How do I document PMP hours?

How do I document PMP hours?

Learning Mudra, Category - PMP

Promising field

If you are a project manager or an engineer since a lot of engineers are also realizing that they are also managing projects, you must have come across PMP, abbreviation for Project Management Professional, certification program, offered by PMI, Project Management Institute. PMP certification is one of those certificates which actually holds value if you have it and will make your CV outshine and get you loads of projects even if you have less experience than the person beside you. So it is advisable that if you are working in projects for considerable period of time you should go for PMP certification to give a boost to your career that it needs.

Confusing eligibility criteria

You must have gone through the eligibility criteria and have gotten confused. The eligibility criteria is rather confusing, no question about it and might be confusing especially for people who are not full-fledged project managers but working in other professions. Even these people undertake projects without realising and get considerable amounts project experience. Why does this confusion happen you may be thinking? This is because people are unsure what exactly is a project? Let us first clear what a project is so it is easy for us to understand.

Defining a project

A project is anything you do, big or small, which has a starting, middle and an end point attached to it. It should have an end result to or a desired outcome attached to it. In many a situations it is also solving some kind of question of a problem of the society. The problem could be something very small. If you led small projects for a short time, that counts. If you led big projects for a short time, record that too. Anything counts as long as you were there. It is not even necessary for you to be a leader entirely. Most people underestimate these tiny achievements.

For more information on How to document PMP hours; get in touch with us at +91-987-123-7360 or email us at info@learningmudra.com

Which project to choose ?

You need to be a leader in action and not on paper. You could be leading an execution of a project with your small team and that works. Just taking responsibility is what you need. However, keep in mind one thing. If you were involved in more than one project, in other words, overlapping projects at one time, then you need to choose one among them. You can only be in one project at a given time according to PMI’s criteria. So ideally situation would be to document or choose the one which has the maximum time duration, this will help you reach the 4500 or 7500 hours mark faster. Or choose those small ones if they all combined are more than the one big project.

Dividing the project

At this point you must be having a fair idea what a project is. Now let us talk of division in project to ease calculation. Generally speaking, project can be divided into 5 parts, namely:

• Initiation of a project- It is where the project starts. Where we see a problem or wish for a desired end result and start coming up with ideas of “how to solve this problem”. Document the hours spent in this step
• Planning of a project- Choosing the best way to solve it and planning a detail road map of things to implement. Find the number of hours spent here too. You see the pattern? It is getting easier to calculate
• Execution of a project- We start working. We take action and decisions mentioned in the plan and work. We might find new challenges at this step and need to solve them. We document the hours spent here. Execution can be rather long.
• Monitoring and controlling- Find what you are doing wrong. Monitor continuously so we can take corrective actions if anything goes wrong. Calculate hours spend here.
• Closing of a project- We achieve our goal and result is here. We see what we did, what our resources were. We document all of the hours.

Simplifying through steps

This whole method will simplify how you calculate. Breaking down things helps put them together better. One good thing about dividing is you could be doing more than one thing simultaneously. You could be executing but also monitoring side by side. And it can be counted separately as they are for the same project. This division will ease your task and slightly reduce the time required for you to do. The best tool to record this is MS excel as it will help you arrange and analyse and apply different tools to calculate all at one place. Wewould appreciate if this is clear for you.

The process is indeed complex. Documentation itself seems like a project in itself and rightly so. But the fact of the matter is no good thing came without hard work and this is what you need to do. And I am sure you can do it. Divide the tasks into simpler steps. Use excel. Improve every task you did but make wise choices when they clash in terms of time. In case are still facing any problem documenting your project experience, we at Learning Mudra provide assistance in documenting the projects that you have done. We will handle it for you. We provide solution for all your PMP certification needs. Apply here.