Source: PMP Passport, Dec. 2007, http://www.pmi.org/passport/dec07/globalfocus.html#emea
PMP credential holders can focus on stakeholder interests and use
proactive risk management to prevent problems from happening in the
first place, says Theofanis Giotis, PMP. “The
PMP drives you to use proactive risk management in
order
to identify and eliminate as many potential threats
to the
project as possible, and then to reduce the negative
impact
of the remaining threats on the project,” Mr. Giotis
says.
In June 2006, Mr. Giotis was faced with a difficult problem
while working on a project that entailed moving 2,000 users
from one e-mail system to another. It became clear from
the beginning that the two systems were not communicating
correctly. So, Mr. Giotis took a proactive approach, creating
a schedule that called for moving addresses in small chunks, as
opposed to moving them all over at once. When initial problems
arose, his team was able to move all e-mail addresses back
to the old system while the technical glitches with the
new system were being fixed.
“Without the PMP certification, I wouldn’t
be able to do proper risk management and adequate problem
solving. I wouldn’t be able to develop fallback plans
and effective contingency plans,” Mr. Giotis says. “That’s
why gaining [the PMP] was a significant milestone in my
professional career.”