How Do I Prove PMP Project Management Experience?

How Do I Prove PMP Project Management Experience?

If you are striving to be a PMP certification holder and if you're confused after knowing the eligibility criteria of PMP about how to prove my project management experience and how to apply, this blog will help you.

Project Management Institute (PMI) is a US non-profit organization that offers project management-related accreditations and has made it clear with the superior eligibility criteria. These accreditations aren't for everyone but only those deserving to be part of the project management field.

Part of entering the project management field is to tabulate the experience hours you have spent leading or directing the projects. Then, if you have worked on a project and have contributed to all project managing stages, be it in any sector, you can apply for PMP certification. 

The most significant thing you have to understand is how to prove your project hours, followed by its documentation.

Before getting into the actual topic, let's first understand what a project management experience is?

What is Project Management Experience?

It's not mandatory that you be a project manager or a leader to gain project management experience. However, even if your experience falls under the five stages mentioned by PMI - Initiating, Planning, Execution, Monitoring & Controlling, and Closing; then you have the expertise in the project management field.

Let's see what these phases are:

• Initiating: It is the first stage of the project management life cycle. The project is introduced to the stakeholders or sponsors, and the project scope is discussed here.
• Planning: Here, the project manager formulates a detailed statement of project scope followed by other activities - schedule analysis, preparing work breakdown structure, resource allocation, and more.
• Execution: In this phase, the project's main operation and implementation occur. The project manager allocates the task to the resources and starts working according to the plan.
• Monitoring & Controlling: This phase goes hand in hand with execution as the manager monitors and ensures that the scheme's performance is efficient. They have to maintain a check on conflicts, risks, and changes that might occur during the procedure.
• Closure: Being the final stage of the cycle, it includes acceptance, definitive documentation, and completion of needed legal procedures before closing the project.

Which Project Should I Choose?

Remember, you need to be a leader in action and not just on paper. Even if you're leading project execution, let's say with a minor team, that works just fine. We're trying to say, ' All you need is take responsibility.'

However, one must consider a crucial factor before printing the document. Suppose you are responsible for more than one project (overlapping projects) at a time; you will have to choose one among them. According to PMI, you can be part of one project at a given period.

If you're familiar with the eligibility criteria of PMP, i.e., you must have 4500 or 7500 hours of project management experience, based on your educational background. 

Hence, if you take overlapping projects, the situation will be to choose the one which has the maximum time duration that will help you attain the criteria at a swift pace.

Calculating the Number of Project Experience Hours

An issue several candidates face is the hours spent on each project management phase. However, you have enough work experience meeting PMI eligibility criteria. However, it won't help you unless you have an exact hour count spent on each phase activity.

Things to understand when calculating the number of project hours:

• Divide the project efforts per activity within the five domains of project management. Breaking down things will ease your job and slightly reduce the time and effort. The best tool to record the data in MS Excel
• Referring to the company's project repository for historic project plans or schedules helps extract detailed experience hours information. This is possible if you're working for the same company.

Else:

        If you can't find the project plan but remember the duration and tentative estimates, it must be enough to derive process group-wise efforts. 

• You don't have to acquire experience in all the process domains.
• When it comes to foreign locations where the IT projects are executed, project managers are given the responsibility at the end of the initiation phase. It's not essential to add hours under each activity within the domain groups as some activities might not be a part of the project.
• Offer a detailed project description for each project you have managed. You must include a prominent task summary of projects you lead and direct when it comes to project deliverables.
• Applications are selected for audit randomly. Hence ensure that you get the necessary details from your reporting manager on each project with the correct contact detail. PMI does call these managers to recheck your experience hours and other information.

Determine Additional Project Management Experience 

Suppose you have worked for thousands of hours on several projects, but the crucial point is to determine all of them. Unfortunately, you may miss a part of your project hours because of terminology differences. 

It might be possible that you might spend some quality time working on an activity related to project management. However, that might be out of your role, and due to confusion, you might enter it into your experience.

Therefore, it is vital that you accurately gather pertinent information and determine each activity's work type and hours.

Determine the additional project experience hours by the following:

• Review current year objectives
• Volunteer activities
• Review your annual performance
• Seek colleagues' help to brainstorm project experience hours.
• Review extra responsibilities you have handled apart from your routine work.

Are You Lacking Project Hours?

There are possibilities when completing project hours calculation; candidates might identify that they are a few hours behind in fulfilling the PMP credential criteria.

If you're one among them, don't get dejected. You may take your time to reach the goal of your needed work experience.

While calculating the working hours in a year, you'll notice that an average employee works 2000 hours per year. Setting this as a benchmark, you will know how many working hours you're behind and plan accordingly for credential application.

If you lack few project experience hours, then take your time to attain them and go ahead with the PMP application.

Fill the Project Management Experience

• According to PMI, your first project's start date and the last one's completion date must cover a minimum of 3 years for degree graduates and a minimum of 5 years for secondary degree holders.
• Prepare for audit. You must connect with your project supervisor and ensure to notify them about the project hours you will claim for each project. 
• Enter the details of projects that are needed to satisfy the eligibility criteria. Make sure you include large projects first.
• Add project management experience details. For that, you have to give:

1. Project title
2. Your project role (leader, manager, coordinator, etc.)
3. Supervisor's name and contact details. 
4. Add details of someone you have closely worked with and gained consent from.

• Calculate and add the number of project hours spent on the project management domains.
• Remember, don't fill hours more than 40 hours per week. PMI might ask to revise it.
• First, create a rough estimation of project hours and then add after finalizing.
• Write project description in about 500 characters, including:

1. Brief project description
2. Goals
3. Key deliverables
4. Result
5. Your role

• When writing a description for a project, try to include terms related to PMI project management, such as project charter, quality management, stakeholders, etc. You can refer to PMBOK Guide to search these terminologies as these will create an impact on your project management knowledge.

We hope the idea behind proving your project management experience hours are clear and helpful for you. We wish you luck in your PMP certification career.

Are you looking to create a change in your career with PMP certification? If yes, enrol iCert Global's PMP certification training course now!

We would be privileged to play a part in your journey towards achieving a globally recognized PMP Certification from The Project Management Institute, Inc. 

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