The cut-throat competitive business landscape in recent years, demands highly skilled professionals to sustain in the long run. Career-oriented certifications add a lot of weightage to the CV and push it ahead among thousands. Over the past few years, several certifications for project management have emerged causing confusion among professionals.
Project Management Professional PMP and Certified Scrum Master CSM are two very popular certifications, each having the accountability of its own. Primarily, both offer credible certification programs for project managers looking to enhance their skills and set new career goals.
A detailed study of the benefits and prerequisites will help you to understand the difference between them and which one to choose while aiming to excel in the profession. So, let us start with the study.
PMP Certification and its Benefits
The PMP or Project Management Professional is a certification provided by the Project Management Institute (PMI), an organization based in the USA. It is a globally recognized credential in the sector of project management and is widely accepted for the value that it adds to a project manager’s career growth.
It is considered a pivotal step for project managers looking forward to advancing their careers.
Here are some of the benefits of PMP certification:
1. Recognition across industries
PMP is a widely recognized certification to enhance your project management skills. It is a worldwide certification that is accepted by any business irrespective of location. Thus, adding this qualification to your portfolio will increase its weightage and would make you acceptable across industries.
2. Enhances essential management skills
Project management itself requires some specific skills. PMP is designed with a curriculum that suffices the stringent requirements of the profession. Thus, this course requires meticulous study of the subject resulting in obtaining multiple hard and soft skills. Including the understanding of the project management processes, methods, and tools, essential for the profession.
3. Aids in higher paycheques
This certification course allows you to expect a better salary. PMP-certified project managers are likely to be paid more salary compared to the industry standards. It puts you ahead of your competitors making your higher paycheque justified.
4. Represents your commitment
If you want to show your commitment to your profession, a good way is to gather more skills and keep a record of it. This certification does the same thing. A PMP certification is the representation of your improved skills and expertise in the domain. Thus, it will help you to earn acknowledgment from your onlookers as well.
CSM Certification and its Benefits
The CSM or Certified Scrum Master certification is for beginners in project management. The certification works on a model meant to teach entry-level management professionals.
Concepts such as handling responsibility, teamwork, cooperation, and working towards the incremental progress of an objective, are taught in this certification course.
Some of the benefits of CSM certification are:
1. Enhances the learning attitude
The certification upgrades the learning mindsets of professionals. It updates you on the latest developments in the field and pushes you to have an open learning frame of mind. You will get to learn the latest developments of Scrum and learn more about the concepts behind Scrum. It will expand your dimensions of learning capabilities.
2. Helps to perform better
The company processes are never stagnant. With every upgrade and application of new processes, the management has to undergo changes in the processes of workflows and several improvements.
CSM teaches you to adhere to the changes and gain the expertise to handle such changes. This in turn makes you an asset to the company.
3. Boosts your career path
A reputable certificate always puts you ahead of your opponents. The CSM certificate provides a certificate on completion of the course that is well-recognized worldwide. CSM is provided by a reputable organization Scrum Alliance which gives substantial credibility to the certificate.
4. Strengthen teamwork
CSM certification teaches professionals to betterment their team and collaborating abilities. As a project manager your team management capabilities will be improved and you will be able to contribute better to team-building activities. CSM will teach you the skills required to strengthen teamwork and collaboration and thus you will find yourself in a better position as a project manager.
As a Scrum Master, you will get to understand the responsibilities and skills required to build and maintain a Scrum Team.
Prerequisites
Let us know about the prerequisites required for both certifications.
For PMP
Professionals who have a secondary degree, are required to undertake 7,500 hours of leading and directing projects, and the project management education will be of 35 hours.
Professionals who have a degree, are required to take 4,500 hours of leading and directing projects and a project management education of 35 hours.
For CSM
No prerequisites are required to take a certification of CSM.
Conclusion
While the two certifications have some common factors, they have their own differences as well. It depends on your experience and choice of career goals that will determine the path. For a newbie in the domain of project management, CSM could be the best fit, whereas PMP is more appropriate for project managers with some amount of experience.
Identify your nature of work and determine the career goals you want to set before choosing between PMP and CSM. Ideally, it is your professional target that will determine your path.