From #pmv #prodmgmt seminar, preliminary thoughts on the returns on investment on certification

Jotting down quick thoughts, will probably assemble into something more coherent later -

I attended a webinar by Therese Padilla of the Association of International Product Marketing & Management (AIPMM) which discussed, among other things, the benefits of certification for product managers. While Padilla was not solely speaking about AIPMM certification, it's obvious that Padilla would be positively inclined toward a certification process, in the same way that Jack Welch (we'll see him later) would be positively inclined toward light bulbs.

However, on Twitter, Trevor Rotzien raised a question regarding certification:

#pmv However, I've not seen statistical evidence for the ROI of certification in #prodmgmt. Anyone out there who has?

Here's Val Workman's reply:

@trevorrotzien I have never read a book that I didn't get an ROI from #pmv #prodmgmt

And Matt Shandera also weighed in:

@trevorrotzien Great question. I have seen several job posts requesting #prodmgmt certs and the value personally for me #pmv

But these examples talk about personal ROI. I tweeted about another aspect of ROI that should be considered:

@trevorrotzien re roi of certification, i assume you're talking about roi to organization. roi to person is positive. #pmv #prodmgmt

And perhaps I'm assuming too much about a positive personal ROI of certification, but I've experienced this in my own life - the first example that comes to mind was the job interview (and job) that I got because of my MBA.

But does an ORGANIZATION benefit from having a certified product manager? And if it does, how do you quantify this for the organization's benefit? (Remember that these are the same organizations that are cutting travel, something that some product managers feel is cutting them off from vital information from their customers.)

But back to the ROI of product management certification. Mack McCoy linked to a discussion of this topic. I'll follow up on this when I get a chance.

To be continued...

P.S. As long as I'm mentioning Mack McCoy, I want to think him for sending me the link to a Jack Welch quote that was briefly referenced by Therese Padilla in her webinar. The quote:

Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.

P.P.S. Here is the text that I submitted in the post-webinar evaluation:

The webinar worked well. My only problems were problems that were inherent in Twitter itself. However, while other applications (e.g. FriendFeed) are better suited to conversations, one can't argue against Twitter's popularity.

[8:15 PM - I DELVED INTO THIS A LITTLE MORE. PARTS ONE, TWO, AND THREE.]