4th Update: Make Your PMP® Application Pass
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4th Update: Make Your PMP® Application Pass

Authors: Antje Lehmann-Benz, PMP; Oliver F. Lehmann, PMP

If you are a Project Management Professional (PMP®) exam aspirant just about to submit your application to Project Management Institute (PMI®), you might already know that you will be required to provide details on your relevant professional experience and education.

This article describes the PMP application. To get an understandable overview of the entire preparation, application, and examination process in a nutshell, please see https://www.oliverlehmann.com/free/pmp-certification-the-process.

In the following article, we assume that you have already taken your project management seminar that gives you the 35 contact hours required by PMI as a prerequisite for exam eligibility. You may have taken one of our prep classes, in-house in your organization or in a public setting, taken a seminar by a colleague of ours or obtained them using other means. We further assume that you have the experience that PMI requires for eligibility. The table gives you an overview of what you need:

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  • Update: In July 2020, PMI dropped the requirement of 4,500/7,500 hours. The requirements on the months spanned and on the education/training remain unchanged.

Further Support

We also assume that you know, where you find additional resources for preparation, for instance free sample questions at https://www.oliverlehmann.com/free/free-pmp-practice-questions (plus links to many more from various providers of free offers at the end of the test).

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In addition, we have letters to the employer (or to employees, when the certification is driven by an organization) at https://www.oliverlehmann.com/free/letters-templates.

Recently, there have been several cases where exam eligibility was denied to candidates due to insufficient or irrelevant details in their applications, and it seems that it is getting more and more important to be informed about the requirements and include important keywords indicating the relevance of an experience to PMI.

Once you have submitted your PMP application (most probably online), PMI reserves the right to deny exam eligibility to candidates if they think the project experience and/or education provided does not fit their requirements sufficiently. If an application is turned down, an exam refund may be requested according to PMI refund policy. However, a processing fee of $100 has to be paid whenever an application is canceled. This means that even though you will be able to apply again right away, it can cost you valuable time and money―and all this maybe just because of a misunderstanding.

This is why I would like to give you an overview of the information you should provide, along with other useful hints. This way, you can be sure that if your professional experience meets PMI’s requirements, you communicate this fact correctly (if it does not, you should of course collect more experience until it does).

Basic Documents

Update 4 January: PMI has moved the description of the exam application process to the PMP Exam Content Outline. The PMP Handbook has been replaced with the PMI Certifications Handbook.

We recommend that you obtain and read two guiding documents from PMI's website:

PMP Exam Handbook

1.  Project Management Professional (PMP)® Handbook

The handbook contains valuable information on what is expected―refer to pages 6-9 specifically for how to describe your project management experience and education.

You find in this document a description of the entire process for application and execution of the examination and also on costs and on the next steps in case that you fail the examination. It further includes the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, that you will submit to by applying for the examination.

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2. Project Management Professional (PMP)® Examination Content Outline

This document is the PMP examination syllabus and describes all contents that are relevant for the assessment. On page 3, you can see how much weight is given to each single performance domain PMI has defined. Pages 5-10 help you understand exactly the content of these domains by reading the tasks PMI has identified as being a part of them.

For example, task 5 under Initiating is “Participate in the development of the project charter by compiling and analyzing gathered information in order to ensure project stakeholders are in agreement on its elements.”

This can give you a hint that when you are describing how you initiated a project in the past, you should make sure to include that you were creating, or helping to create, the project charter as one of the most central documents in PMI’s project management framework. Another important output is the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), all documents that are results of work during the Planning processes, and many others.

Generally, when reading through all the tasks in all domains, you will find many potentially important keywords. It is also a very good idea to thoroughly read through the cross-cutting knowledge and skills, listed after the Closing domain, for such clues.

By the way, when you are reading the PMBOK® Guide 6th Edition while preparing yourself for the exam, note that Section 2 "The Standard for Project Management" gives additional valuable information to better grasp the concept of performance domains, (= process) groups as identified by PMI.

Filling in The Application

Where do you find it? Start here: https://certification.pmi.org/

Make sure to consult an expert to give you important advice on how you should phrase any details on your professional experience and project management education when applying for the exam. By referring to an experienced mentor to help you with your application process, you can increase your chances for approval. This person should proofread your entire application and give their feedback to you before you submit it to PMI.

Normally, this should be the job of your trainer who helped you in your preparation for the exam. A good trainer will include this kind of mentoring service in their seminar package, making this an indicator for the quality of a training offer before booking a seminar.

Advice given to you by a mentor during the application process can include, but is not limited to, the following:

-  Include as many details as possible with the numbers of characters allowed (comprehensible abbreviations are allowed), but keep the information in a format that they are a high-level description of project tasks you led and directed.

-  Make sure each professional experience you present relates to a single project. Avoid combining any project experience.

-  At the same time, be sure that your experience covers all aspects of project management in alignment with how these are outlined in the PMBOK® Guide and other documentation by PMI.

-  As mentioned above, include certain important keywords pointing out the relevance of the experience, for example those specified in the PMP Exam Content Outline, or other important words, such as:

  • Project charter
  • (Cross-functional) team
  • Project lifecycle
  • Requirements
  • Deliverables
  • Scope statement
  • WBS

and further project management documents, terms, and process outputs which can be found in the PMBOK® Guide as well as other central reference materials.

-  Deliverables should be described in a manner that makes it clear to PMI what they looked like.

-  When specifying hours of experience for the projects you were working on, it should be a reasonable number in consideration of the project duration and the kind of project altogether. For example, a large construction project will likely justify a lot more hours of work than a rather small-scale software release project.

-  The title of each project has to be its actual name, as it was communicated and documented at the time it was undertaken (not describing the role of the PMP applicant in that project or other aspects).

-  While presenting your project experience, always keep in mind the definition of a project as a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or other kind of result, in contrast to the ongoing nature of operations. It has to be clear that you were indeed managing projects and not engaged in operational or administrative work.

This last aspect is especially important, as many applications seem to be denied based on irrelevant information in this regard. To put emphasis on the fact that you are really describing a project, be sure to include

  • The project objective and the actual outcome (one short sentence for each)
  • Deliverables for each process group (you can use abbreviations for them: IN for Initiating - PL for Planning - EX for Execution - MC for Monitoring & Controlling - CL for Closing)

Here is a screenshot of what the text in your application will look like:

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  • Update: In July 2020, PMI dropped the requirement of "Hours spent". Another change: There is now more free-text space to describe the projects.

As a general reminder, these are the criteria your project management experience has to meet as a first step to become eligible―you need to provide evidence for 35 contact hours of formal project management education plus one of the following, depending on your degree:

- Persons holding a four-year degree (bachelor or global equivalent): Minimum 3 years unique non-overlapping professional project management experience spent leading and directing the project.

- Persons holding a secondary degree (high school diploma, associate’s degree or global equivalent): Minimum 5 years unique non-overlapping professional project management experience spent leading and directing the project.

When presenting your experience in the application process, PMI requires you to indicate how your activities align with the “tasks, knowledge, and skills specific in the Project Management Professional Examination Content Outline”, as already discussed in this article.

Furthermore, you have to make sure that your experience spans across all five process groups / performance domains as identified by PMI in the same document―although you do NOT need to have experience in all of those in every single project you list.

While making sure to meet all these requirements when applying for the PMP exam might not be an easy task, you will greatly increase your chances by following the steps outlined in this article. Do not despair―it is feasible!

When you added all the information required by PMI, your application page will look like this screenshot.

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When you see this screen, you have not yet submitted any documents to PMI, but can already formally apply by clicking "Submit Application". You are not expected to submit supporting documentation at this point in time, but will need to do this per traditional snail mail in case you are selected for an audit.

It is important by the time that you submit your application to PMI that everything is correct. PMI may not give you an opportunity to fix it before the audit, and definitively not during this review. Make sure that you prove your professionalism not only with the project experience that you are submitting, but also by adhering to the rules of PMI in a way that you can pass this step on the first time.

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We hope to have helped you with the task of application and wish you all the best with your application and examination process. We are looking forward to welcoming you to the ever-growing community of PMP certification holders worldwide soon.

If you are looking for experienced and professional trainers in the field, https://www.oliverlehmann.com (en) and https://www.oliverlehmann-training,de (de) may be your best source. Or go to https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverlehmann/ here in LinkedIn.

PMP Exam Prep Learning Group

To ensure getting updated on changes in the exam, become a member of the PMP learning group "I want to be a PMP®".

Antje Lehmann, MA., PMP

Oliver F. Lehmann, MSc., PMP

_______

2021 Edit Note:

  • New supportive materials:
  1. Hundreds of free PMP practice questions
  2. PMP process in a nutshell
  3. Letter templates
  • PMP application process has been moved from the PMP Handbook to the PMP Content Outline.

2020 Edit Note:

  • Updates are denoted in the text.
  • Several images were updated to reflect changed documents and online screens.
Sara Murillo

Mission-Driven Leader ▣ Project & Change Manager ▣ Improving human health with quality services ▣ Delivering high-impact projects working with multidisciplinary teams from the health, education, and social sectors ▣

2y

Very informative. Thanks for shining light into the path of Project Management Professional (PMP®) exam aspirants, like myself.

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Yinka Olugbile

IT Business Analyst|Product Owner | Project Management

4y
Adele Z.

Business Analyst @ The Salvation Army Australia | Industrial Engineering, Business Analysis

4y

But you dont have to pay the exam fee if you have not received your eligibility for scheduling the exam. So, I'm not sure why do you mean by refund!?!

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Carlin Tawiah Martins

Blockchain Educator | Leadership Coach

4y

Thanks for the enlightenment. You, Markus, and your team are doing a great job.  That notwithstanding, can you clarify what you meant by  'you have to make sure that your experience spans across all five process groups... although you do NOT need to have experience in all of those in every single project you list'. Your second example depicted the latter, was it an omission or it was to buttress the point (for emulation), please? 

Jeannette Simmons, CPO, LSS

Small Business Consultant @ Dog Boutique | Certified Project Officer

4y

Great timing for this article as I was just thinking about going for it. But must say I am scared.

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