How Do I Fill in PMP Experience Hours?
The next section of the online form asks for your project management experience. This is the part of the application most people find hardest. It’s important to get this section right as you need to show your project management experience in order to be eligible for the exam.
You are asked to complete full details of your work experience on projects. The online form asks for:
- The project’s title
- The organization where the project was carried out and its primary domain
- Your job title
- Your functional reporting area
- The approach or methodology: you can choose from traditional (waterfall), agile or hybrid
- The project team size
- The project budget which you have to give in USD
- The dates of the project and you can also select if the project is ongoing.
- A description that summarizes your role and includes information about the project objective, outcome, deliverables and your responsibilities. PMI advises that typical responses range from 200 to 500 words.
You can add more projects to complete your application. You won’t be able to move on to the third and final step in the process until you have added enough project experience to equal what is required.
- If you have a secondary degree or high school diploma, you need to show 60 months of project management experience
- If you have a bachelor’s degree, you need to show 36 months of project management experience
- If you have a GAC accredited degree, you need to show 24 months of project management experience
This is what it looks like when you have completed entry of your Professional Experience...
What are Project Management Experience Months?
Months of experience are a measure of time that you spent leading, managing and directing a project. PMI is looking for either a total of between 24 and 60 months of experience, depending on your highest level of education.
Think of qualifying months like elapsed duration and effort duration on a project schedule. It’s OK for your project dates to overlap. Many people manage multiple projects at the same time. However, time spent on leading overlapping projects only counts as per the elapsed time. You may have managed three projects in January, but the elapsed time is still only one month.
To reiterate: Each calendar month only counts as a single month of experience even if you managed multiple projects.
Try to limit your reported hours to 40 hours per week. You don’t need to try to impress PMI with how many hours you are working or how many projects you can juggle at any one time.
However, we all work in the real world, and sometimes there are legitimate reasons why you would record more than 40 hours in a week. For example, around the time of a big delivery milestone, you may need to work extended hours. This is not uncommon for specialized contractors that may have long gaps between projects.
If you do record excessive hours in the PMP experience hours section -- over 40 hours/week for a very long time -- you will need to be able to justify the hours if necessary by providing written documentation to PMI. So make sure you have detailed back up to use if you are audited, such as timesheets or client invoices that state hours worked and the work carried out.
Quick Tip: Start from your current or most recent project and work backward through your career history until you have reached the total months required. There’s no need to list every project you have ever led!
There is plenty of space for you to document your experience. We know of candidates saving experience with around 2,500 words of description but I would not recommend that! Someone has to read your application form. Be as concise with your responses as you can. PMI recommends you use up to around 500 words, so use that as your guide.
You need to show that you have gained knowledge and skills that span a wide range of project management domains and activities, but you don’t need to document every project management task you did on every project.
For example, you should analyze the stakeholders on each project. When you are writing your descriptions, if you did analyze stakeholders, you can mention it in one or two project descriptions. You don’t have to mention the fact you analyzed stakeholders in every description, even if you did it every time.
Quick Tip: Write less about the scope and topic of the project and more about what you did on the project.
Think about using as many keywords as you can in your descriptions. This is your time to shine! You can find some examples here which can help you better understand what PMI is looking for.
Keep entering project descriptions and dates until you reach the total amount of months that you require. Remember that the time relates to the work you have done leading and directing the project.
In the next and final section of the PMP Exam application you will enter your exam details >>>