Getting a PMP

After years of being a project manager for Marketing and Creative teams at an innovative food tech company, I joined Sunbasket’s newfound PMO to help drive organizational change.

One of the conditions of the transfer was that I would start studying and working towards my PMP - the Project Management Professional Certificate awarded by the Project Management Institute that focuses on managing, enabling, and advocating Agile development methods.

When people talk about obtaining the PMP it is often described as a tedious process with little real value. While the materials and body of knowledge can certainly be dry at times, the applications of the methodology and the technology it enables are amazing. PMI’s materials covered projects of astonishing scope and vision - Carbon capture farms in recycled shipping containers, autonomous vehicle fleets, massive infrastructure projects.

Seeing these real-world projects up close and understanding their development process and underlying challenges made me want to expand my skillset to better deliver value to ambitious projects. Now that I’ve gained the technical skills to contribute directly, I am very happy to bring the soft skills with me from my project management background and PMP.

These are the top five things I value in obtaining my PMP.

  1. Increase in my scope of vision of what is possible when leveraging people’s determination, excitement, and common interest.
  2. Hard skills when evaluating business choices, such as when evaluating the potential for organizational change, cost, and risks across multiple potential projects.
  3. Soft skills for managing difficult social and work situations, learning how to navigate human complexities and always put the people first.
  4. Basically the entire Agile Practice Guide
  5. Community. Having the PMP has given me access to a greater Bay Area Project Management network.