Project Management Certificates compared – PMP vs PRINCE2 vs IPMA (Part 2)

Hello,
I guess one must be biased once one has made a selection of which qualification to pursue and yet, still I feel duty bound to emphasise a major anomaly (unlkess I am misreading it or jumping to a conclusion) in the above table, i.e. that the Prince2 Foundation certification (as far as I am aware) is not recognised as being an adequate qualification to assert oneself at any level of being a competent Project manager, rather the Practitioner certification provides one with a far deeper understanding of the Prince2 framework for managing change delivery. Even so, I don’t know any Prince2 qualified Practitioner who would say they pursued it because it provided the most thorough grounding in project management, rather that it opened doors to potential employment due to its widely recognised and deployed modus operandi.
Personally, as a Business Analyst, I am aware that there is a market for PM-savy BAs and Prince2 is, once again, the recognised standard, particularly in the UK however increasingly in continental Europe.
I would welcome any feedback.
Yours sincerely,
Michael Grant. LinkedIn Group Member of Business Process Improvement

Nice summary, thanks for sharing..

This was very interesting although I didn’t know that Prince2 was considered a PM certification, I thought it was more for developers.
Are you planning on something similar for BA’s?
Thanks!!

I think this is a nice summary. As a Project Manager in the US who does a bit of government work, the PMP is the golden ticket. The PMBOK was endorsed by our government’s Office of Management & Budget and adopted by most agencies of the government through their adoption of PMBOK or thinly-rewritten PMBOK for large IT and Technical projects.

You add to that a base of 300,000 PMPs worldwide and you have a pretty powerful force. This is not to say that other certs cannot arise and even be better than PMP in some dimension, but they may be fated to be the Macintosh to the PMP’s Windows.

The important thing is that PMs use a common language (not spoken language but language of projects), common artifacts, and definitions of terms – this leads to better integration and continuity of long projects that go through several PMs.

It would be interesting to compare terms across Certs – WBS, RTM, Change Control, etc.

Nice table and comparison, but can you please share your sources of information to find the number of certified people, and why you don’t consider the OGC as the “issuer” of PRINCE2?

To clarify the information on “recertification” of IPMA raised by Martin, it’s not well described in their website and apparently not mandatory as the PMP. This is the answer I got from the IPMA support team a while ago when investigating this topic:

“The idea of renewing professional credentials on a regular basis is relatively new. We do not assume that an agricultural engineer or an architect with a University degree loose their knowledge.

The certification as well as the recertification are a decision of the indivudual. No recertification does not mean that somebody looses his or her certificate ofr that he or she is no longer active in the profession, but that the certificate is no longer actual, the value of an “old” certificate is not nothing. Our goal is that we can convince many professionals to do the recertification.”

PRINCE2 practitioner has a pre-requiste that you have the foundation certification.

PRINCE2 is the global PM METHODOLOGY standard whereas PMBOK is the global PM knowledge base. PMP and PRINCE2 Practitioner certification provides evidence of someone who knows about Project Management (PMP) and knows how to do it(PRINCE2).

There are well over 200,000 PRINCE2 Practitioners globally, and it is already being seen in job adverts in the USA and CANADIAN . (search Monster).

Thanks for your help.

Your comments has given me good amount of knowledge about various certifications.

Thanks once again.

give some more details for Prince 2 Practioner and IPMA certifications.

Have you looked at certifications vs. a Master Degree in Project Management (MSPM or MPM)?

I have to say that to compare Prince 2 Foundation to the other recognized PM qualifications has slightly skewed the purpose of this forum. The Practioner exam is way more complex than that of the Foundation test as it is not entirely multiple choice, you have to apply the Methodology which is not just limited to the material studied, but also how you apply your own rational to the questions presented. There are more than 35% of applicants that do not pass the Practioner exam the first time (this is a confirmed fact) and it is a 3 hour exam compared to the Foundation test of 1 hour. I would like to also highlight that Prince 2 is not just limited to the IT industry (it was initially developed by the Telecomms industry in the UK) but has board based application as it is about managing processes, technical ability is adventitious but not absolutely necessary as this too is covered by a process.

I can contribute a slightly more descriptive comparison between the three main qualifications at Difference between PMI, APM and Prince 2

I seems a pitty that the IPMA qualification lack to global presence of PRINCE2 and PMI. I think they lack the single driving certificatiob body.

Excellent, Great Effort

Hi,

Can anyone give a comparison of PMP and MPM certifications.

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Thank you for this great project management certificates’ comparison you have done. Would you please provide to me with some information about trustworthy certificates for Business Analysts?