What is PMP And How Can It Change A Project Manager’s Life?

What is PMP? If you are a project manager, you may have been thinking of this quite often. Is it a certificate, or diploma or degree or a credential? How will Project Management Certification help me? How important is it for a Project Manager? If you want to know about these, continue reading about Project Management Certification.

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PMP or Project Management Professional is a Project Manager certification. PMP is offered by the PMI institute or the Project Management Institute. It is the de-facto standard for project managers. PMP is the Gold Standard of project management. Moreover, PMP is the most coveted project manager certification world over. PMI institute has been providing value to over 2.9 million professionals across the globe with its credentials, standards, and guides. Moreover, Project Management Certification is fast becoming a mandatory requirement for project managers in many organizations.

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What is needed to become a PMP?

So, you now know what PMP is. If you are thinking of becoming a PMP, you need to have the following prerequisites to apply for PMP. The PMP certification requirements are:

• 4-year bachelor degree
• 4500 hours of experience leading and directing projects
• 35 hours of PMP Certification training

On the other hand, if you do not have a 4-year degree but have a high school diploma, you can also go for PMP. Your experience needs to be at least 7500 hours, though. Are you thinking what is this project management education and from where you can get that? Well, not to worry, there are both classroom PMP boot camps and PMP online certifications. You can choose the one that suits you best.

What is Project Management Education?

You have seen the prerequisites for PMP. While you know project management education is a prerequisite for applying for PMP credential, next question is what does it comprise of? Before you apply, PMI institute wants to make sure that you have undergone a basic PMP training or a PMP bundle. These are generally based on PMBOK or the Project Management Body of Knowledge. You can know about project management framework through ten Project Management Knowledge Areas, five Process Groups covered in PMBOK. The complete knowledge is described in terms of processes and their interactions. While a process will have certain inputs, you apply tools & techniques on them to get the desired output. Now let’s see the importance of Project Management Certification for a project manager.

What is the importance of Project Management Certification?

Your question about PMP is not completely answered if you do not understand how important it is! Suppose these are all the questions you have:

• Are you looking for growth options in project manager role?
• You want to know what sets you apart from other project managers?
• Will this give me a hike in salary?
• Does it help me when handling projects where stakeholders are from different parts of the world?
• Can I better manage projects to successful completion if I do Project Management Certification?
• Will I get to know what are the best practices followed by other projects managers?
• Will my organization value my PMP?

And, if I say ‘Yes’ to all these questions, you don’t need any more explicit answer to understand the importance of Project Management Certification for a project manager. Though you may not need, here are a few more to answer about Project Management Certification.

What will be my Salary if I get the PMP certification?

You have seen there is a hike in PMP salary if you go for Project Management Certification. How much? PMI institute salary survey- ninth edition says that as a PMP, you will get 20 % more salary than a project manager who is not certified. Your organization also knows the value of having a PMP on the project. Let us discuss PMP from the organization perspective and how an organization can benefit from a PMP.

What is PMP from an Organization Perspective

If you have project managers who are PMPs, your customers have more confidence in the way your projects are handled. You have better chances of bagging the project when you have PMPs at the helm. You can assure that your managers understand and implement best practices in the projects. Therefore, the benefit od PMP for your company is having greater chances of projects being successful.

When communicating with people from different parts of the world, your managers use common terms and phrases as others. While this removes confusion, it also promotes better rapport.

How to get ready for the Project Management Certification exam?

You can read how to get PMP certification post to get a detailed information about this. We will be going over the major steps of getting Project Management Certification here as well.

Let us say you have taken your 35-hour project management education. Your next step is creating your PMP Study plan. Like Project Management Plan is the blueprint for a project, PMP Study plan is your project plan. Project Management Certification is your project and hence you need to approach this with the same rigor. Typically, you should have one round of study of PMBOK, any study material given to you. Then, you test yourself with the PMP Question Bank. How many did you get correct, how many of them incorrect? Analyze and check why these were not correct. Strengthen your concepts by revising.

How can I apply for exam?

You may apply for Project Management Certification in parallel while studying. You can check an online step-by-step PMP application guide. Login to pmi.org and complete the application process. Schedule your exam once you are getting a good score in the practice tests. Go and answer all the questions since there are no negative marks. You can mark the questions that you may want to review so that you can do it before final submission. Once you submit, you see ‘Congratulations’ on the screen and you are a PMP.

What should I do after I get my PMP?

Once you get your Project Management Certification, you complete the rough part. Congrats! However, it is not over. You must retain your Project Management Certification and there are certain steps to renew it.

Renewal

Now along with the perks that you get with Project Management Certification, you also have a certain responsibility. Not very huge, you need to renew your credential before the end of the three-year period from the day you are a PMP. You can do PMP Renewal by earning 60 PDUs in this three-year period. How do you get these? Do you need to do a course again or write the exam? Well, yes and no. There are many options for getting PDUs. You may attend course, webinars, seminars or volunteer. You can check the guide in PMI PDU Submission article to learn how to submit your PDUs. Essentially, Project Management Certification renewal is to keep you current with the profession and contribute back to the profession. And, you don’t need to write the exam again!

Other credentials from PMI:

Also, you may specialize in areas of your interest or core work areas. You can go for risk management (PMI-RMP) or scheduling (PMI-SP), etc. Moreover, as you climb up the ladder, you can aim for a program management (PgMP) or Portfolio management (PfMP) credentials too. Now you also now know about the best project management certification options.

In this post, we have answered questions about Project Management Certification. Therefore, in short, it’s a credential that puts you in the elite group of professionals. It gives you monetary perks as well as knowledge. Moreover, you get to know best practices from other experts and an opportunity to network.

Author Biography:

Sunanda Gundavajhala, B.Tech, M.B.A, PMP has over 25 years of project management. She is a consultant, trainer on project management for different sectors and is the recipient of “Recognition of Excellence” award from PMI, USA and Woman Volunteer award from Hyderabad, India Chapter of PMI. She has contributed to the “Practice Standard on Scheduling, PMI”. She has worked as the Liaison officer for PMIEF (Education Foundation) for the Hyderabad, India Chapter of PMI.