How To Document Your Experience for PMP EXAM Application?

Important Update: PMP exam is changing in 2016

How To Document Your Experience for PMP EXAM Application?

Step1: List down all projects that you may have lead or managed over the entire span of your career. Please make sure you will down all of them, no matter how big or small.

Step2: Now that you have list of all projects, you need to list down the start date and end date of these projects.

Step3: Once you have the start date and end date, next thing is to recall and document your role and the name of your supervisor for each of those projects.

Step4: Now, for each of the project you will need to document the following:
(a) Purpose of the project
(b) Your contribution or Work done by you in the areas of Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitoring and Control, Closing
(c) Efforts invested by you in each of these areas
(d) Remember it is not mandatory that you document efforts for all phases for all projects. For example, for Project A your role might have started when the initiation phase was already completed.

Step5: Add the number of hours of efforts for all of the projects. Make sure it meets or exceeds the PMI eligibility criteria.  Be Honest. If it does not meet or exceed the criteria then you are not eligible. You need to wait. Gain more experience and then apply again.

Tip: Once you are ready to fill the application for PMP Exam, you may just want to visit their website and start creating the application with some information in your hand, this way you will know what is the exact format in which the application needs to be filled in. You may just save the draft and then work offline to document your stuff before actually going back again and completing it online in one shot.

Note: Sometimes it may be difficult to recall all of this information if you have spent say around 10 years in the industry. Best way is to look at your CV/ Resume and get the entire information listed over there. Now you know the importance of updating your CV regularly :)