How Do I Prove 4500 Hours for PMP ?

How do I prove 4500 hours for PMP ?

Learning Mudra, Category - PMP

Introduction

Project Management Institute or PMI offers many project management courses and PMP is one very important amongst them. PMI has outlined certain eligibility requirements for the PMP certification exam. One of them is having a professional experience of at least 4500 hours over a period of three years in project management provided you have a four-year college degree. There are specific processes that need to be undertaken to give proof of the same to PMI for the purpose of receiving PMP certification. We will discuss the relevant points from these processes in this article as we go along. First, we must examine why there exists a requirement of a certain number of hours prior to getting the PMP certification.

Reason for requirement of 4500 hours for PMP

As we know having mandatory requirements relating to time is not only limited to PMP. As we can see similar requirements for other professions such as pilots requiring around certain hours of flying experience to be granted their license. All of these requirements are there for the reason that in all of these jobs a large part of the entire job’s execution depends on the skill of the person who is getting the certification. Similar to an airplane’s pilot, a project manager acts as the final point of authority in the executive chain of command for taking decisions to ensure success of the project.

A lot of people depend on the project manager to guide them in performing their duties both efficiently and effectively to ensure the deliverables of the project. This requires a certain amount of skill and know how which can only be gained by having practical experience in managing a project. These experiences allow the candidate to connect their learnings in the PMP study materials to their past projects and learn how they could have improved their performance in the past. This ensures greater retention of their learnings as well as greater flexibility of their application of their knowledge of project management.

Another major reason is that only after the candidates have a sufficient number of reference experiences can they be exposed to the various variations in the process. These variations that can occur while managing projects tend to throw a curveball around the project managers. The strategies to deal with such scenarios will be a purely academic exercise for the candidates if they haven’t dealt with such scenarios in their professional career. This will also ensure that the candidates can readily deal with similar situations, if they occur in the future. They can do so by applying their learnings from PMP certification to these situations.

What counts as the required 4500 hours for PMP ?

Next, we must determine what types of activities count towards the professional experience hours required for PMP certification out of the 4500 hours. While a lot of candidates assume that these requirements imply that one has to be employed as a project manager to amass these hours however, the reality is different. Any role a candidate has worked in in which they have been a part of a team or have worked individually in roles that assisted in project management activities. They can be accumulated in many activities while the candidate is engaged in a wide variety of roles in the project.

These can be part of the professional responsibilities of many positions such as supervisor of a small team or team leader of one of the teams in the project or any of the many other roles. The only criterion is that these roles have allowed them to participate in the areas relevant to project management. These areas are: starting a project, planning a project, executing a project, monitoring a project and closing a project. Once a candidate has experience in any of these areas for the requisite duration of time, they are deemed to be eligible for the PMP certification.

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How to provide proof of 4500 hours for PMP ?

In order to provide proof of the 4500 hours to PMI, a candidate needs to document the various times in their professional career where they have worked in the relevant areas of project management. They can do so by preparing an excel sheet where they can document each of the projects they have worked on, along with the roles they have been associated with. They can then break the processes in each position into their components. From these components they can then calculate the amount of time dedicated to each of the five above given segments.

Once this process is done, they can document these results in their application. They can start by first giving information about the project such as: the name of the project, its start/end dates, project lifecycle and their own role in the project. Then they can describe the organization in which this project was being executed by providing its name, functional area and the methodologies used in achieving it. Thus, this is for the various tools and approaches they have utilized in achieving their desired outcomes such as agile or hybrid or scrum. This will help the candidates plan their study approach as well based upon their familiarity.

Finally, they must end with the project description in which they expand on three important dimensions of the project. They are: the goal of the project, activities done as well as its place in the five groups of activities given above, and describing their personal experience in dealing with the various facets of the process. Since a project will always be judged based upon the outcome it set out to achieve hence this portion needs to be clear with quantifying the deliverables precisely. The process of grouping their activities needs a lot of thought put into it to present the best image of their competencies.

Finally, they must be prepared to be randomly audited by PMI for their professional experience. They can do so by getting their managers to vouch for their performance in the fields and roles mentioned by them in the application. They can then attest their acknowledgement of the candidate’s hours that they have submitted to PMI for PMP. All these should be done prior to applying for the exam to prevent any last- minute hassle. In case of special circumstances where they are unable to get the same due to extenuating circumstances, they can collect collateral evidence that proves their assertions and work with PMI to prove the same. Click here to read "What Happens If You Fail Your PMP Audit"