PMP: The Road to Certification – Part 1

As I wrote in the post With Bruno is now PMP!, after several months getting ready, managed to pass the certification exam from the Project Management Professional (PMP). My intention in this post is to report that my long walk, from choosing where to study, until the day of the race, through the dreaded eligibility, the various simulated 200 issues (4h) and some weekends with no social life. :)

Hope it helps to take some questions from people who, I like, had no idea how much was the process for certification.

Topics

1. What is PMP Certification?
2. PMI Membership (Tips)
3. Eligibility. What's that?

What is PMP Certification?

As stated in the above quote, BBB Project Management Professional (PMP) is a certification given by Project Management Institute (PMI) recognizes that the knowledge of good practice in project management. The job market is looking very much welcome this certification, because it gives the employer an assurance that the project manager (GP) even know the best practices in project management adopted worldwide.

Furthermore, is a globally recognized certification.

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PMI Membership (Tips)

Membership of PMI is not required to make the certification exam and not every PMP needs to be affiliated to PMI. Membership ensures some advantages like receiving magazines on the subject (of States to their home here in Brazil), access to exclusive content on the PMI website, discounts on seminars, courses and all area products marketplace, Also the PMI website. In the marketplace you will find articles, books, the PMBOK and other things to buy.

Besides affiliation PMI, you can join a local unit of PMI, known with Chapters, which guarantees other types of discounts and other benefits. Eu, eg, I joined also the chapter of Rio de Janeiro, the PMI-Rio, but you can join in as you like, clear that paying more for it.

Today, 19/02/2009, PMI membership costs:

• Individual - New Member: $129.00;
• Individual - Renewal: $119.00;
• Student - New Members: $40.00;
• Student - Renewal: $40.00;

And the membership of a chapter expense $20.00.

To learn more about the difference between the regular membership (Individual) and the Student, visit the website PMI.org. I know that you will have to prove that a student be able to join this category.

My tip, if you're wanting to take only the certification but did not enjoy all the advantages of being affiliated to PMI, that at least the first fille. "Damn, but I do not want to join, what was it then ", you could say, but as an affiliate you can earn a good discount when making a preparatory course (some training centers give great discounts for members) and get a discount $100.00 not worth da test.

Value of proof to affiliated to PMI: $405.00

Value of proof to unaffiliated: $505.00

*Remembering that these values ​​were the values ​​when I did the test, in January 2009.

Summarizing, with the discount value of the evidence and the likely discount preparatory course, may be more economical to join. Oh if I knew this tip before doing the preparatory! :(

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Eligibility. What's that?

This issue I believe is the most dreaded stage of the process (after the race course) for those who want to try BBB. What the hell is this so Eligibility? What happens if I fall in Auditing? What must I do to be "approved"? What documents will be required? These and other questions I did when I was at that stage I did get worried, but simply by not knowing what is right to be "Eligible" by PMI.

The Eligibility is nothing more than the approval, PMI, that you fulfill certain criteria to try the PMP certification. These criteria vary according to your level of education and are listed below:

Diploma midlevel (2Degree)

• Minimum 5 years of experience in project management (7500h)
• Minimum of 35 hours of formal education in project management

College degree (3Degree)

• Minimum 3 years of experience in project management (4500h)
• Minimum of 35 hours of formal education in project management

One question that many may have and what needs to be well understood is the minimum 5 or 3 years of experience in project management. You must demonstrate experience within the last 8 years and should contain 60 months different to medium (12 X months 5 year = 60) and 36 months to the top level. Different is good because it is very important to highlight. If you worked on two projects in the months of January to December 2008 and each served 860h, 1720h in the end you will have experience in project management but only 12 months, requiring more 24 months for the upper level and 48 months to average.

It is, this is the part laborious to fill such Eligibility, because you will have to describe the hours of work in projects at least 3 previous years.

These hours of operation are divided into 5 Main Groups (Initiation Process, Planning Process, Process Execution, Process Monitoring and Control, and Closing Processes) and each of these categories is subdivided into other tasks where you should put the amount of hours worked throughout the project.

Gee, these guys are crazy? Do not even remember what I ate yesterday and you think you'll remember how long I worked on "Identify key members of the project team and determine roles and responsibilities to create a project organization structure to develop a communication plan"?

Sure they, the "evaluators PMI", are not crazy, and of course you will not remember exactly all. Ah, 33h27 spent on this task! Of course not, but you have a rough idea of ​​the time worked in each category, because of course you have all the documentation of the project and kept the performance reports on lessons learned. (I remembered Rita now)

You also do not need to have worked in all 5 groups to be "approved", but the total hours and different months must be met.

The recommendation is to join you this information before it registers on the PMI website. Although you can go signing up gradually, is annoying to the page including such information and see if completed months and hours. Ideally, before you fill out a worksheet and have this control on your own machine. In a future post I intend to provide a spreadsheet to help with this step.

After completing all the eligibility information and submit it for evaluation of PMI, you will get the answer if it was "approved" or fell after audit 5 days. In my case I had the answer in 5 calendar days and not fall in audit. Only after this analysis is that you can afford the proof.

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Now was curious to know about the audit, has been how to get rid of it, when it occurs, I need to prove? As this post was getting too big, I decided to divide it into two. Continue second reading the tract where the following matters:

• Auditing. Now!?
• Where I studied?
• As I studied?
• The place to do the test
• Proof - Fear!

That, I hope that this first part already help many people.