Investing in project management certification: Do organisations
get their money’s worth?
Nazeer Joseph
1
•
Carl Marnewick
1
Published online: 2 May 2017
Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017
Abstract The professionalisation of project management
has been a contentious topic for some time. Project man-
agement certification is seen as a step towards the profes-
sionalisation of the discipline. Certifications were
developed as a means to provide individuals with the
appropriate knowledge and skills required to deliver pro-
jects successfully. Although project management certifi-
cation programmes are now commonplace across the
globe, research is yet to fully investigate the true influence
certifications have on project performance. This paper
revealed that South African IT project performance is not
influenced by project management certification. Moreover,
it was established that certifications need to be redesigned
to ensure that the professionalisation of project manage-
ment remains on track.
Keywords Project management certification Á IT project
management Á Project management professionalisation Á
South Africa
1 Introduction
Project management has been evolving towards profes-
sionalisation for some time. Certification is considered the
silver bullet required to ensure that the appropriate
competency is achieved for sustainable project success
[1, 2]. Project management expertise and competency
continually emerge as a key factor for realising project
success [3–5]. Project management certifications were
subsequently developed as a means to provide individuals
with the appropriate knowledge and skills. Certification
programmes are now commonplace across the globe
[6–10]. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) conducted a sur-
vey in 2007 which revealed that 77% of respondents held
project management certifications [11]. Similarly, the 2013
Prosperus report, an African project management report,
revealed that the information technology (IT) industry had
the highest number of certifications with 69.7% of
respondents having some form of formal project manage-
ment certification [4]. Both studies revealed the two pre-
dominant certifications are PMP and PRINCE2 Practitioner
[4, 11]. PWC and the Project Management Institute (PMI)
assert that projects are more likely to succeed when project
managers have certifications [11, 12]. There is contention,
however, that project management certification is not
essential for achieving project success, especially for IT
projects [13–17]. Starkweather and Stevenson [16] dis-
covered that PMP certification presence does not translate
to improved project success. Furthermore, Wells [18] dis-
covered that PRINCE2 certification has no benefit on IT
projects. Organisations spend significant amounts of
money on acquiring project management certifications as
approximately USD$9.87 million was spent over the past
12 years [19–22]. Considering the significant cost to
organisations, it is imperative that project management
certifications positively influence IT project performance.
This research aims to investigate whether the South
African IT project performance landscape is comparable or
contradictory to previous studies [11, 12, 16, 18, 23].
Moreover, this research takes a different stance as it does
& Nazeer Joseph
njoseph@uj.ac.za
Carl Marnewick
cmarnewick@uj.ac.za
1
Department of Applied Information Systems, Faculty of
Management, University of Johannesburg, PO Box 524,
Auckland Park, Johannesburg 2006, South Africa
123
Inf Technol Manag (2018) 19:51–74
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10799-017-0275-y
@Phil_Robichaud
@deepthiw
@JoseServera