PMP (Project Management Professional) certification is one of the top most internationally recognized certification in Project Management which is provided by Project Management Institute (PMI). The exam is conducted throughout the year via Prometric testing centers and there is a specific application process you need to follow to take this exam.
50 Free PMP Questions from Whizlabs
It is different from other exams since it requires Project Management training, experience in the Project Management Knowledge Areas to apply for this exam. There are no concepts of test dump questions which you can practice and pass this exam. We need to acquire the skills in Project Management to achieve success in this exam.
1. Eligibility To Apply for PMP Certification
You must meet the following requirements as outlined by PMI to apply for this exam.
Education
Project Management Experience
Project Management Education
Secondary degree (high school diploma, associate’s degree or the global equivalent)
Minimum five years / 60 months unique non- overlapping professional project management experience during which at least 7,500 hours were spent leading and directing project
35 hours of project management education
OR
Four-year degree
Minimum three years / 36 months unique non-overlapping professional project management experience during which at least 4,500 hours were spent leading and directing project
35 hours of project management education
You need to have experience in all the five project management process groups across all your experience submitted. However, on a single project there is no need to have experience in all the five process groups.
2. PMP Certification Process
Here is the summary of 6 steps process to be certified as PMP candidate.
Submit your application online or via mail to PMI. PMI’s response time is faster for electronic submission. You have 90 days to complete the application once you started it.
PMI takes 5 business days to complete the application completeness review.
You need to complete the payment of credential fees for Computer-based testing ($405 for PMI members and $555 for non-member).
If your application is selected for audit process you have 90 days to send your audit materials. PMI processes the audit material in 5-7 days.
You receive your authorization to schedule the exam in any prometric testing centers within one year from the date of the application approval. You can take the exam up to 3 times during this 1 year. You need to pay your re-examination fees to the second and third attempts to pass the examination. (($275 for PMI members and $375 for non-member).
You need to acquire 60 PDUs within 3 years to maintain the credential acquired failing which your credential is suspended for 1 year. If you are not acquiring the PDUs before that, your credential expires. If you wish to hold the credential again, you need to reapply.
3. PMP Exam Details
The PMP exam consists of 200 objective questions with four options and you have 4 hours to complete the exam. 25 out of the 200 questions are pre-release questions and not counted for scoring your exam. PMI does not disclose the pass score for the exam and the passing score is determined by psychometric analysis.
PMP Exam Blueprint
From the PMP Examination Content Outline
Domain
Percentage of Questions
Initiation
13%
Planning
24%
Executing
31%
Monitoring and Controlling
25%
Closing
7%
Total
100%
4. Why take the PMP certification?
If you want to get hike in your salary, promotion to the next level or keep you position during difficult situation due to economic slowdown you need to demonstrate and differentiate that you are a valuable project manager to the organization. Leaving it to your immediate supervisor alone to defend you is not a good approach.
Acquire PMP certification which add more value to you and demonstrate to everyone that you are a skilled project manager of international standard and organization would like to retain you even during difficult times. You are giving a chance to your supervisor to defend his decision to give good salary hike or promotion to the next level to you to the top management.
More than 100 profiles are received for every open position for project management in any company. If you are looking for opportunities in other company in project management, PMP certification will help you to cross the screening process easily and it is one of the biggest advantage you are gaining over your competitor. PMP certification helps you to get job all over the world.
5. What are the resources available for the PMP certification?
PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) guide from PMI
Project Management Education Training to acquire the 35 hours of project management education requirement online /classroom sessions.
PMP exam preparation guides
PMP exam simulation software to practice mock exams
Objective question bank for PMP exam to practice test in each project management knowledge areas
6. SWOT Analysis for the candidates planning for the PMP certification
Before applying for the PMP exam, the candidates must analyse the expertise they have in project management. The preparation technique is different for different skilled person and an analyse of your strength, weakness, opportunities and treats would help to plan the right strategy to achieve success in this examination.
Take a mock test of around 20 questions on each knowledge area of project management and see where you stand. This will help you to identify your strong and weak knowledge areas in project management. The strength and weakness of candidates is based on their previous project management training and their experience in project management. So, you need to plan your preparation accordingly.
Plan for the exam when you are relatively free in your official work and able to take vacation for a week to focus fully before the exam. Don’t plan your exam if you are held up with important work in your organization and there are lot of dependencies on you. You may not get the required time to prepare and it is not possible to clear this exam.
7. How to prepare for the PMP certification?
Here is the 10 steps that helps your to effectively prepare for the PMP certification. PMP certification is not a simple one, you require extensive effort for preparing and pass the exam.
To clear the PMP exam, candidates needs to have project management knowledge, application of the concepts in the real-time environment and have the analysis skills. It is not the test of memory where you prepare a book thoroughly and pass the exam. It is neither the test of your application of your skill nor analysis skills only. A combination of all three is required to pass the exam.
If you don’t have the project management training so far, I recommend you to attend either online training or class room training from a reputed institute which will be the building blocks for your PMP certification process.
Preparation of PMBOK guide is mandatory and needs to be studied at least three times before the actual exam. The first-time should be used to go through the book once, to get familiar with all the tools and techniques, inputs and outputs from all the processes and note down the areas where it is new to you and pay more attention to these areas (You can use one of the popular self-study training materials for the exam preparation).
The second-time reading should be used to understand the project management process groups and knowledge areas and identify where a process lies in the project management process and which knowledge area. The third-time reading should focus more on consolidation of these concepts and understand the relationship between different processes.
In addition to that, you can relate your real-time experience in project management and understand all the process. You may not have experience in all these processes and hence deeply analyse those processes where you don’t have experience.
In addition to the PMBOK guide you can also follow a book of your choice and go through that. Don’t go for too many books and it is waste of your precious time.
Then you can evaluate yourself with practice test based on knowledge areas and identify the processes where you are not comfortable and revisit those processes in the PMBOK guide.
You need to plan for group discussion with other colleagues who are also appearing for the PMP exam at regular intervals during your preparation. This would help to understand the concepts from different perspective.
Finally, minimum 15 days before the exam date, take one mock exam from any PMP exam simulation software. If You cross 70% in that exam, then it is an indication that you are on track. Analysis of your result of the mock exam would help to identify the gaps in your knowledge and you can work on your skill gaps before the next mock exam which you can plan after a week. You can repeat the process and take the final mock exam and complete this process before two days of the actual exam date. The last two days can be used to focus on the gap areas you have identified during the mock exams via PMP exam simulation software.
Attend the actual exam and pass the exam.
8. Study plan and implementation strategy
This exam requires successful investment of your time and money to pass the exam. You need to plan your best possible time to take the exam. The money you spend on this exam is an investment which is going to give back multiple times. So, plan your budget for this exam to acquire all those materials which help you to acquire this certification.
Similarly, the time you need to invest for the preparation also is critical and plan for that in the beginning itself. Based on current skill & experience in project management the preparation strategy, time as well as the material requirement differ for different candidates.
A normal candidate with project management training and experience in project management requires around 20 hrs per week for 3 to 4 months of time to pass this exam. In addition to the time, you also plan to invest around Rs75,000 which includes the exam fees to pass this exam.
Consistency is the key and you need to allocate minimum of 2 hrs per day during week days and around 5 hrs during the week end for preparation. Don’t miss not even a single day of your preparation. If the continuity is missing, it would impact the preparation process and you are moving away from the successful completion of exam. Stay yourself calm and enjoy your preparation for the entire duration of your PMP journey.
Your study plan should cover the following points:
Prepare the PMBOK Guide for three times
Prepare a standard book on Project Management
Group discussion with peers on each topic
Practice tests based on Knowledge areas
3 Mock exams using PMP exam simulation software
Follow a schedule of your choice and make sure you have discussion on each project management process, constantly work on your weak areas to overcome the hurdle and pass the exam successfully. Allocate some buffer time and money and plan for the exam date accordingly. This will help to manage for any unplanned deviation in your study plan.
9. Types of questions in the PMP exam
The following are the different types of questions you can see in the PMP exam
Situation based questions. All the options are valid and only candidates with good experience and knowledge in project management can choose the right answers.
Questions with two or more possible right answers.
Questions related to PMP mathematics
Questions where understanding is important
Questions with make-up terms
Questions with lengthy word
Questions related to tools and techniques, input and output from project management process
How to prepare for the situation based questions?
These questions require you to have real-time project management experience.
Sample Question: You identified that there is a potential delay in the deliverable to the customer due to the absence of key resource. What is the best thing to do?
Update the customer about the potential delay
Meet with the team and identify other options
Discuss with your senior manager
Accept it is a mistake and plan for the backup for the subsequent deliverables
The correct answer is option B.
Here all the options are valid and you do all of them based on the current situation. But the best project manager would like to discuss with the team for alternative options before thinking other options. Hence the correct option is B.
While preparing the PMBOK guide always relate the process with your real-time experience and think about what should be the best thing a project manager can do at that time. Consider the key inputs, outputs, tools and techniques and dependencies with other process and learn accordingly. Practising a lot mentally prepare your mind for choosing the best answers for the situation based questions.
How to prepare for the questions for which more than two possible right answers?
You need to have good project management knowledge and experience to handle these questions.
Sample Question:
The best activity of the sponsor in a project is
Supporting the project manager to interact with the customer
Helping to prevent unwanted changes to project objectives
Identifying additional project constraints
Helping team when they are in trouble
The correct answer is option B. Though it appears to have multiple right answer A, B and C the most important activity for the sponsor is to prevent unwanted changes to project objectives.
To weed out the less experience and limited project management knowledge candidates these questions appear in the exam. For them, almost two to three options, sometimes all the options appear to be right due to their limited knowledge and experience. Best project managers handle these questions effectively. Have good project management training and acquiring good experience in project management is the key to handle these questions.
How to overcome the PMP maths hurdle?
Questions about project selections and basic accounting fundamentals would appear in the initiation process groups. You need to have solid understanding about Cost-Benefit ratio, payback period, PV, NPV, IRR, opportunity cost, sunk cost, Return on Sales, Return on Assets, Return on Investment, make-or-buy analysis, lease-or-buy analysis.
Questions about expected monetary value, decision tree analysis, project cost estimation, critical path analysis, float, crashing, communication channels, PERT, standard deviation, variance, point of total assumption would appear in the planning process groups.
Questions about earned value analysis both assessment and forecasting would appear in the execution process groups. You need to have clear understanding of cost variance, cost performance index, schedule variance, schedule performance index, estimation to complete, estimation at completion, budget at completion and variance at completion concepts to sail through this questions.
Questions about the quality control tools and probability distribution would appear in the monitoring and control process groups. You need to have clear understanding about beta distribution, triangular distribution, bell distribution, uniform distribution, control chats, bar charts, histograms, Pareto charts, fishbone diagram, run charts, scatter diagrams, flow charts and inspections to answer well in this section.
Questions about statistical concepts would appear in the closing process groups. You need to have clear understanding of mean, mode, median, standard deviation and variance to choose the right answers.
Once you prepare well on these topics you can score full marks in this section. These are straight forward questions and you need to apply the formulas directly. Memorise the simple formulas and practice as many questions as possible to get success in these areas.
Sample Question:
A project manager is trying to choose between project A which is having a NPV of $55000 and project B which is having a NPV of $78000. All other criteria being equal which project should be selected by the project manager?
Project B
Neither Project A nor Project B
Project A
Both
The right answer is option A since project B is having higher NPV value.
How to handle questions where understanding is important?
Sometimes the options to the questions are given indirectly and based on the activities related to the process. You need to have the clear understanding of the process to answer these questions. Memorization would not help to answer these questions.
Sample Question:
Preparation of Test Strategy activities is complete when
Testing approach is completed
Identified all the risk, assumption and dependencies in the project
In scope and out of scope activities are clearly defined.
Signoff from all the stakeholders related to the project.
The right answer is option D. Without signoff, the document is not having any value on its own. Hence D is the right option for this question.
How to handle questions with make-up-terms?
To confuse you, Often the questions setter added some terms not at all related to the questions. This may be because they are looking for the fourth option in the question or they want to trick you to choose the wrong option. If you are preparing well and understand all the terms from PMBOK guide, you can handle these questions easily. Any term you don’t know in the exam is a make-up-term and you skip that option easily.
Sample Question:
A form of project organization where power is exclusively with the functional manager and the project manager is having very limited power is called
Strong matrix
Weak matrix
Balanced matrix
Functional matrix
The correct answer is option B. In this question the option Functional matrix is a make-up-term which you can eliminate it easily.
How to handle questions with lengthy word questions?
Instead of saying that the activity in the critical path is behind schedule, you can see that the activity float was zero and has moved to negative now. Instead of saying that the team deliverables are poor quality, you can see that the team has lost sight of the quality management plan.
You need to understand what they are asking and accordingly translate the wordy phrases to answer these questions. Also, practice a lot of questions which is of length to focus on what is required in these questions. Most of the time the questions would have lot of information which you don’t require to answer these questions.
Sample Questions:
A project manager in the planning stages requested 10 resources to work on the project and they need to available for three months. This is his top priority to the management team. He also requires a budget of $250000 to complete the project successfully. But the management has approved $175000 for the project and fulfilled his resource requirement. Which of the following should the project manager do because of this situation?
Handle this cost risk as part of the risk response planning
Reduce the scope of the project
Include this cost risk in the list of risk identification
Control other risk to get sufficient budget to manage this cost risk
The correct answer is option B. In this question the key point is instead of $250000 the management has approved only $1750000 and it is a fact and it needs to be handled in the project planning rather than risk management. All other information is not required which is given to trick you.
10. Common mistakes by the PMP candidates
PMP candidates do the following mistakes during their preparation journey.
Understand the question from their project management experience perspective and answer that. You need to thing from the PMI PMBOK guide first and if not able to answer then go for your real-time experience. The reason is whatever we are practising may not be correct always and hence go with PMI approach first.
I see lot of candidates plan every year for this exam and still not completed this certification. A serious candidate can complete this exam in 3 to 6 months. Don’t put yearly plan.
Reschedule the exam date many times. Unless it is mandatory to reschedule the exam due to an emergency, don’t reschedule the exam. Stick to the exam date. You will not follow your study plan properly if you are not sticking to a committed date.
Not utilizing all the important sources for the exam. I have seen most of the candidates have the desire for this certification but not interested or willing to invest in all the tools required to prepare yourself well for the exam. The resources required to prepare for the exam differ from each candidate, but whatever you planned needs to be used to succeed in this exam.
Not allocating sufficient time to prepare for the exam.
Lack of consistency in following your plan. If you don’t have a plan in place, then it is difficult to pass this exam.
Practising lot of objective questions without understand the concepts from PMBOK guide. The best approach is to understand the concepts first and practice lot of objective questions.
11. Why should take tests on each Knowledge Areas?
To understand the gaps in your project management knowledge, you need to do practice test which would help to work on your weak areas related to the processes in that knowledge area. Note down the processes where you are struggling and go through the PMBOK guide again.
This process will help you to remember the mistakes you have committed in your practice test. Again, go for the practice test and see where you stand. Repeat the process till you get confidence in that knowledge area and move to the practice test on new knowledge area. Make sure you are taking practice test on new set of questions every time to see the real improvement in your knowledge in that area.
12. Why should take Mock exams before the actual exam?
PMP exam simulation software usually have questions of high quality and help you to analyse where you stand at that time. Taking an exam for 4 hours require physical and mental strength and techniques to keep yourself focused. Mock exam help us to practice this and you will understand how to go about the exam with more clarity.
You can plan your exam in the right way based on these experiences. The questions are from all the knowledge areas and practising these tests help to handle the questions effectively. Instead of understanding the difficulties in the exam site, realize these problems during the mock exam. This would help to plan for these problems and if you encounter the problem again in the exam, you can handle that easily.
13. How to conduct yourself during the exam?
I recommend you to take leave for two days before the exam date. You need to give time for your mind to process all the learning you have till that time. Relax yourself but do some activity related to the exam. Visit the exam site before the exam date and understand how much time it takes for you to reach your venue.
On the Exam Day:
You must bring your authorization letter from PMI as well as ID with the same name as per your authorization letter.
If you struggle to remember any concepts, write those concepts in the scratch paper given to you. This will help to relax your mind before the exam.
You will see one question at a time and all those 200 questions are selected immediately you started the exam and not based on your answers to a question.
You have the option to mark the question for review later and can move back and forth.
If you are reading the question multiple times, you are stressed and use breathing technique to relax yourself.
Focus on the question and answer. If you are thinking about the 10th question when you answering 110th question, you have not focused well for nearly 100 questions and the result should be a disaster for you.
Answer each question from PMI perspective.
Follow the elimination strategy to eliminate the options which are not correct. This will help to answer more questions correctly.
Utilize all your 4 hours in the exam and don’t leave the exam hall before that. Approach the exam based on your plan and control the exam. Never allow the exam to control you.
Conclusion
Achieving the PMP credential is itself a project and make sure you plan it well, to successfully complete this certification in your first attempt. You need to manage this project effectively to make sure you are rewarded with the PMP credential. It differentiates yourself from your peers and use this a launch pad for your career growth. It is an international certification which has the potential to get job anywhere in the world. Lot of new doors open for you in your journey.
I wish you success in your preparation for this exam and achieve the PMP credential!!
PMP Certification References:
995 Practice Questions for PMP Certification
PMP Self Study
Please refer to the following link for the PMP candidate handbook and exam content outline from PMI
http://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/pdf/certifications/project-management-professional-handbook.pdf
http://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/pdf/certifications/project-management-professional-exam-outline.pdf
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