Knowledge Work

The Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) has just rolled out a professional accreditation program, designed to offer independent, external validation of a proposal manager’s skills and abilities.

I just successfully completed the APMP-Foundation exam, laying the groundwork to pursue higher levels of certification and entitling me to place “AM.APMP” on my resume and in my e-mail signature (don’t worry, I don’t plan to alter my .sig line just yet.)

Herewith, a few notes on the accreditation process, in no particular order.

Bottom line first.  To obtain the APMP Foundation accreditation:

• The total investment in time for me was about 12 hours, spread out over a month.  (About eight hours of class time, about three hours of outside study, about an hour taking the actual test.)
• The investment in money was a little more than $900 ($399 for an online course, $60 for a copy of the Shipley Associates Proposal Process Guide, $450 for the testing registration fee at the APMP member rate.)

I paid for this out of my own pocket, but will deduct it as a professional education expense on my 2007 Federal taxes; obviously, if you can get your employer to pay for your training and certification, more power to you.

(The fee structure for the higher accreditation levels is currently as follows: $650 for evaluation as APMP-Practitioner, $850 for evaluation as APMP-Professional, exclusive of any coursework you might choose to do.  If one pursues accreditation to the highest level available, it is plain to see that a considerable investment in both time and money will be required.)

So, back to the Foundation exam.

You could, conceivably, buy, read and study the Shipley Associates Proposal Process Guide ($60; available directly from Shipley but also from Amazon.com and many other sources) and do well enough on the Foundation exam to pass (42 questions out of 75, or 56%.)

Given the nature of the test, however, which focuses on APMP-defined “best practices” for proposal management, and frankly includes some questions which require rote memorization of the accredited answers, some type of formal coaching in the form of a live or online class is probably desirable.

This is not to say that the exam is pure rote memorization of arbitrary facts; however, to pass, you are going to need to know, for instance, that “best practices” indicate that a proposal writer producing new material can be expected to work at a rate of 4-8 finished pages per day, and you are going to need to be familiar with the workflow and terminology used in the APMP syllabus.

Shipley Associates has an online class available for $399; it’s about eight hours of recorded instruction, plus sample tests in the same format as the online Foundation test.  With a crowded schedule of proposal deliverables last month, I couldn’t take a day (or two) off to travel to attend standup training, but I could easily work in 8 hours of instruction, in 30-60 minute chunks, in  periods of downtime over the course of four weeks.  (Online instruction is, from my point of view, ideal for the proposal manager’s life; you know you’ll have downtime, but you don’t ever know when… or at least, I don’t.)

The online class is in a straight-up “talking head with Powerpoint-like slides” format, but I found it engaging and interesting; it prepared me very well for the Foundation exam, but more to the point, served as a useful refresher course on proposal management and an orientation to current best practices beyond the memorization of facts necessary to pass the exam.

My advice to you is to take a class in some form and take lots of notes!  The Foundation exam is open-book, but timed, and the most valuable reference matter I had to hand was the notes I took during the online classes.  (Tip: Dedicate a special notebook just for class notes, so that you don’t have to rummage through your proposal management notebook looking for notes from your class sessions.)

Further advice: When it comes time to take the test, if you want to take it online, go straight to the source: the APM Group in the UK.  I tried to register for the online exam at the Shipley Associates site; apparently, they haven’t had too many students sign up that way yet, as the very friendly technical support person I contacted after signing up and paying, but not hearing anything about when or how to take the exam, was not even aware that you could buy that on their website (for the record, the link is near the bottom of the page here.)

Going directly to the APM Group’s testing page, however, offers instant access, and doing the test online offers instant gratification: as soon as you submit your answers, they’re graded and you know immediately whether you’ve passed or failed.

To sum up, preparing for and taking the Foundation exam was a positive experience and good from a professional development perspective.  I feel that the real value in the accreditation process, for me, will come as I pursue the next levels of accreditation, but the Foundation step is a prerequisite for that.