I’ve passed my PMP exam on Monday. I was a bit nervous (I’ve passed so many exams in my life but I can’t help it - I’m always a bundle of nerves before exam, regardless of how prepared I feel) and exam itself was very fatiguing (200 questions in 4 hours), but I’ve done it with a good score (exact score isn’t communicated, but my overall score in all process groups but one was the top grade). This way I’ve got both most reknown project management certifications: PRINCE2 Practictioner and PMP - that allows me to create some kind of short comparison between those two, including the difficulty level of exams and amount of work needed to pass them. I’ve decided to shape it up as a FAQ:
Q: Which of those two is more applicable in everyday’s work in Accenture?
A: Definitely PMP. It’s a bundle of “best practices” and “things to focus on”. It collects pretty much everything a good manager should think about while leading a project / working on project.
Q: So does it make sense to go for PRINCE2 as well?
A: Of course, most likely you won’t participate in any project managed according to PRINCE2, but it’s a well organised methodology, that puts great focus on business case (and its validity maintenance), role of users and maintaining order and chronology. Some of things are not directly applicable, but learning them helps to realize how to improve your projects.
Q: If I decide to go for both, which one should I start with?
A: Definitely PRINCE2 - it’s more general and it doesn’t dig deeply into detailed techniques. PMP seems like a great dive into the details when you’re already done with PRINCE2.
Q: Which of those two exams requires more effort to get prepared to?
A: Hmm, hard to say really. I’d say PMP, because exam’s “scope” ain’t limited to a single book but requires a lot of practical experience (PRINCE2 Practicioner is not that practice-oriented, even if you take it’s title under consideration) - but if you have a serious deal of experience with project management, PMP will be very intuitive for you and PRINCE2 is a methodology to memorize, so in this case P2P will require more effort.
Q: Which of those two exams is easier to pass?
A: PMP. Three reasons: because you can solve plenty of questions with just project manager’s commonsense; because you don’t have context questions with some ridiculous “case study”; because all questions are of the same sort - 1 of 4 (and none of them are with clear task of tricking / fooling you).
Q: Which of those two certifications seems to be more painful to maintain?
A: I don’t know yet :) Future will tell … P2P requires re-passing the exam every 5 years or so, PMP requires collecting some activity points (and it looks like kinda pain, but …).