Remember that Survey on Product Management Certification (results here)? And how the Cranky Product Manager warned the certification training vendors NOT to stuff the ballot box in attempt to skew the results?
Well, readers tipped off the Cranky Product Manager about 2 emails circulating the known product-manage-osphere, each from a different training/certification firm. These huffy emails were apparently sent to product managers who already had some kind of certification. Recipients were urged to take the Cranky PM’s survey and were explicitly instructed to say certification is super marvelous, akin to a holy sacrament. Why? “In order to maintain the value and credibility of the professional certification you have worked so hard to earn.”
One of these emails even went as far as providing “suggested answers” for EACH and EVERY question!
Also, these frenetic emails described the Cranky Product Manager as “biased” and “disgruntled” !!!
How DARE they!
Hmmmppph. OK, granted, the CPM is disgruntled. That’s fine. Disgruntled is practically a synonym for cranky.
But BIASED? What? REALLY? As opposed to WHAT?
As opposed to YOU, Certification-Training-and-Test-Giving Firm? You who conducts certification classes and proctors exams for a piddly $2000-$5000 per student per week?
Hang on while the Cranky Product Manager calculates exactly how wicked biased you are, compared to her.
OK, assume you get a class of 10 students at least 4-5 times a year. That means 40-50 students. At somewhere between 2K and 5K per student, that means that you make … (hold on, let’s do the math… carry the two, add the five…OK, math done)…
OK, You OFFICIALLY make a BOATLOAD FROM CERTIFICATION. As in, you could probably make a decent 6-figure income for just 4-5 weeks of work per year. As in, your firm earns somewhere between $700 and $1600 per instructor hour. Sure, there’s some costs involved (licensing fees to the industry orgs, instructor time, classroom rental, materials, etc), but the CPM has gotta think your profit per hour is very, very decent.
Nice work if you can get it. No wonder you love certification.
So, no, you’re not biased. NO WAY…. No one would EVER think that.
For the record, the Cranky Product Manager receives NO MONEY from any aspect of certification. She does not (currently) hold any certificates or designations, other than an MBA in marketing and a Bachelors in computer science — both from schools you’ve actually heard of, and NOT because they advertise on TV.
That said, if given the opportunity to score a certification without touching her own wallet, the Cranky Product Manager would probably go for it. Just cuz. She’s curious about what’s on those tests. Plus she’s pretty awesome at standardized tests — she’s sure she’d crush it.
And crush yo’ heads for calling the CPM biased, beeyotches…
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Just consider the motivation: a certification firm has a financial interest in getting people certified. Follow the money.
Wow. That scews it a bit does it not? If your certification is worthwhile, it does not matter what kind of survey results it gets. You will see people beating down your door…
Oooo!!! Here is an idea. Let’s start a new certification program where training and certification are free/at cost.
i got this blog post in my reader feed, and one of the ads was for Phoenix.edu online certification. tee hee. great post. i’d love to see the original emails mentioned, even if they were censored for public consumption.
Not too surprising. It would be fun for you to post one of these circulating emails.
I was quite harsh in the certification survey. I am a firm believer that great PM’s are not made, but that a person either has the temperment, or not. Technical skills come with experience, but a PM worth their salt is a battle hardened, hard nosed warrior.
Unlike the CPM, I do not have an MBA. I actually studied physics in University (a public institute, and not one that grants doctorates).
The best PM’s I have ever worked with worked their way up from being applications engineers, and have lived the trial by fire of being on the front line with customers. However, I know that path is also no guarantee that they can handle the complex role of PM. Probably 60% of those fail to make the transition.
Right now, I am trying to mold an engineer (who got his MBA from the University of Phoenix) into a product manager (He was forced into the role, not really my choice), and it is a challenge to work someone who has not really had the customer facing aspect into the role. Certification will not help someone like that.
I stand by my responses to the survey.
-G
This post is a 100% delicious beat-down, and an excellent use of your crankiness. Thanks for taking the time, CPM.
I think you are being unfair to the costs associated with providing certification:
1. That heavy bond certification paper is much more expensive than you’d think.
2. If the company fails to plan properly, the instruction will need to go to Kinko’s the night before graduation. And we all know Kinko’s is a rip off when they have you over a barrel.
Ray
PS. I also forgot to include the high-quality plastic frames that many firms provide to their graduates.
I know I’m late to the party here, but I completely agree with y’all (fake southern accent). The only thing these certifications are good for are to help a really cranky PM (not the blogger) who is battling with getting stuff done so much that they forget the way the ideal world works get remotivated and energized about why they became a PM.
The only reason they make money is because their materials are not in the public domain and you want to see what they have, so you pay for the course (never done it, but that’s the only reason I would). SO if somehow, I don’t know how, their materials leaked, they would have no IP and hence no draw. Amazing with all the torrents out there that this hasn’t happened. Oh wait, maybe its ’cause the content has to be something people really want to see…..
Quite a circle.
I’ll poke my head into the bash-fest temporarily to remind everyone not to confuse the CERTIFICATION with the training. Does the PM certification have dubious value? Currently, yes – I’d argue that it’s faaaar to easy to obtain (the only one I have personal knowledge of is the Pragmatic cert). No cert that anyone truly respects is something that you can get after a 3 day class. That’s dumb. There are certs that ARE highly respected, like CCIE. It takes at least 1-2 years on average to study and get a CCIE, and they are rare relative to other certs. The other thing that advanced certs like CCIE test is thinking skills and not just memorization. Any advanced cert has a lab portion that has some amount of unscripted “think-on-your-feet” content. IMO those are skills that are much more important to a PM than memorizing the “right” answers to a test.
@Howard – I can only speak of Pragmatic b/c that is the training I have attended (twice). The materials are good, and proprietary IP as you point out. However they are only good as a refresher without having been in the training and heard the voiceover, case studies, discussion, etc that the trainer brings to the table. IMO Pragmatic’s secret sauce is at least one part their method/process/content, and one part their people, who by my measure are all highly experienced and have the war wounds in PM battle to prove it. It’s not like a PM with 3 years of experience can walk in and get a month of coaching and become a trainer.
This is much ado about nothing: people look out for their own interests and there is nothing shocking about that. Certification companies want prospects to see value in their cert and people with a cert want to feel like their investment in time and money was worth something. I would have been more surprised if those two groups HADN’T teamed up! Providing suggested answers is a step too far, obviously. I wonder if Mrs. Cranky would have had an issue if they had provided a neutral link in a newsletter or website saying “Cranky, a PM blogger, is running a survey on the value of certifications like the one you have. Please consider taking the survey and letting your thoughts be known.”
As a peer group, let’s be careful how much we bash the training and certifications offered by these various groups. Yes, they are additional revenue streams for these companies. Yes, their value is questionable right now. What I’m seeing is a backlash against ANY kind of PM cert because people feel that the essence of PM can’t be captured by a cert, and on that I say the jury is still out. And even if it can’t, you can test and certify many of the critical skills that are required to be a good PM.
Finally, let’s consider for a moment where we would be without these companies evangelizing for Product Management for years. PM didn’t exist by name or craft 30 years ago. It barely existed 15-20 years ago. Today you can find PM’s everywhere. It isn’t only because of companies like Pragmatic and AIPMM, but they help. It lends credibility to PM when a training company can come in and say “we’ve training over 100,000 PM’s at 5000 companies worldwide and 95% of the Fortune 500.” Let’s consider how far these companies have helped bring our craft before we brand them as the source of our problems.
Full disclosures: I have attended Pragmatic training. I am not certified. Both Pragmatic and AIPMM help sponsor ProductCamp, and event that I plan. No one from either contacted me about this topic in any way. I like long walks on the beach.
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