I’m a new-ish member of PMI, having joined in January. There isn’t great cause for the PMP certification in the UK and most people over here expect project managers to have PRINCE2 and/or MSP, which are the informal national standard. So I wasn’t really sure what benefit I would get from joining up to PMI, and UK Chapter. If you are wondering whether it is really worth it, here’s my summary of the first few months of PMI membership.
You pay your money, and you expect some things for that privilege. This is what you get:
- Online access to all PMI standards including PMBOK. I haven’t tried to download this yet, but I will be doing so soon as I would like to read the latest version.
- eBooks to read. Again, I haven’t tried out this perk, partly because I’m not a big fan of reading more than 1200 words on the screen.
- A certificate. This came on US-sized paper and so won’t fit in any frames – grrr.
- Career Headquarters. This is a CV repository. It might work in the US but there isn’t much call for me to post my CV online, as none of the UK recruiters would ever think to look there.
- PMI Today and PM Network. These are very interesting magazines. I have received my first copies and Network in particular is well-written and useful. It is also terribly polite, calling everyone Mr So-and-So.
- Project Management Journal. This is the quarterly academic journal. I like research and that kind of thing, so I will read this. But it’s not the kind of thing you can just flick through while you are eating a sandwich so while it is on my desk I need to find the time to concentrate on it.
- E-newsletters. These get picked up by my spam filter and I can’t seem to get them whitelisted. I haven’t found them very interesting so far and at the moment it’s all about what seminars are running at the EMEA conference in Milan – which I am not attending.
- The opportunity to volunteer. Won’t be taking that up myself, I’m busy enough as is. I can see how this would appeal to others though.
- Discounts on credentials and registration fees for Congresses. I haven’t decided yet whether I’m going to do PMP. I don’t feel I need the credential for my day job so the benefit would have to come from making me better at my day job and therefore more efficient/better thought of/more employable through demonstrable results rather than the virtue of having PMP after my name.
I also opted to join the UK Chapter and I recently attended my first event of the London group. I was surprised at how many people turned out. It was a good evening, actually, looking at the overlap between Lean, Six Sigma and Project Management.