All the discussion around certification - from PMI or from the counter-PMI competency based PM certifications - ignore the core understanding of improvement. 10,000 hours of experience. This is the notion in the Outliers.
In order to actually be successful, you must practice your professional according to some "master" set of principles. This is not a question in the martial arts. This is not a question in baseball.
Why do we believe that taking a test - no matter the approach of this test, competency or multiple choice question - can be the basis of good project management.
I attended the Waster Management Conference in Phoenix last week. This is not the street trash waste, it is nuclear waster management - either from power generation or the National Nuclear Complex.
What I observed is that most of the participants are "senior" members of the community. It may be the "senior" members are the ones attending of the conference. I think though that the 10,000 hours rule is in play. 10,000 hours means the 2080 woring hours in the year, actually less for vacation. So this means 5 years or so doing the same job. In this case Programming Planning and Controls.
In that period of time the person will have acquired the needed skills to be considered competent or they woudl have be eliminated from the pool of project managers. Either through the failure of the projects or the failure of the projects.
10,000 hours of "teaching" project management, writing standards about project management, or defining what others should be doing about project management is not the same is "managing projects for 10,000 hours."
