How to Become a Certified Project Management Professional

In the modern workplace, it is important to be disciplined and good at time management apart from being skilled at your workplace. Project management courses can help you with that. They teach you how to deliver your targets within schedule and provide a working knowledge of how to organise your work effectively. Being a certified project management can ace your management career.

In case you are confused on how to become a certified project management professional or which project management courses to choose from, you have come to the right place. This article deals with the benefits of pursuing the certification, how to choose the right course, and what are the pre-requisites of joining a course. Let’s get started.

Benefits of being a certified project management professional

Today, there is a greater need for employees with managerial skills who can handle the problems of an agile, digital, and modern workplace. Here are a few benefits that you can look forward to when you complete a project management course.

You become a better leader: These courses are deigned to instil values of workplace ethics and honesty, which are regarded as crucial qualities of a manager. You learn to handle a team and motivate your teammates.

You get better at problem solving: With these courses, you learn to identify and solve various challenges that crop up in a workplace. You also develop analytical skills that ca help you crunch data to solve potential problems.

You improve your interpersonal skills: As a manager, you would need to communicate with different stakeholders, team members, upper management or fellow managers. These courses improve your communication and people skills in verbal or written formats. 

You develop your technical skills: As a manager, you would need to have a keen understanding of the nitty-gritties of the business. In addition, this also helps you mentor or coach your team members better.

You get better at handling shorter projects: These courses prepare you to handle and complete short projects within a limited time frame with limited or constrained resources. You also pick up skills such as

1. Writing a project plan
2. Building a work allocation schedule
3. Allocating resources to team members
4. Creating a project budget
5. Defining and setting the project’s scope
6. Identifying and managing associated risks
7. Handling conflict resolutions

How to choose a project management course

There are several universities in the world offering online or offline courses on project management. It is important to choose the one that offers you a detailed course covering a multitude of topics and an option of online courses so that you can study at your preferred time. Look for courses which focus on

1. Project planning
2. Project management
3. Project Implementation
4. Key elements of projects such as analysis, sequencing, and scheduling
5. Overview of change management and project life cycle
6. How to implement project tools, risk analysis, and risk management.

Key requirements to join a project management course

The pre-requisites of joining a course is different for different course providers. However, you need to fulfil the following criteria at least to be eligible to join a course.

1. An undergraduate degree with relevant work experience
2. A graduate degree from a reputed university
3. A minimum level of B2 in English language according to the Common European Framework (CEF).

Project management courses help in learning to deal with tighter deadlines, resource crunch, or unorganised workplaces. They also impart transferable skills that are useful in many positions other than managerial jobs.