Why another project management certification?

The prevalent project management certificates don’t directly measure the ability of a software project manager to deliver software projects. Hence, there is a need for an exam that directly tests the capability to deliver software projects efficiently.

The most prevalent project management certificates today are PMP and PRINCE2 apart from several agile certifications such as CSM, CSPO, PMI-ACP, SAFe, DSDM have limitations.

PMP and PRINCE2 frameworks are generic project management bodies of knowledge and tests a person for knowledge in general concepts of project management. However, for a person certified as PMP to be effective in software delivery he has to acquire much more software specific knowhow in project management. For instance, software sizing and estimation techniques, software life cycle models, software requirements engineering, software engineering methodologies such as OOSE and so on are unique to the software field. A PMP has to be knowledgeable to a good extent in these fields to be effective as a software project manager. Hence, a certification beyond PMP is needed.

On the other hand, agile certifications measure the knowledge in agile methodologies and don’t cover the complete gamut of project management. A project manager must be knowledgeable about requirements engineering, estimation techniques other than story points also, risk management, software engineering, stakeholder management, software testing and so on. Even though a software project manager need not necessarily be proficient in all the above aspects, he should have some sound knowledge. Please refer to this article on skills of software project managers for more details on why and to what extent a software project manager should possess these skills.

Hence, neither the PMP andPRINCE2 certifications nor Agile certifications cover the complete software project management gamut and the ACE PMP certification fills this void.

What does the ACE PMP certification imply?

The ACE PMP software project management certification implies that the certified project manager possesses sound knowledge in fields that are critical to software project success. Based on some of the industry reports such as Chaos reports published by Standish group, other project success surveys, and other surveys conducted by ACE consultants themselves, certain factors critical to success emerge. Please read this article for more details on factors that are critical to software project success.

Based on these factors, ACE has listed the following areas as critical to software project success:

1. Requirements engineering – elicitation, modeling and documentation, change management
2. Project planning and tracking
3. Software estimation methodologies
4. Project scheduling – creating project schedules and tracking projects using schedules
5. Risk management
6. Software testing for project managers

The ACE PMP certification implies that the certificate holder possesses good working knowledge in the above listed areas, can apply them effectively in software project situations and can be very effective in delivering software projects up to project sizes of 500 person months of effort. Projects beyond this size will require more specialised skills that the ACE PMP certification does not measure and please contact us for more customised and advanced assessments.

How is it different from existing certifications?

The ACE PMP exam tests not only the project management knowledge of the participant, it also tests the ability of the participant to apply this knowledge in practical situations in software projects. This is best illustrated using an example question. Please refer to this project network diagram below:

Project network diagram

A typical PMP question related to this network diagram would ask the respondent to determine the critical path or length of the critical path typically.

The question, for instance can be like this:

In the above project network diagram, the critical path is:

1. ABCDE
2. ABHIDE
3. ABFGE
4. ABHIE

And the correct answer would be option 2.

However, a ACE PMP question would be as follows:

The customer has given a new requirement to the project to be included in the current release and following conditions depict the project situation

• New requirement would take about 5 days to implement
• The new requirement is a complex one and has to be assigned only to an existing project team member
• All tasks in the above network diagram can be assigned to a new team member
• Customer is not willing to extend the delivery date
• Customer will not cut-off any feature already under development
• Customer is willing to provide additional resource persons.

In order to satisfy all the above conditions, the project manager inducts a new member into the team to assign a task to him from the above network diagram so that an old project member can be freed and assigned to the new requirement. Which task set is the best candidate for assigning to the new team member?

1. A & B
2. F & G
3. D
4. H & I

And the correct answer is option 2 as these tasks have the maximum float and can hence can provide a cushion to the newcomer to the project to accommodate the learning curve.

As is evident in the question, ACE PMP question goes beyond the subject matter and goes into the details of situations in software projects and tests the ability of the project manager to apply project management knowledge to situations in software projects. Therefore, software project managers certified by ACE are more likely to be effective in applying their knowledge to manage practical situations in software projects.

For that matter, here is another example question from Risk management knowledge area that refers specifically to situations in software projects:

For a risk that the application passes system test in the development environment but fails in production environment for the same test cases, which of the following responses qualify to be a mitigation plan?

1. Creation of a comprehensive target environment check-list and replicating production environment in the development environment
2. Having a dedicated system administrator in the project team who can fly to customer location at short notice
3. Taking responsibility only up to making the system work in a staging environment and leaving the responsibility of production environment to customer
4. Engaging a production support team either from a different division within the organization or from outside the organization who would carry the penalty clause if the application fails in production after passing in development environment

(The correct option would off course, be (1)).  Please feel free to take a sample 15-question exam to get more insights into ACE PMP exam and contact us for details on the syllabus, certification, exam fee and modalities of conducting the exam for a full certification test.