See what Josh Nankivel said when he first ran across the organization's Twitter account:
Someone set up this account on Twitter today, and within 3 hours they’ve already sent 33 updates out with someone’s Twitter username tagged, as if they were responding to them. You can see many of them are exactly the same.
Well, you know how I feel about mentionspam.
Then Nankivel visited the organization's website:
Just reading the copy on these pages, it looks like someone slapped them together without any real idea of what a professional organization or certification program looks like. There is apparently no requirements or description of what it takes to be certified…you just need some money apparently.
Now the best part about this is the name of the certification that is offered...Certified Ethical Project Manager.
Yes, ETHICAL. I kid you not. And, if nothing else, they really emphasize their message on their @CEPM_CERT Twitter account.
But this isn't a marketing certification; it's a project management certification. And how do they manage their own project? Well, they must be doing well:
We are one of the largest "Ethical Project Management" certification organizations in the world...
And they demonstrate their grasp of project management by using key words such as "standardized." Heck, even I know that. (So I guess I'd better apply.)
Seriously, to become a certified ethical project manager, you have to do more than send in your money. You have to agree with some pretty stiff principles:
Our members have shown that they have the abilities to correctly manage projects according to a standardized body of information known C.E.P.M. Principles (below).
So, what's the first ethical principle?
Management by principled objective. This means that a project is started with the end in mind, on-time, in-scope and within-budget. A project is not system maintenance or technical support. A C.E.P.M will inform stakeholders of these parameters when necessary.
Now if you read that second sentence as written, any project can satisfy the criteria. At the beginning of a project, EVERY project is on-time, in-scope, and within-budget. (And clearly-hyphenated.)
I'm not quite sure why the third sentence was inserted in there. I'm sure there was a good reason.
But the most interesting thing that I found in all of these principles (numbered from 0 to 0, by the way) was this phrase in the second principle:
Buffering schedules and costs breaches an unwritten contract of honesty that can't be regained.
Now the implicit assumption is that an ethical project manager will know the exact schedule and cost at the beginning of the project, and that any upward deviation from those exact figures will earn the project manager the unending wrath of the Joe Wilsons of the world.
Perhaps the head of the C.E.P.M. certification program (who, as is usual with these types of organizations, is not identified) should become familiar with the idea of a risk factor. In fact, you should grant Stephen Toney a free certification for his work Risk Factors in Technology Projects.
Interestingly enough, Toney's model grades the risk of technology projects on a scale of 6-30, with a score of 30 indicating the highest risk. His comment about the low-risk projects, however, is interesting:
Scores under 10 may indicate that the project is so low risk that it may not accomplish anything worthwhile.
But, according to the anonymous C.E.P.M. people, those projects are really really ethical.
Speaking of anonymity, if you type cepmcert.com in the WHOIS form for their registrar, here's what you get:
General Information
Domain: cepmcert.com
Creation Date: 27-Mar-2009
Updated Date: 27-Mar-2009
Expiration Date: 27-Mar-2010
Name Server: ns57.1and1.com 74.208.2.9
ns58.1and1.com 74.208.3.8
Registrant
First name: Oneandone
Last name: Private Registration
Organisation: 1&1 Internet, Inc. - http://1and1.com/contact
Street: 701 Lee Road, Suite 300 ATTN: cepmcert.com
City: 19087 Chesterbrook
Country code: US
Telephone: +1.8772064254
Telefax:
E-Mail: proxy1760419@1and1-private-registration.com
Administrative Contact
First name: Oneandone
Last name: Private Registration
Organisation: 1&1 Internet, Inc. - http://1and1.com/contact
Street: 701 Lee Road, Suite 300 ATTN: cepmcert.com
City: 19087 Chesterbrook
Country code: US
Telephone: +1.8772064254
Telefax:
E-Mail: proxy1760419@1and1-private-registration.com
Technical Contact
First name: Oneandone
Last name: Private Registration
Organisation: 1&1 Internet, Inc. - http://1and1.com/contact
Street: 701 Lee Road, Suite 300 ATTN: cepmcert.com
City: 19087 Chesterbrook
Country code: US
Telephone: +1.8772064254
Telefax:
E-Mail: proxy1760419@1and1-private-registration.com
Frankly, just the fact that the certifying organization doesn't bother to identify anyone associated with the firm should be enough to make anyone doubt the...um...ethics of the certifying organization.
But what do I know? I'm not a C.E.P.M.
By the way, it should be clearly emphasized that cepmcert.com is presumably IN NO WAY connected with cepm.com, the website for the Centre for Excellence in Project Management (CEPM) Pvt. Ltd., an organization with a clear history and identified clients. Although this organization doesn't have "ethical" in its name, it's clearly much more ethical than the other group.
