7 credentials · every figure dated and sourced
Certification training guides
One guide per credential: who's eligible, the route through, what it costs, how to keep it, and which funding a veteran can actually use. Every one carries the date it was last checked, and the sources we checked it against.
- CAPM® Certified Associate in Project Management PMI's entry-level credential, and the one PMI itself points people toward when they can't yet document the experience the PMP demands. It asks for no project experience at all, just a diploma and 23 hours of training, and holding an active one waives the PMP's whole training requirement later.
- PMP® Project Management Professional The credential most civilian job postings screen for. It takes documented project leadership hours plus a formal exam, and it's the one guests on this show most often point to as the thing that made their military experience legible to a hiring manager.
- MSPM Master of Science in Project Management A master's degree rather than a certification, so it's the long route: two years and tuition, against weeks and an exam fee. What it buys is the theory behind the practice, and it reads differently to an academic employer or a large organization with an education budget. GI Bill benefits cover graduate study, which changes the math on it considerably compared to paying out of pocket.
- Project+ CompTIA Project+ The cheapest way into a project management credential, and the only one you can sit with no experience, no required coursework and no application for anyone to approve. It's IT-slanted and carries less screening weight than the PMP, but for someone still serving it's often free through their service's COOL program. It stopped being a lifetime certification on October 1, 2025.
- PMI-ACP® PMI Agile Certified Practitioner PMI's agile credential, spanning Scrum, Kanban, Lean and XP rather than a single framework. Usually picked up after the PMP by people whose work moved into iterative delivery.
- PMI-RMP® PMI Risk Management Professional A specialist credential for identifying and managing project risk. It maps unusually well onto military planning experience, where assessing what can go wrong is the job rather than a side task.
- PRINCE2® PRojects IN Controlled Environments A process-based method rather than a body of knowledge, and the dominant project qualification in the UK and much of Europe. Worth knowing about if you're targeting a multinational or a government-adjacent employer outside the US.
Looking for a credential that isn't here? Every certification our guests hold has a page, whether or not a guide has been written for it yet.