Project management is a very broad profession. Project managers can work on a very large variety of projects from small that take a few hours to huge projects that last a decade. They can work on project in different fields of expertise from technology to construction from low tech to high tech. But regardless of what the project is the management of all projects has something in common. Project management is the art of managing resources that vary from the gentle human resource to financial budgets physical material and many other tangible and intangible resources.

Like any other profession project management can be learned on two ways. One is by experience or in other words by trial and error. The other is by studying the profession in a methodological way in class from people that have such experience and organized it in a structured fashion. In reality you would learn project management in both ways as simply studying in class is not a replacement for hands on experience. In fact most project management classes would not even accept you before you had a certain number of years of actual market experience for that same reason.

Some people look at project management as a side profession. In other words that look at their university major or whatever expertise that they have for example software and see project management as just a necessity in order to put their real expertise to practice. But looking at project management this way is a mistake that can cost dearly to the individual and the company. Project management is actually a profession by itself and in fact a good project manager is probably not the best expert in the underlying project technology that he is managing. A good project manager should have some understanding of the technology but his real expertise is managing resources planning for the unexpected dealing with crisis and designing comprehensive time and resource plans to meet the project goals.

The best project managers are the ones that take the profession seriously and one way to prove that someone is indeed taking the profession seriously is by obtaining a project manager professional certificate also known as a PMP certificate. It takes significant effort to apply and be accepted to the project manager professional program and it takes further effort to succeed in class. In order to be certified you will have to successfully pass a standardized exam. Having that certificate is a good choice for many reasons. First and foremost it is not the certificate but the actual studies that are important and that can and will make you a better project manager. Second on a practical level having a PMP certificate will help you when looking for a new project manager job or when trying to climb up the corporate ladder.