visible at the very top of Figure 3 are the newest credentials, the PMI-PBA (Professional in Business Analysis) and PfMP (Portfolio Management Professional). These new credentials were just launched last year and both have around 200 holders. It is interesting to speculate which will grow faster. Portfolio management is a narrow specialization within the project management space, but for portfolio managers looking to distinguish themselves, a credential from the PMI is the logical choice.
Business analysts represent a much larger target audience to pitch to, but the market is more diverse. Competing credentials in the BA space exist already and business analysis is not viewed as a PMI core competency by some people. Perhaps BA’s will double up, adding a PMI-PBA to their existing BA credentials to differentiate themselves from their peers. If this happens in significant numbers then the PMI may have another PMP on their hands as, anecdotally from my experience, organizations employ many more BAs than PMs.
The large orange area is the PMI-ACP credential. This appears to be the current high performer of the new PMI credentials, but I suspect the PMI-BA could quickly surpass it once it gets going. Nevertheless the PMI-ACP has great potential too; a 2012 PMI Membership survey showed that 65% of PMI members were engaged in IT projects. That same year Gartner said 85% of software projects are using some form of an agile approach. By that logic, 65% x 85% of the 640,000 PMP holders might be in the market for an agile credential, that’s over 353,000 people before we add the project managers using agile outside of IT. However, unlike the early PMP days when the PMI had the market to themselves, there were already several well established agile credentials before the PMI-ACP entered the market.
The next two credentials represent specializations within project management. These are the PMI-SP (Scheduling Professional) and PMI-RMP (Risk Management Professional)....