What is PMP?
PMP (Project Management Professional) is certification program offered by Project Management Institute (PMI). This certification is highly recognized for all the project management personnels throughout the world.
Is that only certification for project management?
The answer is Big No. There are several other project management certifications like
PRojects IN Controlled Environment 2(PRINCE2) from Office of Government Commerce (OGC) - is set a process based method for effective project management, which is highly recognized in UK and Europe,
Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)v2 is a set of good practices for IT service management, mainly related to IT infrastructure.
Why PMP?
Most Obviously asked question isn't it
Why a project management professional should have the Project Management Certification?
The idea behind any certification is to make sure the personnel who are taking up the certification is well versed or have a knowledge on the subject that he is dealing with. So for project management professionals, this certification covers all aspects of a project.
Why only PMP? why not other Certification?
PRINCE2, ITILv2 are at specific needs. Like PRINCE 2 covers the project process mostly on government projects and doesn't cover the Risk, Communication, Time, Cost areas. Whereas ITIL cover merely on IT Infrastructure side. Whereas PMP vastly covers all aspects of a project and applicable to any type of project . Hence it has global acceptance and vastly used in IT and non-IT projects.
Prerequisites:
4500 hours of project management work.
35 hours of project management training.
Fees:
PMI Membership : $129 (recommended)
PMP Exam Fee (for members) : $405
PMP Exam Fee (for non-members): $555
Application Process:
Most of the people have several questions on filling the application
How much effort that I need to show in each process group?
I'm not in to development and working only in support projects. How should I fill my experience?
I don't know how much time I spent on each process group?
In a project, your work will always fall in some or all the five process groups: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitor and Control, and Closing.
So you can categorize the number of hours for each process groups and fill in the hours based on percentages incase if you are not sure about the exact no.of hours.
For e.g. *
Start Date: 01-Feb-2009
End Date: 19-Apr-2011
Total No. of Hours : 4616
This total number of hours can be divided into certain percentage of effort that you have put in each process group and further divided into each item under each process.
Initiating: 10%
Planning: 30%
Executing: 20%
Monitor and Control: 30%
Closing: 10%
*Note: This example is given only illustration purpose. The hours and percentages may differ for each person and type of work.
Also you need to mention the person with contact details who can authenticate the details of the project which are listed in your Application. Have the contact details(address, mobile#, email id) of the person. Remember, the person can be your direct supervisor, manager, or stakeholder.
.
PMI Audit Process:
PMI can audit the details that you have listed in the application at any time so provide only the legitimate details.
Start Date: 01-Feb-2009
End Date: 19-Apr-2011
Total No. of Hours : 4616
This total number of hours can be divided into certain percentage of effort that you have put in each process group and further divided into each item under each process.
Initiating: 10%
Planning: 30%
Executing: 20%
Monitor and Control: 30%
Closing: 10%
*Note: This example is given only illustration purpose. The hours and percentages may differ for each person and type of work.
Also you need to mention the person with contact details who can authenticate the details of the project which are listed in your Application. Have the contact details(address, mobile#, email id) of the person. Remember, the person can be your direct supervisor, manager, or stakeholder.
.
PMI Audit Process:
PMI can audit the details that you have listed in the application at any time so provide only the legitimate details.
Preparation:
PMP Certification preparation does take some time, but its not that bad as we think (which includes me). It took a month for me to prepare for the exam after a PMP training from Progressive Ventures -Proventures (PMI R.E.P).
Here are few steps you can follow:
"Get the brief first and then into detail. So read one knowledge area at a time."
- Start with the brief details first on each knowledge area so that you don't get too much at a time.
- Take online exam to find the gaps.
- Go through the PMBOK Latest Edition for the knowledge area and try to get some answers to the gaps.
- Certain Tools/Techniques and terms may not be very detailed in PMBOK, so use online resources like Google and Wikipedia (believe me there is lot of information available).
- After detail reading, take a practice test of 50-120 questions(specific to Knowledge Area) and try to analyze the incorrect answers.
- Last day before the exam, try to do the exercise of listing down all project management processes associated with Process groups and knowledge areas.
Some Exam Tips:
- You will get 15 minutes to get a feel of the online exam (how to use "Mark for review", and at the end to "Review all questions", "Review marked questions", "Review unanswered questions"). This will help at the end to review your questions and if you are short of time you can review only unanswered or marked for review questions directly.
- In exam you get in-built calculator for doing any calculations.
- The key is not to spend more time on each question instead you can mark it for review and can review later.
- For some questions, almost all answers are wrong except one and for some questions two answers are correct. So in the later case, you have to use the judgement of what needs to be done first.urope.
