Project management certification programmes: how appropriate are they?

Abstract

The competences of project managers are a vital role in projects success. An exten-sive literature survey was conducted to determine the constitution of an adequate knowledge base for would-be project managers.

A detailed literature study was conducted. The literature review discussed how to assess project management competencies. Technical skills and social cultural skills were identified from the literature review. A comprehensive list of criteria was used to generate the critical success factors.Based on the critical success factors that were obtained from the literature in the content for the knowledge base was constructed.

This research then started to address what constitutes certification requirements. Certification programs were identified globally for the study. This study identified what the certification programs offered.

This research started by proposing a knowledge base and using the “grounded theory approach” used content analysis to compare the proposed knowledge base with project management certification programs.

The study concluded with recommendations on the gaps that exist in project man-agement certification programs.