How to fill the PMP Application Form

The PMP Application format may evolve over time but overall following are the main 4 items you will have to provide:

1)     General information (name, address, educational background, etc.)

2)     Document your 35 contact hours training in project management.

With the electronic form, you simply provide the training provider name and the date you obtained your certificate. (Be sure to always keep a paper copy of the  35 contact hours certificate with you).

3)      Document each of the projects you want to use for your experience requirement.

Prepare carefully this section, be accurate and honest. Summarize the project names, the company for whom you did these projects, describe briefly tasks and the main deliverables. You may want to review and use the tasks listed (per process group) in the PMP  handbook.

4)     How to evaluate the project duration?

If a project took 6 months, then you simply make a calculation to get the number of hours. One way to do it is to assume 5 working days per week, 50 weeks per year and 8 hours per week. With this assumption, a 6-month project would provide for 1000 hours of work experience (50/2*5*8). You may want to create and use an excel sheet to make accurate calculations as you enter the information. Review also the PMP handbook for overlapping projects. Finally, indicate the duration and percentages for the 5 group processes. Review the tasks and process groups listed in the PMP handbook. The percentages should reflect your experience and the project life cycle. If your 16-week involvement in this project was only 1 week of initiation, 3 weeks of planning, and 10 weeks of execution as well as monitoring and controlling and was closed in 2 weeks, then you could translate this into the following percentage: 6% (1/16) initiating - 19% , (3/16) planning - 31%, (5/16) executing - 31%,  (5/16) monitoring - 13%,

(2/16) closing.

Again a spreadsheet might be very useful to compile and verify your calculations

(6%+19%+31%+31%+13%=100%) . Some project experience may not include all the processes involved. There is no right or wrong :-)