Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.
-Albert Einstein.
Like every other IT professional, Covid-19 and the resulting lockdowns came as quite a challenge to me. After switching from my first job into a core IT Project Manager Role, I saw that there are sufficient gaps which could of course be achieved by experience. But, in the competitive world, you must be one step ahead to make yourself consistent and relevant. This is where education and certifications came into picture into my world. As travelling and commute time was being saved because of lockdowns and work from home scenario, I took a bold decision to proceed with a PMP certification. This is where I googled about a relevant training institute and ended up talking with Siddhant Bitla from ProThoughts Solutions.
Siddhant made the admission process very easy and very soon I was trained in an online classroom training environment by Arvind Nahata. With proper guidance, mock tests and preparations, I was able to achieve the much-coveted credential within barely 45 days post training. After PMP, the next important question for me was to pick from a wide range of agile certifications available in the market. After having worked in Agile as a project manager, I am well aware of the pros and cons of the methodology, which is why I was reluctant to go with traditional certifications and courses. I wanted to go for a better or improvised version of Agile which could be more practical.
This is when I read an article about Disciplined Agile. After researching about it, the fact that it was a credential from the PMI immediately caught my eye. After enquiring about the certification and the course from the sales team of ProThoughts, I enrolled myself to the May, 2021 batch.
About Disciplined Agile:
The most important aspect was that Disciplined Agile is more practical and applicable in real world scenarios and circumstances. There are always areas of improvement and the ‘Choose your Way of Working or Choose your WoW’ book can always be referred to regarding the same. It has far sight and considers that, in the near future every business will be agile.
Enrollment and Training:
The training for DASSM has to be undertaken online and in my case it was done with ProThoughts. It is a 2 day training, where the trainer Ashish Sadekar who is an industry expert with years of experience in mentoring, coaching as well as Agile Coaching takes the students through guided learning sessions. The training includes a lot of activities in order to learn the art of thinking out of the box and practicing Disciplined Agile as you learn.
Enrollment for the exam:
The enrollment procedures were automatically taken care of by the ProThoughts team and within 6-8 days post training, you receive an invite from the PMI for booking your exam date.
Preparation:
ProThoughts equips its students with in house training materials which include a wide variety of documents, video recordings. Other than that, we were given credentials to access and utilize materials from the PMI on their site pmi.lochoice.com.
ProThoughts offers mock tests which include 4 mock tests which are arranged in ascending order as per difficulty with the 4th exam being the closest to the actual certification exam in terms of difficulty.
I was able to prepare based on both the documents from PMI and ProThoughts and I kept giving mock tests back to back and improvised myself. By the time I gave the 3rd Mock test I felt confident enough and I did not give the 4th Mock test. Rather I booked an exam slot with the PMI after clearing the 3rd Mock test.
Examination:
The examination was a 90-minute test with some questions being multi-choice questions. I was confident about my concepts being clear and by the grace of God I came through just fine. I was able to see that I had passed after the exam ended on the screen. Emails from the PMI followed suit within 3 days.
What did you get from this certification?
An Investment in Knowledge pays the best interest’ – Benjamin Franklin.
I can start with talking about myself first. I am an IT professional who is into project management largely. DASSM gave me the confidence I needed about agile expertise. It also will give my current organization or future recruiters the assurance of my candidature in my future PMO roles. The same applies to you, if you are looking to build your career in Agile and stand out as a strong contender then certification courses from the PMI are the right choice. DASSM is fairly new but it will outshine the other certifications very soon.
Read more Success Stories by our candidates: Click Here
For more information drop a mail here [email protected] or WhatsApp us.
