Our PPM Consultants pass the PMI® CAPM project certification

CAPM® (Certified Associate in Project Management) certification from PMI® (Project Management Institute) is a first-level certification for project practitioners. Our Senior Consultant Marwan Bakkali has just passed the certification and gives you his feedback.

What are the benefits of CAPM®?

CAPM certification attests to a certain level of competence and experience in project management.

What are the three points that have impressed you most?

• It's not a methodology. Contrary to a preconceived idea I had, PMI does not propose methodologies. Rather, it's a collection of project management knowledge, best practices and tools organized in the form of process groups.
• Adaptability. These groups of processes can be adapted to any organization, whatever its size, sector or core business, as long as it carries out projects.
• Completeness. The PMBOK is very dense, and nothing is left to chance. It's a gold mine for project management. It even includes templates for deliverables and tools.

Who would you advise to take this certification?

I recommend the certification to anyone wishing to acquire a sound knowledge of project management, or to any customer wishing to structure these processes / implement a common project management methodology within their organization.

A principle you'd recommend to a customer on a future mission?

In the course of the "Project knowledge management" process, the importance of REX (feedback from experience) is mentioned. A REX is used to analyze a malfunction or success during the project or in the post-project phase. The aim is to identify what worked and what didn't, why and how, with a view to sharing best practices within the organization, so that the methodology in place can be improved and future projects can learn from it.

What are the three key functions of Project Monitor in line with CAPM?

The special feature of Project Monitor, project portfolio management software, is its flexibility, which means it integrates very well with the PMBOK process groups. If I had to pick just 3 :

• The Gantt: for the "Schedule management" process
• Forms: for the "Drawing up the project charter" process
• Exchanges: for the "Communication management" and "Stakeholder engagement management" processes

What was the most difficult part?

Process groups are not really processes in the true sense of the word. Indeed, during the entire life cycle of a project, the same process may be reactivated several times. If I take the example of the "Identify project stakeholders" process, you might think that this process only comes into play at project initiation. However, this is not the case, as it will continue throughout the life of the project. In fact, certain stakeholders will be identified "along the way", while others identified at the outset may no longer be so at the end of the project. This non-linearity was rather difficult to grasp at the outset.

What was the easiest part?

The easiest thing was to put the PMBOK processes into practice. The PMBOK is very down-to-earth. At no point is there any talk of unrealistic, abstract or far-fetched principles. Once the logic and interest behind each process is understood, it's relatively easy to put in place a concrete action plan to integrate these groups of processes within an organization.

If not, at the end of the certification process, would you prefer "Agile" or "V Cycle"?

Both 🙂. PMBOK's process groups are equally suited to projects with a predictive cycle, as well as projects with an iterative and/or incremental cycle. However, the latest version of the PMBOK (7th edition, 2021) has been updated to incorporate more agility and innovation and to take into account emerging technologies, new approaches that have pushed project management to evolve.