Game in the Brain

One thing PMBOK can learn from ISO 9001 is that to demonstrate capability iso Audits for a System in place. PMBOK asks you to spend more hours than you can afford as a 3rd World Project Manager to fulfill their requirements (and not the requirements of your Business). Its easier to be an ISO 9001 Organization – naming the scope of the Quality Management system as Project Management than to have any Individual be a PMBOK PMP.
PMP requires first world salaries and time in its altar of worship to be able to maintain its accreditation.

Like the way I love-hate GURPS, Pmbok is a great framework that attempts to standardize concepts and define the ambiguous. It’s not the only one, there are other Proj Mgt bodies – and it has flaws. Particularly its TITHE of manpower is HIGH for a Developing World PM.

The value of the skill is relative to its Market – if PMing as a Skill can increase a Company’s Productivity better than the Alternative (alternatives analysis) then rationally a company will pay for that if it’s relative to other options. To ask for Developed World Salaries (where a PM is 50,000php** per month is 13,000USD/year*; 15 years of experience) is crazy and should never be implied or lead enough to believe such (in PMI’s report of 2019 we are a bit better than Egypt’s 10k a year for our Career PMs but if you compare our trained PMs its really at 5-6k USD a year).

So PMBOK certification is not feasible if your PM is 20-25k (5,850USD a year) with 2-3 years of experience. What is sustainable is having Project Management part of your Quality Management System and having a Defined Project Management and Quality Management System.

In the end Companies will accept a bit of Uncertainty and RISK. the Philippines being Poor and Developing accept many risks, one of the ANti-AGILE mindsets is OVER-Inflating RISK. Whenever someone explains risk management its always with a lot of exaggeration. its never in the context of the audience – everyone sees risks differently and coming from a Traditional Fiipino Company my language of discussing Risks and Managing it is VERY different from what a developed world person’s.

I make as much as  Call Center Employee in the US. Getting PMP certified’s opportunity cost is too much for me let alone my company. The best we need is

1. BASICS like a Proj Management Plan and all subsidiary plans and training in how to use this Plan. 
1. Prioritizing how to “branch” from the Proj Mgt Plan and creating subsidiary plans as we go. 
2. How to build Proj Docs and the basic skills for basic Proj Docs. 
3. Basic Tools and Techniques. 
2. How to Build our Organizational Process Assets. 
3. How to reconcile PMBOK best practices with the REALITY of Developing Worlds Conditions (this is the Enterprise Environmental Factors). 

*(50k x 13 /50 )
**Market rate – note that we have a lot of Potential PMs (oversupply) and a lot of companies training people to be PM-ish every year. PMing is not a silver bullet career-wise.