certified project managers were

perceived as more successful in the
dimension labeled Quality/met techni-
cal specifications. Indeed, this item
yielded the largest mean difference
between the two groups of project man-
agers and suggests that IT executives
perceived PMP

-certified project man-

agers to be more technically competent
than uncertified project managers. The
results of this analysis suggest that
although respondents did differentiate
on their judgment of project success on
the five criteria, they did not attribute
different rates of success to certified
project managers versus uncertified. In
terms of the five dimensions of success,
having a PMP

certification neither
helped nor hurt the projects outcome.
We must, therefore, reject the second
null hypothesis that predicts greater
project management success with
PMP

-certified leadership. Although the

IT executives were not specifically asked
to indicate what project management
competencies they perceived as critical
to project management success, their
high valuation of the soft skills (commu-
nication at multiple levels, oral and writ-
ten communication, leadership, attitude,
ability to deal with ambiguity and
change) suggests that these are viewed
as significantly more important.
Project Management Training
A number of questionnaire items in
the study were devoted to the issue of
trainingexternal and internal. While
75% of respondents indicated that con-
tinuous project training was not required
as a condition of employment, 82.5% of
respondents indicated that employees
would indeed be reimbursed for any
project management training courses
taken outside of the organization. The
sample was divided, on whether or not
project training was offered in-house,
50% of respondents indicating Yes and
50% indicating No. In addition, 77.4%
of the respondents indicated that there
was upper management support for
PMP

certification training, and 51.9%

stated that 15% of their operating bud-
gets were reserved for project manage-
ment training. It is clear that while PMP

certification was not highly valued as a

core competency, executives do value
additional training, once the employee
enters the organization. This suggests that
companies prefer in-house project expe-
rience combined with relevant training
that fits these types of projects. Finally, an
open-ended question asked IT executives
to offer suggestions or modifications that
they would like to see in the PMP

certifi-
cation programs. The following quotes are
illustrative of their comments:
Academics for PMP

, then appren-
ticeship as lead to first project man-
agement assignment, then PMP

designation. (chief information offi-

cer: Department of Defense-certified
program professional, ACAT1)
People skills. PMP

is too much
cookbook and not enough reality.
Project management is about man-
aging people. PMP

tends to
address just the mechanics. (vice
president: not PMP

-certified)
Would like the PMP

program to
more rigorously measure under-
standing of the methodology rather
than memorization. Ive seen very
little correlation between having a
MeanPMP
Success Criterion Certification MeanUncertified t-Value Significance
Cost/within budget 7.33 7.75 1.487 0.143
On schedule 7.22 7.41 0.642 0.642
Quality/met technical specifications 9.70 9.19 0.894 0.375
Quality/met client business requirements 8.17 8.31 0.733 0.467
Client/user satisfaction 8.06 8.23 0.625 0.535
Table 5: Mean success rates for certified versus noncertified project managers.
31-41PMJ1301.qxd 1/13/11 3:03 PM Page 38
February 2011 Project Management Journal DOI: 10.1002/pmj 39
PMP

and having a deep under-
standing of how to apply the method-
ology, how to tailor it for a specific
situation. (director, architecture &
project delivery, PMP

-certified)
These comments mirror themes
from the scholarly literature review in
their emphasis on people skills, the
ability to apply academic knowledge,
and the importance of relevant project
management experience.
Conclusions and
Recommendations
The purpose of this research was to
establish the relationship of project
management certification and estab-
lished project management core com-
petencies in the IT industry. Employing
the knowledge flow theoretical perspec-
tive, two hypotheses were generated for
empirical testing: that PMP

certifica-
tion would be highly valued by IT execu-
tives relative to other project manage-
ment competencies and that PMP

-cer-
tified project managers would have
higher project success rates than project
managers who were not PMP

-certified.
A two-stage methodology was utilized to
first ascertain the criteria that a national
sample of IT recruiters used in their
screening for project management can-
didates and then to forward those iden-
tified competencies to a national sample
of IT executives at large companies for
their assessment. PMP

certification
was included among the 15 competen-
cies forwarded by the IT recruiters,
although only a slight majority of
recruiters (52%) viewed the certification
as an important prerequisite. Analysis of
the 15 competencies by IT executives
revealed an even lower assessment of
the PMP

credential relative to other

desirable PM attributes. Indeed, formal
education, training, and technical
expertise were among the lowest-valued
competencies identified. Empirical tests
to ascertain whether the status of IT
executives as certified or not affected
their valuation of the hiring criteria
revealed no statistically significant dif-
ferences. These results led to a rejection
of the hypothesis positing that PMP

certification would be a highly valued

project management competency. A
series of pairs of questions asking IT
executives to indicate the success rates
for certified versus noncertified project
managers yielded no significant differ-
ences between the two groups on five
dimensions of success (cost/within
budget, on schedule, met technical specs,
met client-defined business require-
ments, and client/user satisfaction).
Thus, the second hypothesis positing
higher success rates for PMP

-certified
project managers was also rejected. On
the surface, the significance of these
results may call into question the value
of certification. However, the authors
feel that such a hasty conclusion would
be misguided.
Clearly, mastery of the project man-
agement body of knowledge is an
important asset in the professional
preparation of project managers. An
understanding of the methodology is
essential to the appropriate conduct of
project management. However, based
on the narrative explanations offered by
both IT recruiters and IT executives,
their emphasis on soft skills such as the
ability to communicate at multiple lev-
els, and the tacit knowledge of knowing
when to exercise leadership and how to
do this effectively are critical to eventu-
al project success. Despite the adage
that leaders are born, not made, both
leadership and communication skills
can be taught. Strategic decision mak-
ing and effective communication of
those decisions are not beyond the
purview of PMP

certification training or
in-house project management training.
The results of this research provide
concrete suggestions for improvements
relevant to all constituencies involved
in the project management hiring
milieu. Those responsible for the con-
tent in the certification curriculum
need to assess whether the current
material devotes sufficient attention to
the critical nature of soft skills in the
conduct of successful project manage-
ment. Further, this assessment needs to
include an evaluation of the extent to
which certification candidates have
been given opportunities to demon-
strate their ability to apply these skills
under various project constraints (both
simulated and real-world). The gap
between explicit (textbook) and tacit
knowledge (experience) was noted by
both IT recruiters and executives. Thus,
the application of knowledge is a criti-
cal component of project manager
training. In addition to efforts on the
part of certification professionals, IT
executives have to act on their views
regarding the importance of soft skills
by emphasizing these attributes in
the list of competencies that are for-
warded to recruiters for screening
potential project managers. Similarly,
IT recruiters need to employ screening
methods/instruments that evaluate a
candidates soft-skill competencies. The
temptation to rely on a checkmark in
the certification box as indicative of an
imprimatur for project management
success needs to be supplanted with
more rigorous and specific assessment
of a candidates communication and
decision-making abilities.
Although this analysis suggests that
PMP

certification, as currently com-

prised, is a necessary, but not sufficient
factor affecting project management
success, further research on this topic is
imperative if project success rates are
to improve. Specifically, more informa-
tion is needed regarding the IT screen-
ing process and IT executives defini-
tion of project management success.
On the topic of IT recruiting:
What metrics do recruiters use to
assess soft skills?
Is there a need to develop additional
instruments that are more granular in
their ability to discern specific soft
skills?
Regarding IT executives definition
of PM success:
What/how would they change PMP

certification to enhance its contribu-

tion to project management in their
company?
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40 February 2011 Project Management Journal DOI: 10.1002/pmj
PMP Certification as a Core Competency
P
A
P
E
R
S
What PM competencies do they asso-
ciate with PM success?
What specific soft skills need to be
present to facilitate PM success?
Clearly, project management needs
to be viewed and valued as a core activ-
ity in organizations. As such, it needs to
be integrated into corporate strategy
and not relegated to the tactical arena.
Organizations may need to increase the
budget allocation for project manage-
ment training and/or they may need to
consider developing additional screen-
ing procedures for new project manager
hires. It may be unrealistic to think that
recruiters can or will screen for project
management success. Companies may
benefit from defining their own version
of project management success and
retaining or promoting based on these
proprietary criteria. In any case, this
research suggests that IT execs perceive
that success is more than the technique
and procedures incorporated in the cur-
rent certification body of knowledge. If
certification is to be viewed as more
than a paper chase, a more relevant cur-
riculum and experiential knowledge
base must be developed.
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Jo Ann Starkweather is a professor in the
Department of Information Systems &
Technology at Northeastern State University.
She has 10 years of experience as a social
research consultant in Washington, DC, and 25
years devoted to teaching and scholarship. She
holds a PhD in development sociology from
Cornell University.
Deborah H. Stevenson is an associate profes-
sor in the Department of Information Systems
& Technology at Northeastern State
University. Having recently returned to acade-
mia, she has 15 years of project management
experience in various industries, most recent-
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MBA degrees from the Florida Institute of
Technology, as well as a PhD from Clemson
University.
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