Behind every successful IT project, you’ll find a highly skilled project manager. From hardware and software upgrades and ongoing security patches, to application development and the software rollouts themselves, project managers keep your teams productive and on task.
Behind every successful IT project, you’ll find a highly skilled project manager. From hardware and software upgrades and ongoing security patches, to application development and the software rollouts themselves, project managers keep your teams productive and on task.
Almost any IT pro can benefit from adding a project management certification to their list of IT credentials, showing you have the know-how to plan, schedule, budget, execute, deliver, and report on IT initiatives. Here, CIO.com outlines the most popular PM certifications that will add value and help you hone skills throughout your career.
There are several certs to choose from, and the best for you will be whichever one aligns closest with your goals and expertise. Entry-level project managers will want to look toward those designed for beginners, demonstrating you have a baseline understanding of project management. These certifications can also get you up to speed on the fundamentals of project management, giving you the foundation to begin a career in the field.
As your career progresses, you’ll want to earn more advanced certs to validate your skills and experience. There are many designed for everyone including experts in PM, validating that you have the knowhow to lead PM teams and manage large-scale projects.
The Associate in Project Management (APM) certification offered by The Global Association for Quality Management (GAQM) is an entry-level project management cert to validate your fundamental knowledge of the Project Management Framework. It’s aimed at those with little to no experience in PM and includes an online course you’ll be required to complete before taking the exam. The course covers topics such as training and all the basics of the role you’ll need to be successful. It’s targeted at managers and project team members, students at the graduate or undergraduate level, entry-level practitioners, and anyone with an interest in PM as a career.
In context
- Topic: Proyectos, PMO y Riesgos — Gestión de proyectos, oficinas de proyecto y riesgo del portafolio.
- Source: CIO
- Published: 08/10/2026
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Why it matters
In project management, nearly everything discussed as a technical problem is really a problem of expectations badly negotiated at the start. Scope, time and cost were agreed at a moment when nobody had enough information, and afterwards nobody wanted to reopen the conversation.
My filter is the quality of the status report. If every project is green, the reporting system is not working: in any real portfolio some initiatives are in trouble, and a healthy organisation surfaces them in time rather than discovering them at the closure committee.
What usually goes wrong
Where it usually breaks is the handover to operations. The project is declared finished when it is delivered, not when the receiving area can sustain it. Three months later the team has dissolved, nobody documented anything, and operations lives with something it does not understand and cannot change.
What to watch
- Whether the status report shows any red projects: an all-green portfolio is a portfolio without information.
- Which risks are identified, who owns each one, and when they were last reviewed.
- The size of the first useful delivery: the further out it is, the more it resembles a bet.
How I read this entry
I would use it to review how the organisation estimates. If historical estimates were systematically out by half and nobody adjusted the method, no project will land well: you are planning with a ruler that measures short and blaming the team for not reaching the mark.
This entry is an excerpt from the original source, selected by the site radar. The commentary above is the site's own and does not belong to the cited publisher.
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Living through this in your own team?
Open the chat and tell me how you're handling it. I'm interested in comparing notes.
