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PMP Certification (Exam) Application Process

December 27, 2007 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Certification, PMP, PRINCE2

PMP Certification (Exam) Application Process
By Aditya Chinni

PMI offers 2 kinds of Project Management certifications for Management professionals. First and foremost highly accredited PMP certification and stepping stone certification CAPM. PMI offers Certifications in other categories in Program management (PgPM) and OPM3, the maturity model certifications. I’ll cover Program Management in other section but I’ll focus Project Management topics in this current section. I definitely recommend Stanford Advanced Project Management course at Stanford, which is the best place on earth to learn Program management and Portfolio management.

Let us talk about PMP certification over here. Why do you need it? This certification is globally acknowledged and respected credential. Globally is appropriate word but in UK Prince 2 certification enjoys wider acceptance. Lets compare PMP and Prince 2. Prince 2 is a framework and the PMP which is based on PMBOK is collection of Knowledge Areas and both are difference breads. A framework provides templates and repeatable processes. PMBOK the guide for PMP doesn’t provide such templates. Most important, if you are in a job market this certification definitely makes the difference. Even if the employer doesn’t follow PMBOK principles as a PMP you can always have better perspective of Projects.

Getting PMP certification is not a simple process. But with an exam strategy it would not be that impossible. You also need to have certain educational standards and Project Management experience. A major misconception is that Project Management experience means people think that they need to be Project Manager all along. But Project contributor experience is also valid for the certification. PMI doesn’t look for Manager title, but the real Project contribution experience is sufficient. That means a Senior Developer or Business analyst who contributed to projects are eligible for PMP certification.

Lets look into basic requirements:

  • 35 contact hours of formal Project Management education
    • If you have High School Diploma:
      7500 hours of Project Contribution experience
    • If you have Bachelor’s Degree
      4500 hours of Project Contribution experience

Then Steps that you need to finish to appear for the exam:

  1. Register yourself at http://www.pmi.org
  2. Then fill-in online application
  3. Once PMI reviews your application and approves it, you will have 1 year to write the exam
  4. From PMI.org you can apply for the exam. Pay the fee on pmi.org web site. Then they will send you confirmation number.
  5. Links will take you to Prometric.com web site. Using the confirmation number you can schedule your test at a center near to you.
  6. Appear at the Prometric center and finish the exam in 4 hours.

About the exam

  1. PMP exam will be based on PMBOK guide 3rd edition. So need not to say 2nd version is no longer valid. Please don’t follow 2nd version books at all. There is hell lot of terminology change in 3rd edition
  2. It will be 4 hour exam and will have 200 questions in it. Out those you will be marked only for 175. The trick part is that you will not know which are those unwanted 25 questions.

Tips to fill-in your application

  1. PMI categorized all project management processes in to 5 groups. Those are Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring, and Closing.
  2. When you submit your application you need to categorize your experience in to these 5 process groups.
  3. Typically we have 2000 working hours in a year. Aproximately 500 hours in a quarter. You have spread those hours across the 5 process groups.
  4. For example in software industry if you are a developer or lead most of the time you spend on Implementation. So Executing will occupy majority of your project. If you are a Business analyst most of the time you spend on Initiating and Planning. If you are Coordinator or Project Manager you will spend mostly on Monitoring.
  5. You have to think about your projects and calculate hours you spend across these process groups. If you calculate those figures on working sheet, then you can fill your application with ease.
  6. In software industry Projects roughly have 10%, 30%, 20%, 30%, 10% of division across 5 process groups. This is just rough division.

Aditya Chinni, MCA, PMP, SCPM has over 14 years of experience as a Project Manager and Systems Engineer in industries such as finance, consulting, hardware and software development, education & SMB (Small and Medium Business). He has pretty long career at Sun Microsystems, Santa Clara, CA and performed various technology roles and groomed skills under fast paced open source technology culture. Experienced in various project management methodologies like agile, RUP, Sigma, prince2 and on. And managed Software projects end to end right from inception to support roll over.

He is graduated in Mathematics and received Masters in Computers. He also received his Project Management Professional certification from the Project Management Institute, Prince2 certification from Office of Government Commerce, UK and prestigious Advanced Project/Portfolio Management certificate from the Stanford University.

He is also a member of award winning Orange County and San Francisco PMI chapters. Part of Career Development group of SF Chapter. He is also presenter at chapter forums.

He is currently working as Senior Manager at Computer Sciences Corporation, and providing consulting Project Management to Edison, utilities giant. He lives in Phillips Ranch, CA with his wife and 2 little kids.

Runs PMP Certification Tutorial web at http://aditya369.com

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 27th, 2007 and is filed under Certification, PMP, PRINCE2. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 people have left comments

Hello Aditya,

Can programming/developing/coding experience be counted towards the 4,500 hours? The handbook says “leading/directing” tasks – which to me suggests getting work done through others (i.e. team members).

Will PMI accept programming/coding experience under “EXECUTING PROCESS” – i.e. Execute the tasks defined in the project plan in order to achieve project goals”?

Why do they ask for “Project Management (leading/directing)” experience and also provide a “Project Contributor” category? This seems to be contradictory.

Thanks,
FC

FC wrote on January 28, 2008 - 6:46 pm | Visit Link

Is it necessary to demonstrate experience across all the five process groups to achieve PMI certification? Being a Business Analyst myself, I am not sure if I would be able to showcase sufficient experience across the Execution and Monitoring phases. Does that sound like an impediment?

Harriet wrote on July 29, 2008 - 8:35 am | Visit Link

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