FAQs

What is the PMP® credential?

The PMP® (Project Management Professional) credential is a globally recognized certification for project managers. It is awarded by PMI (Project Management Institute), a not-for-profit professional membership association for the project management profession. The PMP® is one way to demonstrate to potential employers that you have the experience, education and competency needed to lead projects.

Is the PMP® just for Project Managers?

No. PMI defines a project as “a temporary group activity designed to produce a unique product, service, or result.” In other words, project management is the art and science of doing something that has never been done before. Given this definition, you can understand why project managers are in such high demand!

You do not have to be a titled project manager to benefit from learning to manage projects, and the PMP® certification is increasingly valued across many professions and occupations. In fact, many of today’s project managers were “accidental”—people with technical expertise in another area who gradually developed a reputation for successfully leading projects within their department. If this describes you, you may benefit from formal training and certification in project management!

Do I have to have project management experience to get the PMP®?

Yes. Experience is one very important aspect of certification. It is one thing to learn the discipline academically, and another to apply project management principles to the real world. However, note that any time you spend doing projects count as experience even if you did not have the title of “Project Manager” at the time.  The amount of experience you need varies depending on your educational background:

Educational Background	Project Management Experience (In Years)	Project Management Experience (In Hours)
High school diploma or Associate degree	Five years	7500 hours
Four year degree or higher	Three years	4500 hours

It is important to note that you must have BOTH the requisite years and hours of experience. In other words:

·         If you worked 80 hour weeks for one year, that still counts as just one year of experience.

·         If you worked 80 hour weeks for one year, all of those hours do count toward your hours of experience.

·         In the above example, it is possible to hit your total needed hours before you hit the requisite number of years of experience.

Your years of experience do not have to be consecutive, but they do have to have been with the last eight years of today’s month. For example, if the month is November 2017, you can record project management experience dating back to November 2009.

Do I have to take an exam to get the PMP®?

Yes. After you have submitted your application, which includes documentation of your experience and education plus any audit paperwork requested, you‘d be cleared to sit for the exam. This exam is administered daily by Prometric testing centers throughout the country. You must make a 61% of higher to pass the exam. However, after completing the exam, you receive two levels of results instead of your score. The first level simply indicates whether you passed the exam. The second level rates you as “proficient,” “moderately proficient,” “or “below proficient” in each domain of project management. Note that even if you score “below proficient” in one of the domains, you can still pass the test.

What is the PMP® exam like?

Each test is 200 multiple-choice questions, and you will have four hours to answer them. Twenty-five of those questions are “experimental,” and do not count towards your score. Unfortunately, which 25 questions are discarded is unknown as they are placed randomly throughout the exam.

Each question will have four choices, and it is often the case that all four answers are correct. You are looking for the “most correct” response—the right thing to do at the right time in the right way. This is why reading the PMBOK Guide is usually not sufficient to pass the test. Answering questions takes practice, practice, practice!

In terms of content, most of the test questions come from the PMBOK Guide. PMBOK stands for “Project Management Body of Knowledge,” and the guide is PMI’s summarization all of the ideas, concepts, terms, and best practices used by project managers around the world. It breaks project management down into five process groups (Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitoring/Controlling, and Closing) and ten knowledge areas (Integration, Scope, Schedule, Cost, Risk, Quality, Human Resources, Communication, Stakeholder, and Procurement Management.).

While PMI does not provide data on how many questions come from each knowledge area, we do know how many questions come from each of the five process groups:

Initiation	13%
Planning	24%
Executing	31%
Monitoring/Controlling	25%
Closing	7%

PMI reserves the right to pull questions from outside reading, although PMBOK is the source of most of the questions. For a complete guide to the PMP® exam content, PMI has published an Examination Content Outline.