As someone who has been a PMP for many years in both Enterprise PMO and Consulting environments, project management is fundamental to success of any project— regardless of its size.

Unfortunately, PMPs have the stigma attached to them that they always carry gantt charts at the hip. All gantt charts provide is a tool for communicating project progress—on paper anyway. They by far do not portray the success of the project. Regardless of the project, “generic” PMPs should not always be sought. In fact, SMEs who are not PMPs often prove to make projects more successful than PMPs not familiar with the particular industry seeking an assumed “project professional”.

Whether or not it’s a web-based technology project, sought after PMPs should bring a type of mindset with them that will make the project successful. In other words, a PMP is not going to be successful without being an effective communicator.

PMI does provide a good knowledge base in many key fundamental areas, but it’s up to the PM to make sure the key stakeholders ally themselves to supporting and upholding the direction of the project and the organization. If a PM can’t manage resources (or have a working relationship with functional managers who can), identify key risk areas and work to define mitigation strategies, managing time, cost and change, manage scope, define quality metrics and ensure quality assurance, of what good is a gantt chart that outlines that all of these tasks that need to be done? Leadership is essentially gone, and you might as well use your gantt charts as wallpaper.

So the value of the PMP certification should not be in any way devalued, but the value truly comes into play when you have someone behind the credential that is willing to commit to making sure he will put forth his best effort to making the organization and its objectives a success.

Thank you for writing this article! I can’t tell you the number of CMS implementations that go on with ‘by-the-book’ project management protocols that still run into failure on the usual dimensions.

I wanted to add a few other points if I may. First, certification as a PMP just demonstrates a minimum level of competency with the concepts and best practices as defined in the PMBOK (Project Management Institute’s Body of Knowledge). It also presupposes a certain number of hours of field time as a project manager (I think when I was certified it was 4500 hours but it may be more today).

If you think about it, if we go to a doctor (MD), they’re licensed to practice medicine but they may or may not have subject matter expertise. If we consider the PMP as just a prerequisite for success—not THE determinant—then customer would next want to look at subject matter expertise (SME) as well as technology expertise. re: SME, I have seen PMP’s on content management projects that had plenty of CMS experience, but came from a pharmaceutical background, yet were project managing an implementation for a publisher, or any other vertical market. This could work out, but if the person does not have the technical expertise (the battle scars) of content management implementations, it is a recipe for disaster.

In any event, I’d hate to think that people who read this great article then deprecate the PMP credential since I don’t think that was your intent to suggest. Personally I hire certified developers, or masters degreed computer science professionals, but that doesn’t mean they will be successful—just one checkmark on a list of credentials I look for when putting together my WebCMS deployment teams.

I think there’s one more area that could help the project manager. You mention that the PMP credential could be a way for the resource to “divorce oneself from whatever outcome may result from the web project?” I have seen that happen so I understand why you put it in there, but I think that may be more the function of the resources than the certification. Also, with or without the PMP certification, people tend to not buy-in to the outcomes if they have not had a chance to be involved in project initiation or planning. What is the usual case in there projects is that much of the initiation and planning work has happened before a project manager has even been brought on board. I think a best practice is to have the PM as a highly respected part of the initial planning phases—including the critically-important CMS platform procurement phase.

Finally, I still don’t believe that PM’s do a good enough job with the other tripod of project management, namely change management, communication plan management, and risk management. The Web content management implementation is as much about these things as the technology itself, and while these tend to be the first disciplines to be cut from tasks on a project, I would argue they may be even more critical than the technology that is selected itself.

http://www.ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?isnumber=4444190&arnumber=4444261&count=83&index=70

Project Management is an integral part of our framework but, as you stated clearly, commitment from business and alignment with strategic goals on a strategic level – and a more operational perspective of content management should be taken into account.