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PMP Study GuideNov2015
PMP Study GuideNov2015
You dont 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
todays project managers were accidentalpeople 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!
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 todays month. For example, if the month is December 2015, you can record project
management experience dating back to December 2007.
Each question will have four choices, and its often the case that all four answers are correct. Youre
looking for the most correct responsethe 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 PMIs 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 30%
Monitoring/Controlling 25%
Closing 8%
Although most questions are taken from content in the PMBOK Guide, PMI reserves the right to
pull questions from outside reading as well. For example, some of the content is derived from
the PMI eReads and Reference library made available electronically to members. For a
complete guide to the PMP exam content, PMI has published an Examination Content Outline.
The online application will ask you to enter the source of your 35 contact hours, the institutions
and years in which you obtained your education, and all of your years and hours of experience.
You will enter your years of experience as date ranges (for example: Aug 2011 to Jun 2012, Oct
2012 to Oct 2014, etc.). You will enter your project management hours by project. For each
project, youll be asked to write a description of your role, a summary of the project, and the
name of your supervisor/manager (or someone who, if audited, can vouch for your involvement
on the project.) Youll also be asked to list the number of hours spent in each process group of
the project. For example:
You will receive your score immediately after completing the exam. Your score will be
presented to you as a Pass or Fail designation; you will not know the percentage of questions
you answered correctly on the exam. You are allowed to take the test three times within one
year. If you fail all three times you must wait one year before making another attempt.
Study Guide: Math Concepts
http://www.preparepm.com/mock1.html. This site offers two different free "mock exams"the first
has 70 questions; the second has 28 questions, and the answers to the questions are included at the end
of each exam. What I like most about this site, however, is that you can filter the sample questions by
the various knowledge areas covered in the exam (i.e., questions on Risk Management, or Quality
Management, or Ethics, etc.), so you can focus your studies on the areas where you think you need the
most help. The site also includes a link to a free, timed 200-question PMP practice exam (although you
do have to register on the site).
http://www.ajithn.com/login.php. The free, sample exam on the PMP Question World site is rather like
the old Choose Your Own Adventure books; you decide how many questions you'd like to answer in your
mock exam. Possible questions come from all nine of the PMBOK Guides knowledge areas, and you can
take the mock exam as many times as you like. The sample exam does not display correct answers;
however, practice questions -- with their answers--are also available on the site. You can also "share"
questions with your fellow PMP exam-takers.