How I easily got my PMP certification?
Getting certified in project management can help your career to leap forward if you make a living executing projects or work in project-based organizations. Project Management Body Of Knowledge, which is published and maintained by the Project Management Institute (PMI), is the world's leading project management guideline and reference. Being able to understand it, will help project teams everywhere in the world have a common understanding of the project processes and knowledge areas. Despite what one might infer from its name, it is not devised just to help project managers. Everyone who is involved with projects can -and should- know about and -better yet- understand it.
Since I have been working on various projects during my not-so-long career, and I have been fortunate enough to have been trusted to manage a few, I decided to go ahead and get certified as a Project Management Professional (PMP). At the beginning, it seemed like a tall task but the further I got the easier it started to look.
The first step was to enroll on the website and apply for my desired certification. PMI offers numerous certificates but for the sake of this piece, I will stick with PMP. In order to be eligible for a PMP certification I needed to:
- Have at least 3 years of experience with projects (if you hold a Bachelor's degree or higher)
- Complete a 35-hour training course
- Accept the code of ethics
The first item was clear enough. The only important note is that the experience was evaluated based on my own declaration. I was totally honest about my experience in the application, and I was not selected for a random audit.
As for the training course, there were no specific requirements other than the fact that the training should cover all of the project management areas required by the PMBOK. I personally registered for an online course that was borderline fair but cost only 35$.
When I passed all of these requirements, I went ahead with completing my PMI registration. PMI offered me two registration methods, the first one was only for the exam and the second one included the exam and a one-year membership. I took the latter as the cost were lower and I also needed to have access to the reading materials. PMI provided me with electronic versions of the book as soon as I registered with them and made my payment.
I spent two hours a day studying for 40 days. There were two main references for the exam, the PMBOK and the code of ethics, both of which were accessible on PMI website. But as I later found out, it was not enough to study the textbooks. It is a must to have had hands-on experience with projects. Fortunately enough, I knew what it was like to work in a project environment.
Before moving on to scheduling the exam, I took a few free online mock test to see how I was doing. These test helped me find my weak spots and go back to the test books. The only problem with them was that they used a lot of questions from other references that were not necessarily used for the actual exam in order to market their own references. But overall, mock tests are not a step that I would skip if I were to go back.
When I felt that I was ready, I reserved a slot for the exam with a Prometric Testing Center via PMI website. Unfortunately, the exam was not held in my country and I had to travel to a neighbor country which was a hassle considering that all flights were on the brink of cancellation due to bad climatic conditions. Finally, I reached the destination city 12 hours late, 4 hours before the exam was set to start.
In the exam center, I was asked to fill a form, leave all my belongings in a locker and only take your identification -passport in my case- into the testing room. I used my passport as the primary ID because the identification must contain a photo and a signature. In the testing room, I was provided with a computer, a scratch paper, a pen, and a calculator.
When I clicked the start button of the exam, the software provided me with a 15 minute tutorial on how to work with the system and how to effectively use the exam software. Then, I moved on to the actual exam. The exam consisted of 200 questions that needed to be answered in 4 hours. The questions were circumstantial and smartly designed so that you need to understand PMBOK and have worked in a project environment to be able to answer them.
As soon as I finished the questions, I started reviewing the marked questions. But even after I thoroughly checked my answer sheet, I still had a good half-hour to go. I was confident enough about my answers so I hit the 'end exam' button. Instantly, I was congratulated on passing the exam and I was provided with a result sheet that showed me how I did. PMI does not provide you with quantitative results but gives out a qualitative assessment of your test right away.
Lastly, I left the exam room, received a signed and stamped printout of my result sheet, picked up my belongings, and was informed that I would receive a hard copy of my certification in the mail in about 6 weeks.