PM-Mastery

A New Era in Project Management Certification

• Walt Sparling • Season 1 • Episode 64

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Understanding the nuances of project management is crucial to achieving success today. This episode dives into the new PURE Certification program, highlighting the importance of real-world application in varied environments, taught by instructors that work as project management professionals. 

In this interview we discussed:

  •  Updates on PMBOK 8 and its implications for project managers
  • Discussion on the challenges and strengths of Agile methodology 
  • Little's Law
  • Introduction of the PURE Project Manager credential 
    • Overview of the structure and offerings of the new certification
    • Ability to earn PDUs incrementally throughout the program, which can be used for existing certifications
    • Highlighting the accessibility and cost-effectiveness of the certification process 
    • Commitment to practical education without unnecessary theory and fluff 
    • Insights from experienced project managers on various topics

This was another great interview with Joseph Phillips, and I am excited about getting my PURE certification this year!

 If you are interested in learning more about this certification, check it out here. 

Links: 

PM-Mastery Links:

Intro/Outro:

Welcome to the PM Mastery Podcast. This podcast is all about helping you master your project management skills by sharing tips, tricks, tools and training to get you to the next level, while sharing the stories of other project managers on their journey in project management. And now here's your host, walt Sparling.

Walt Sparling:

Welcome everybody to the current edition of PM Mastery, and today I am honored to have with us Joseph Phillip. Once again, welcome to the show, joseph. Thanks, walt. Happy to be here. I know I was thinking back and I'm like, oh, it's been a while since you've been on the podcast. And I'm like, no, you haven't. You were on it last month when we did the top five most popular episodes, right, and then before that we did the book review. I believe it was the CAPM book. That was like last year.

Joseph Phillips:

Oh yeah, yeah, it's been a little while.

Walt Sparling:

Yeah, so what else has been going on? What's going on in your world?

Joseph Phillips:

Well, we have been just a flurry of activity with, you know, pmbok 8. So we've been reviewing that and looking at updates for what's going to be big changes whenever that's released. Of course, the exam content outline has not changed. I've been getting a lot of questions about that, you know, with PMBOK 8. There's always been this misconception, especially the last few years, that there's a correlation between the PMBOK and the PMP or the CAPM, and that's not true. The exam, like the PMP for example, is based on, I think, 16 different books, not just the PMBOK guide, but there is an expectation of terminology and the processes like there's 40 processes in PMBOK 8, I believe. So there will be some changes, I'm sure, coming on the exam. None of that has been announced yet from PMI but we're just in the review stage of PMBOK 8 and looking to see what you know what's PMI's vision is for new processes, new approaches.

Joseph Phillips:

I mean project management is project management. It's always been my thing, so I've been immersed in that. And then, of course, working towards the updated PMI ACP. You know that exam changed recently, so I've been reviewing that content and going to be updating some materials for that exam. But again, agile is agile, so I don't get too caught up in. Oh, there's a new addition to this or that. At the heart of it it's still agile, it's still Scrum, it's still XP, it's still project management. I mean there was no PMBOK guy when they built the Eiffel Tower or the pyramids, or the pyramids or the pyramids, or the Rockefeller Center or the Empire State Building or what have you. So I don't get too emotional about the PMBOK guide.

Walt Sparling:

It's interesting. This is not PMI, but I haven't done a lot with Agile and we've talked about this in the past, so that's one of my things this year is to get involved more in that. So I'm actually taking your professional Scrum Master course and working on getting that certification behind me this year, so help me get a little bit more and see how I can maybe relate the Agile to some of what I do, sure.

Joseph Phillips:

Agile is not a panacea. I think it's become kind of a hype that, oh, it's Agile to some of what I do. Sure, agile is not a panacea. I think it's become kind of a hype that, oh, it's Agile, it's clever and fun. But Agile does not work for everything. There are some things that you have to predict, like in your industry with construction. I mean, you have to know what the building's going to look like before you start. Agile is more suited for you know brain work, you know writing, coding, creative type work or, of course, predictive is anything more industrial. But I think there are a lot of things from Agile that we can take and put into a predictive environment to basically realize business value sooner and to streamline some repetition and to have a more iterative approach to some of our work.

Walt Sparling:

Now I'm thinking design.

Joseph Phillips:

design for the could be agile Right yeah, or even taking things like the retrospective or looking at time blocks like three weeks or four weeks of effort. What are we going to get done in the next four weeks? To take chunks of work and I'm always a big fan of smaller chunks of work that it's easier to manage, easier to see where we're going to be in four weeks as opposed to four months. It's not always realistic, but whenever possible I like to work in smaller chunks of work. You may be familiar with Little's Law that basically, the longer the queue, the longer it's going to take. So if you have fewer people in line, the line moves pretty quick.

Intro/Outro:

You got a lot of people in line.

Joseph Phillips:

It just takes longer, like at the DMV where you get your driver's license but little is all so just kind of that, you know, kind of makes sense when you think about it. The longer the line, the longer it'll take. But the shorter the line, you know you can work faster in smaller iterations and knock things out. Kind of ties into the Pomodoro technique. I'm a big fan of where you and I have talked about that, working in small chunks, like 25 minutes. There you go exactly, yeah, mine's in the other, but to work in small chunks of time, I'm a big fan of the Pomodoro technique.

Walt Sparling:

It's just on a bigger scale, is what we see in Agile. So good to have you on Good to catch up a little bit. I believe you have another project that you're working on.

Joseph Phillips:

I do. So this is big news. This has been a huge endeavor, so we're going to break the news here. I've not really told a whole lot of people about it. Of course, when this comes out, our program will be going live, and that is the Pure Project Manager.

Joseph Phillips:

This is a new credential that focuses on the core, real-world, applicable skills of project management. No theory, no fluff, no flow, no earned value management, but the idea being, as you know, I've been teaching to P&P for over 20 years and consulted and led projects, and there is a real dichotomy between theory, classroom book and actual application. And so over the last few years I've developed this framework called PURE, and PURE means Projects Under Realistic Expectations, with the idea being that we as an industry, a project management community, maybe not an industry we have to have an understanding that there is no formula for project management that works everywhere. You cannot take the PMBOK guide and just say I'm going to do everything in here, my project will be successful. That is a guide to the generally accepted practices of project management. So Pure begins with this acknowledgement that it's not a one-size-fits-all solution. So that's a realistic expectation. And then we have a realistic expectations in different industries, different expectations, compliance, regulations, laws and so on. So we know, in construction versus healthcare, versus IT, versus banking, all of those have different compliance. You have safety, you have patient care, you have financial and all sorts of laws and compliance that are unique to that industry, that basically are requirements that are constraints on what you may do in that industry. So we have to have realistic expectations there. Then we have to have realistic expectations in the organization. So you may have two companies in construction, but they have a different way of doing business. So the standards, the culture, the formalities are different in each organization as well. So we have this broad umbrella of pure that becomes more and more narrow to the individual organization and projects operating in that organization. So it's projects under realistic expectations that we have to have a buy-in to that concept that there is not a universal approach.

Joseph Phillips:

Now, having said that, what the course is? I've partnered with over 20 project management experts Walt, you are one of those people and we have created a series of courses that equates to 60 hours of project management education no theory, but how projects actually work. So no fluff, no aspirational goals, real world expectations of how projects work in these different environments. So there are. We begin with that concept of a just having an acknowledgement that what works in one environment will not work in every environment.

Joseph Phillips:

And then the program there is a host of classes they range from an hour up to five or six hours that you complete at your pace and at the end of completing all of the courses, the total of 60 hours of training you must pass a 100-question exam. Pass a 100-question exam, you have 90 minutes to do so and then you'll receive a badge from Credly that says you are a pure project manager. So you're authenticated, you're verified and you can add that to your LinkedIn, to your resume, to your email and so on. And then, of course, it's 60 hours, which the goal there is twofold is one to give a broad base of knowledge of real-world application and then two to support, if you have PMI credentials, that you'll get 60 PDUs for your ongoing education requirements with PMI, education requirements with PMI. So it is a massive program, it's a massive endeavor.

Joseph Phillips:

Came up with this framework over the last seven years.

Joseph Phillips:

You'll see on our website, puremanagementalliancecom, that it's kind of a temple of project management that has a foundation all the way up to the pinnacle of it, which is business value, that everything has to support business value and that if any one of those components in the temple and the framework were to be faulty, your project's going to fail in some aspect. So that's pure. That's been consuming my life for the last year, on top of everything else getting this vision to come to life. So it's very exciting. It's a totally different way of training and learning project management. So the folks that are involved, the people from all over the world we have PhDs, we have people that are in the trenches, we have folks that have done training and some that I've never taught before, but they're just good communicators and they're really doing project management. That it's not a slide deck and they're just reading the slides. These are folks that are actually doing project management and what's worked for them in their career and how other PMs can apply that in their lives and in their career.

Walt Sparling:

So I, like you said, I I'm involved in this as well and it has been an interesting journey to get through and it is a lot of work. It was a lot of work. It's still happening but, um, you know, as as we move forward, but it was fun. And I do know probably pretty well about a third of the people that are the instructors.

Walt Sparling:

The other people I know kind of sort of some I've met for the first time and I also know that some of the instructors over the next I would say at least the next month or so are going to be coming on the podcast and they're going to specifically talk about their courses and then I assume, over time, more will come on as well. So you're going to be hearing a lot about this, mingled in between other podcast episodes. So I'll probably do a lot more releases for the listeners. Instead of one every two weeks, which has kind of been my average there might be for a while, there might be two a week just to kind of get everybody's episodes out there and get everybody familiar with what's going on and get a feel for what this, this certificate, is like. So I'm I'm pretty excited about getting it out there.

Joseph Phillips:

I think it's a great opportunity for learners and project managers on a couple of different fronts. One, there is no barrier to entry. That you complete the course and pass the exam. That's all it takes. It's a huge. It's a huge program. Those 60 hours is no joke.

Walt Sparling:

Yeah, and I've run that through my head and I've talked with some other folks about, okay, allocating 60 hours and you know me, I have a full-time job. Most almost everybody does has a full-time job. They already have others. I'm working on another certificate or certification. I'm buying a house right now. I've got my podcast, my blog, other things that I'm doing. So, yeah, I'm trying to figure out how am I going to get this. You know I will get it done. It's just like how long will it take? Yeah, you got to set to it. It's just like when I studied for and passed the PMP, I had a plan and then I just worked that plan until I got through it and completed it.

Joseph Phillips:

Absolutely. It's definitely going to take some dedication and some resiliency, which the program itself is part of being a project manager, of seeing things through the program, you have one year to complete the 60 hours and pass the exam, so it's not like you have to do it in a month. You could do a couple hours a week and have a pretty good grasp, you know by month eight or so, of being prepared. The final exam as well is a little different than other credentials, a little different than other credentials we won't mention any names, but you take the exam online. It is a self-paced, a self-guided exam of 100 questions and you have 90 minutes to answer all the questions. Any blank questions are wrong.

Joseph Phillips:

And so in our focus group, some of the feedback we had was well, won't people use Google or a book to look it up? And my response is absolutely, yeah, absolutely, because if I'm in a project that I don't know what to do, I'm going to use Google and look it up. So that's part of using some critical thinking, which is one of the components of Pure is to use your resources to answer questions or figure things out. The goal is to not answer the question. The goal is to support business value. So the other part of that, though, is you only have 90 minutes to answer 100 questions, so if you are whirling through you know Google looking for the answer I have to read articles and so on you're going to run out of time, and you run out of time blank answers are wrong.

Walt Sparling:

I just want to add something to that. Not only do you. What you just said about the time is that you don't get to the final until you've taken the 90, 60. Yeah, exactly.

Joseph Phillips:

And all of the final is based on all of the individual courses and at the end of each course there is an exam, little quiz that will test you on the content of that course. So you'll have a good idea on topics that you need to spend more time on or seek clarity on. The other part of it being self-led and online is, I think sometimes there is undue stress, like the stress of going to the testing center and you got to take everything out of your pocket and get the wand over you or having a proctor stare at you. It adds a lot of anxiety and I think a lot of adults get test anxiety where they are good PMs and they know how to do project management and they know the material. But that test anxiety comes in and really robs them and cheats them of all the work that they've done.

Joseph Phillips:

And so what's the goal? To pass a test or to be a better project manager, To be a better PM? So that was part of my philosophy with why I've elected to do it online as part of the program, without going to a testing center. And there is, you know, a little bit of ethics that are in there as well. We have it's not the same 100 questions every time. There's a pool of questions that will rotate around and then, based on the analytics for how people answer test questions, we'll determine is that a poor test question because everybody gets it right or everybody misses that one. So it will give us some insight. So over the program we'll be able to add and delete questions just based on the performance inside of the exam. So it will be evolving over the next two, three years as the amount of test takers begin to accumulate. We have a good pool to see how people are answering individual questions.

Walt Sparling:

So a couple of questions that I have, and some of these I already know the answers to, but I want to put it out. There is there are 60 hours. How many actual courses are there in that 60 hours?

Joseph Phillips:

Oh, that's a great question. I think there are about 32 individual classes. Like I said, some are an hour, some are four or five hours, so it just depends on the topic and you can take them in any order that you wish. They will be presented in an order that we feel is best, but you could pause this guy and go start another one, or vice versa. I think try to make the learning into smaller chunks so it's easier to get through smaller portions into bite size. And they're all on different topics. I mean there's a little bit of overlap just due to the nature.

Walt Sparling:

For example, we have courses on emotional intelligence, but we also have a course on personality types, so those two are relevant, and I do know because there's two other individuals that I know that are doing courses and one in the beginning we actually compared our course outlines to make sure we didn't have a lot of overlap. Ours are on communication, but that individual took a different dove, deeper into some things than I did. So it's it's complimentary. So in my mind I'm probably going to go through and pick out any ones that are kind of similar and batch those, do those all together. So I kind of all of that. So I do like the ability to take them out of order.

Joseph Phillips:

And we have some. There's a couple that are, I think, pretty unique, that you probably won't see in any other program. One is well, I do a course on critical thinking, which is one of our main pieces of our framework about how to. What is critical thinking? How does it work in project management? Some logic, and there's some different puzzles in the course. Just to get thinking.

Joseph Phillips:

A big part of project management is critical thinking, and then the other side of the coin, of course, is the emotional intelligence. And then there's a really interesting course about being a project manager in a startup environment, and this is from an individual that's had a lot of experience coaching and consulting PM for startup work. But it's applicable to even large organizations because the project itself can be looked at almost like a little business with ROI, business value, time and resource or labor costs. So that's a shorter course, but I think it's relevant. There's lots of little nuggets in there, even if you're in a large organization. And then we have a really good course by Dr Chambers, a dear friend, and he does the course on customer service. The idea of servant leadership and really being just a good person goes a long way, and having a good attitude goes a long way in project management. So I think that actually I just watched Jim Chambers' course, I just watched his course. Yeah, it's very good. I'm really excited.

Walt Sparling:

It's one of the things that I. I haven't been able to take any of the courses yet, but I have seen a lot of the introductory videos and there are some ones there that I'm really looking forward to His being one. I just commented on that, I think, this morning. That's a great one. So there's AI, there's communication, there's risk, there's stakeholder management. I mean, there's a ton of information out there and, like you said, it's from PMs that are actually doing it, not not. You need to consider this stuff if you come into it. Well, hey, I do this stuff and this is how.

Joseph Phillips:

Yeah. So I've asked people like when you and I, you know, first talking about you doing your courses, I said, okay, what is your biggest strength? Or, if you were, we have a course on hacking your project. So like some tips and tricks to hack your project. So each individual when we talked about doing a class was, okay, what do you consider an area of project management that's helped you in your career that not everybody's doing, and how can we package that so other people can do what you do? And that was a conversation we had over and over on all these different topics as we took the framework and presented that to our group of trainers and professionals.

Walt Sparling:

So the other thing that I think is really good is this course, or this certification includes a bunch of courses, but you can take them in any order and they each have their own PDU value. So in theory, you could take 15 of the courses and get whatever those PDDRs and you can claim them. If it's your turn to do your renewal, you can claim those and they're actual, available to you. You don't have to wait till the end of the final to claim those. The other is the cost.

Joseph Phillips:

Yeah, let me talk about both of those things not to interrupt you, but I did because I'm really proud of that idea of getting your PDUs in motion. If we go to an agile environment, we want incremental deliverables, so I get incremental value as the project's in motion. So you, as you work your way through the course, every course, you'll get a certificate and that has the PDU distribution on the certificate and you can go out and enter those PDUs even though you're not done with the entire program. So the business value, which is our primary focus of Pure the business value is you get the PDUs as you move through the course, so you get incremental value. You get the PDUs as you move through the course, so you get incremental value. And then the ultimate value is you get a new credential, the Pure Project Manager, which is trademarked, and we have the partnership with Credly. So you'll get the blockchain verified badge and certificate that anyone can click on and it shows that you actually did pass the exam. It's not just a piece of artwork that anybody can copy and paste and throw out there. The same with the individual courses you don't get a Credly badge for each course, but the certificate has a unique code on it that's tied to your transcript on our server. So you get value as you move through the course and then ultimately the final deliverable is the credential that then you can claim the pure project manager.

Joseph Phillips:

Oh, and then the price. So we again focus group. We talked and considered a lot over the past year about where this was going to land on price. So it came on the result of $399. So you consider 60 hours of education and a new credential $399. And I know that is less than other credentials in the marketplace and it may be more than some other credentials, but I think the value proposition for the amount of education you get, the amount of PDUs you get at $399, is pretty tremendous. So, whatever that comes out to an hour, what is that like? $6 and some change in an hour for your PDUs. Plus you're working towards a new credential. You can be one of the first people to have this credential if you sign up at puremanagementalliancecom.

Walt Sparling:

It's a one-stop shop. So you sign up, you start taking your courses, you start getting your PDUs when it's time to take the test. It's not a separate fee, it's not a separate sit down. You just, when you're done, you roll in and take your test.

Joseph Phillips:

Exactly, that was one of the challenges. Obviously, my business has. It's kind of a double-edged sword. You know, we generate revenue from training the PMP exam or the ACP or CSM, and then the other side of that people have to pay for. Then now you got to pay for the testing fee alone. So this is all together it's $3.99 for both. You get all the education, the 60 hours and the exam. You don't have to pay two different fees. That's right.

Walt Sparling:

What about continuing? You know we're talking about PDUs. You're earning PDUs, but will there be a requirement at some point where, in order to maintain your certification, you have to take refresher courses or get other PDUs Right now as we are launching, and you know we're pretty grassroots here.

Joseph Phillips:

So right now I'm not making or we are not making that a requirement. If down the road, like, let's say, two, three years from now, we need to update content and we want to do a continuing ed to maintain that credential, I'll be fair or we will be fair, meaning that anyone before that decision they're grandfathered in. I'm not going to make people like oh, you earned it, now we're going to change the rules when we, if we change the rules for continuing ed requirements like PDUs, for pure whatever that may be, ceus or whatever when that decision is made, that would be for individuals from that point forward. So anyone that goes into the program now you're going to be a pure PM forever and ever, without any additional educational requirements. If that changes, those individuals will be grandfathered in. We won't make people like now you got to pay again and take it again or get more training or whatnot, so at some point we may grow into that. Right now we're not making that a requirement.

Walt Sparling:

Now, if someone goes through the course and there's so much good information because I know some of these folks and I've seen little tidbits of their courses I sign up, I take the course, I pass, I get my credential and I'm working on a job and I don't deal with I don't know, let's say risk much, but I know I took a course on risk in this program. Will I have access to go back and look at that again and watch the video?

Joseph Phillips:

You have one year access to the program. So that's an interesting question. There will be deliverables that will be yours to keep, like slides and so on, but the actual video content? You have one year to complete the program and then you are done. So, to answer your question, no, there won't be a lifetime access, or anything like that, to the videos, just due to cost constraints.

Walt Sparling:

That could be a revenue stream right there.

Joseph Phillips:

That may be something that we consider right now. Our focus is on, you know, getting this thing rolling and getting the word out and getting people involved. So we would certainly take that into consideration some type of a you know, marginal fee for lifetime access or something like that. But we would have to really think that through how that would work.

Walt Sparling:

All right, Well, if you do, I'll take my commission on that. Yeah, we'll work something out, joe, always always a pleasure chatting with you and I'm really excited about this. I can't wait to go through the course myself or the certification, because I've seen some of the courses and I'm jacked about going through and taking them.

Joseph Phillips:

Well, I think it's different, it's unique. No one else is doing this. We have all different voices, so it's not just me, it's not just Walt, so we have people from all over the world with different backgrounds, different expertise. So I think it's pretty smart and it's taken two years from concept to go live. So we really have done a lot of research and thought and prayer and sweat, no blood or tears, but it it is been quite the endeavor and I'm really proud of it. And you know, it's this I just celebrated in January.

Joseph Phillips:

I've been teaching in my career. My whole career has been teaching and consulting, but I'm teaching in some capacity for the last 30 years and to stand back, you know, and, of course, project management for a little over 20, and to stand back and say, okay, I want to leave, not to sound cheesy, but a little bit of a legacy, or to really package up what I've learned and what I believe in. And there's so much that I have yet to learn from all these individuals. And in the industry there's always something new to learn, and so that was part of the idea for this. Like I don't know everything, I'm smart enough to know that I don't know everything and so really sought out people of all different age groups. I mean, there's some very young folks and some folks that are retired that I coaxed back into this just based on their career and I know them personally, so I think it's a very unique package.

Walt Sparling:

Well in the show notes. I'm hoping to see a lot of the listeners checking it out and if you have any questions, reach out to myself or Joe and we'll get you some answers.

Joseph Phillips:

Absolutely. I'm eager to see what you do with this and how we can grow together and what's going to happen in the industry over the next couple of years.

Walt Sparling:

All right. Well, thank you for coming on, joe, and I want you to make sure that you keep moving forward.

Joseph Phillips:

I will, you too, keep moving forward. Thanks, walt, appreciate you.

Walt Sparling:

Thanks everyone for for listening and we'll see you on the next episode of pm mastery thanks for listening to the pm mastery podcast at wwwpm-masterycom.

Intro/Outro:

Be sure to subscribe in your podcast player until next time. Keep working on your craft.

Joseph Phillips:

We'll see you next time.