Interview to PMP Passport, Dec. 2007

Source: PMP Passport, Dec. 2007,

PMP credential holders can focus on stakeholder interests and use proactive risk management to prevent problems from happening in the first place, says Theofanis Giotis, PMP. “The PMP drives you to use proactive risk management in order to identify and eliminate as many potential threats to the project as possible, and then to reduce the negative impact of the remaining threats on the project,” Mr. Giotis says.

In June 2006, Mr. Giotis was faced with a difficult problem while working on a project that entailed moving 2,000 users from one e-mail system to another. It became clear from the beginning that the two systems were not communicating correctly. So, Mr. Giotis took a proactive approach, creating a schedule that called for moving addresses in small chunks, as opposed to moving them all over at once. When initial problems arose, his team was able to move all e-mail addresses back to the old system while the technical glitches with the new system were being fixed.

“Without the PMP certification, I wouldn’t be able to do proper risk management and adequate problem solving. I wouldn’t be able to develop fallback plans and effective contingency plans,” Mr. Giotis says. “That’s why gaining [the PMP] was a significant milestone in my professional career.”