Certification Articles

Alex Brown’s views about the best way to study for and pass the PMP (Project Management Professional) exam. NOT an objective review, just Alex’s personal, biased opinion, and his own experience.

Presented at the PMI 2004 Global Congress — North America on October 25, 2004 in Anaheim, CA.

Provides career advice for IT project managers, whether they wish to leave IT or stay in IT. Reviews employment trends in IT that may force IT project managers to make tough career choices. Based on industry publications and employment trends, as well as my own experience crossing over from IT to business-oriented project management. The raw employment and industry statistics used in the presentation are available for download, as well as the paper and the presentation slides.

Published in the PMI Information Systems SIG newsletter, Second Quarter 2002.

In March 2002, the IEEE Computer Society introduced an important new certification option for software professionals. This article reviews the new program, explaining the benefits of earning a CSDP as well as some areas of concern for early applicants.

Announcing some news at alexsbrown.com:
** On May 6th I spoke at the PMI/NJ Regional Symposium on the topic “Project
Management Personality & Skill Types”. The site has the paper as well as the
PowerPoint presentations.
** My article on the IEEE the Certified Software Development Professional (CSDP)
Program was published in the 2nd Quarter 2002 issue of the [...]

This presentation will describe how to adapt standard, career-guidance tools to Project Management. It is never easy making a career recommendation, but these tools can help make a better-informed, more objective recommendation. Experienced Project Managers can use these tools to better understand their management style, and help predict what assignments and situations may be particularly easy or difficult for them. Core skills like negotiation and mentoring, and personality traits like Introvert/Extrovert are critical to job. Learn how to adapt some time-tested tools to Project Management, to understand yourself better and to guide others more objectively.

Presented at the PMI/NJ 2002 Regional Symposium on May 6th, 2002 in Edison, NJ.

Reviews nine distinct elements that make a job a “profession”. Explores the ways that project management and software engineering are and are not “professions”.

Delivered as a Toastmasters International speech #3 (Organize Your Speech) from the Communication and Leadership handbook in October 2001.

Published in the PMI FSSIG newsletter, Fall 2001.

Reviews the role of certification in financial serives. Suggests that Project Managers in this industry should look to their industry’s regulatory organizations for certification, not just the Project Management Institute. A combination of PMI certification and banking-, insurance-, or brokerage-specific certification will be more valuable than any program PMI could reasonably develop on its own.