Mentoring is great, support and effort is a two street

I have taken a co-worker under the proverbial wing to get him on the path to PMP. I have set up a timeline, established goals, and generated interest, and now together, we will get him to the PMP. When I did my PMP, it was a requirement for my position, which had to be completed in three months. I had taken the test two times before passing, as the training and studying I knew I needed was expedited with the need for contract compliance, which meant I had to have the PMP. This was a hard route for me, and though I have a few dozen industry certifications, I knew I had to set a solid study plan to ensure success.

I want to make this path for my co-worker enjoyable and a great learning experience that I hope he can look back on with pride and a solid understanding of the PMP topics. I do have formal collegiate training experience (adjunct professor). However, I still get satisfaction in the one on one or small group training with people that want to achieve the result of knowledge of a topic, such as the PMP.

The plan is a six to eight-month plan, with my driving the horse to about six months, but I always plan a small amount of additional time due to the holidays, interest, topic grasp, etc.  Now the Boot camps are great, especially the one I went to (I won’t do branding here, but I was amazed), and the boot camp should be used to fill in gaps not to learn Project Management.  If you are working in the field, then that is good, but your mentor and training should be from a blank slate, we all pick up bad habits. My protege will be learning topics by chapter on how a project progresses per PMI, not on how some places teach it, which is by knowledge area, not by process groups. I am happy to explain more in detail if anyone is interested.

There are many little study objects that I wish I had known about when I was studying, things that would have saved me hours, and that I did not learn till about more than a month and a half into my studying, but that does get brought up at the boot camp. So why not take just the boot camp, well you could. Still, if your not projects based, now you are about 50/50 percent to pass with only the boot camp, where if you learn the PMI methodology in a way that makes sense. You can initially study with before the boot camp, then you are pretty near 98% chance to pass the first-time goal and, at the same time, be able to walk the talk.

The effort to learn is a two-way street, even if the teaching methodologies are top-notch, there still has to be the effort and interest of the student to make the learning process successful.  How you spark this interest is as significant as the corporate or individual need for the certification, as this spark will be what sets the fire of interest in growing and expanding beyond just a requirement to what will hopefully be a lifetime of learning.

Do you mentor people in your workplace? If so, what topics? What methods and timelines do you use for their development?