How can PMP® certification Help in Building a Project Team?

Managing a project is a challenge that is becoming more complex by the hours. With the involvement of professionals with different expertise, resources controlled by a different part of organizations, multi-level requirements, and even involvement of different cultural values, building a team becomes a huge problem. A problem that project managers must face even before the start of the project.

It won’t be incorrect to say that Project Management Professional (PMP®), a certification governed by Project Management Institute (PMI®) has emerged as one of the most sought-after certifications in project management spectrum. While the contribution of PMP® certification during the lifecycle of a project is huge and cannot be covered in one article, we will explore the contribution of PMP® certification in the very initial task of a project: Building a project team.

If we aim to understand how PMP® can help in building a project team and a healthy relationship in a team, we need to consider the factors that play a vital role in team building. For this article, we present the top 5 most important factors in building a team and how taking a PMP® certification can help in dealing with these factors:

1. Communication

Communication is easily a factor that can make or break a team. Communication plays a major role on multiple levels. Poor team communication can have problems like:

While communication skills can be developed over time, PMP® provides structured methods and tools to eradicate communication gaps. A few of the tools that Project managers can learn about during PMP® certification training are:

i. Power/Interest Grid

The Power/Interest grid works best while deciding the level of communication needed for stakeholders. ‘Power’ signifies the level of authority, and ‘Interest’ signifies the level of concern for stakeholders. 

 ii. RACI Chart

The RACI chart can be extensively used to promote healthy communication within a team. RACI stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. The chart works by making sure that at least one person oversees each category.

2. Common/Individual goals and Outcomes

Having a clear idea of the common and individual goals plays a major role in building a team. If the common goal is missing, the individual performances go astray, driven by the desire to perfect the immediate task. Project Management Professional certification again provides tools to project managers to set up proper milestones and divide tasks. A very simple tool that PM can learn about during certification is ‘Milestone Chart’

A Milestone chart provides a logical order of division of tasks into sub-tasks where reaching M3 is possible only when M2 is completed. Once the milestones are divided, the impending tasks to reach the milestones can be decided and distributed.

While it is important to assign and task, it is equally important to analyze the outcome and identify the weak points of a team. During the PMP® training, professionals can learn about ‘Earned Value Management (EVM)

EVM can be used by project managers to identify and access the schedule and cost performance of the project. EVM makes use of Planned Value (PV), Earned Value (EV) and Actual Cost (AC) to calculate Schedule Variance (SV), Schedule Performance Index (SPI), Cost Variance (CV), Cost Performance Index (CPI) to measure the performance of project with respect to schedule and cost.

3. Competency

Teams at a similar level of competency tend to have the best dynamics and produce the best results. While project managers can strive to improve the general quality of the team, he needs to establish himself as the alpha male as well. It has been long established through adult learning principles that adults tend to learn only from those whom they believe to be qualified. This is another area where PMP® certifications can help project managers. A salient feature of Project management Professional certification is that it establishes you as an expert in Project management by validating your experience. It is a global standard, and with Project Management Professional certification, you can give proof of your competency and help others grow as well.