PMI PMP

Okay, so this has very little to do with Disney directly, but since I noted the following at the bottom of my home page for this blog, I'm gonna post about it:

Likewise, in the interest of full disclosure, I'm highly interested in being employed by the Mouse . . . so take this as partly fun and partly my cathartic outlet along that journey.

Today I achieved another major personal milestone in that quest:  I passed the PMI PMP exam!

PMI is the Project Management Institute and the Project Management Professional (PMP) designation is fastly becoming the commercial gold standard for people who know something about project management (my current employer, the Department of Defense has also had a program management certification program for some time called DAWIA, for which I have been accredited by for quite some time now).

Disney does not yet require such a credential in general, but it does show up occasionally as a 'Desired Qualifications' requirement.  I also haven't yet been able to figure out if Disney employs any type of formal Project Management Office (PMO) organization.  From what I can tell I suspect not, at least not company wide anyhow.  I do know however that Universal Florida recently advertised for several positions in just such an office recently, so presumably they've chosen to go that route to some degree.

A PMO is a group of people who are responsible for sharing best practices, lessons learned, providing project management training and mentoring, etc. across an organization.  In the long run such an organizational construct should hopefully make projects more repeatable, less risky, and with higher quality than would be done otherwise.

Anyhow, it's a 4 hour, 200 question exam and I am glad I got it!