Adout - Project Management Professional (PMP)

Project Management Professional (PMP) is the most globally recognized certification in project management. It is managed by the Project Management Institute and is based on the PMP Examination Specification published by PMI in 2005. Most exam questions reference to PMIs ANSI standard A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, abbreviated to PMBOK Guide

The PMI (Project Management Institute) has three levels of certification, starting with the CAPM (Certified Associate in Project Management) which is the basic level and is intended as certification for project team members. The PMP (Project Management Professional) is the second, higher, level of project management. Individuals who have passed the PMP certification test successfully and have met the PMI requirements for documenting their professional experience are entitled to use the abbreviation PMP with their names. A new certification, PgMP (Program Management Professional) has also been introduced by the PMI, for Program Managers.

Benefits of becoming PMP

Getting a PMP Certification would help you in many ways.

* The PMP designation following one's name demonstrates to employers and other stakeholders that the individual possesses a solid foundation of experience and education in project management.
* PMP Certification is used as a screening tool by companies that have to fill their Project Management positions.
* PMP certified person applies Project Management methodologies in a standardized way. You get to know the best project management practices worldwide and your project management methodologies are not limited to hard work and organizational skills. And that is why employers are willing to pay more money for a PMP-certified professional.

Eligibility for PMP Exam

Certification by the Project Management Institute (PMI) as a project management professional (PMP) demonstrates that you have mastered essential project management skills and knowledge. To earn PMI’s PMP designation, you must demonstrate the required "long-term commitment" to project management professionalism as well as pass a rigorous, 200-question exam covering the five project management processes and ten knowledge areas in PMI’s project management body of knowledge (PMBOK). To receive the PMP certification, each candidate must satisfy PMI's qualifications for experience and education and pass the Project Management Professional Certification Examination. To qualify for the PMI exam applicants must have:

1. A Bachelor degree and 4,500 hours of relevant project management experience in the past 6 years OR
2. A high school diploma or equivalent and 7,500 hours of relevant project management experience in the past 8 years.

Candidates who do not meet the minimum requirements for the PMP certification can apply for the Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) examination.

PMP EXAMINATION INFORMATION

PMP examination is a computerized test of 4 hours duration, with 200 multiple-choice questions, each with four choices. Out of the 200 questions, 25 questions are pretest questions. These 25 pretest questions are randomly placed throughout the examination to gather statistical information on the performance of these pretest questions. This strategy is followed to determine whether the pretest questions can be used in future PMI examinations as actual questions. The pretest questions, included in the 200-question examination, are not considered for pass/fail determination. Hence, candidates are evaluated on basis of the remaining 175 questions.


To pass the PMP examination, out of the 175 questions, candidates must correctly answer a minimum of 106 questions. Which means the minimum percentage score to be obtained should be 60.6%.

All of PMI’s credential examinations are administered in English. Examination language aids are available to assist candidates for whom English is a second language. The aids provide a translation of exam questions and answers and are available in 10 languages – Chinese (Simplified), French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, and Spanish.

Examination Content - Percentage Of Questions

* Initiating the Project - 11%
* Planning the Project - 23 %
* Executing the Project - 27 %
* Monitoring and Controlling the Project – 21 %
* Closing the Project – 9 %
* Professional and Social Responsibility - 9 %

PMP Exam Registration
You can apply Online or use the paper form. Your payment to PMI is normally by credit card or mailed check. You should plan on joining as a member of the Project Management Institute to save money now and in the future

http://www.pmi.org

For candidates who need to apply via a paper application, please download the following documents (as needed).
PMP Handbook and Application Forms
CAPM Handbook and Application Forms


Fees for PMP Exam

Project Management Professional (Fee in USD)
Initial Certification Fee - member of PMI in good standing ($405.95)
Initial Certification Fee - non-member of PMI ($555.95)
Re-Examination Fee - member of PMI in good standing ($275.95)
Re-Examination Fee - non-member of PMI ($375.95)


Some of Popular PMP Training providers in India

* Prologic systems (P) Limited, 16/2A, 401, Ansal forte, Rupene Agrahara, Hosur Road, Bangalore – 560068, Karnataka, India., Phone : +91 80 51114915 Mobile : +91 9845178851, url : www.prologic.in

* KnowledgeWorks IT Consulting Pvt. Ltd.,197, E-5, 2nd Floor,8th “B” Main 27th Cross, Jayanagar 3rd Block, Bangalore – 560011, Landmark : Near to G.K.Vale Photostudio / Pizza Hut, General email: training@knowledgeworksindia.com , Phone: +91-80-26630622 / +91-80-22459941 (O)

* PMTI-India, No. 337/2RT, Opp. to Metro Water Tank, Sanjeeva Reddy Nagar, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh - 500038

* Quality Solutions for Information Technology Pvt. Ltd., A-706 & 707, 7th Floor, Mittal Towers, M.G. Road, Bangalore - 560 001 INDIA, Tel: +91-80-2558 5386 / 4113 4334, Fax: +91-80-2559 7445, email: contact(at)qsitglobal.com

* AstroWix Corporation, A-53/54 Sector 16, NOIDA - 201 301, UP, India, TEL:+91 (120) 431 5760, FAX: +91 (120) 431 5766; 484, 25th Main, 2nd Cross, 2nd Stage BTM Layout , Bangalore 560076, INDIA, TEL:+91 (80) 5120 1679, Fax:+91 (80) 2678 5916, Email : info@astrowix.com

Some of popular PMP preparation forums

* Pmhub
* Head First
* Tcqaa
* Phpbb2
* Ecademy

Model Theory of Goal Setting and Task Performance

Performance of employees and whole organizations is affected by the goals they set themselves. although the goal setting process is a tedious and complex one, the effort is not only worthwhile, but becoming essential in todays organizations.
Organizations introducing a goal-based management – also known as “Management by Objectives” – report performance increases of 25% or more. But there are bad examples as well.

The most important reasons for having goals are:

* Goals guide and direct behavior of individuals and groups
* Goals provide challenges and indicators for assessing the individual and whole groups
* Goals define the basis for the organizational design
* Goals serve an organizing functions.
* Goals reflect what management and employees find important

Goal setting is the process of developing, negotiating and establishing targets that challenge the individual.

Individuals and Organizations strive to achieve their goals, thereby if goals are set up correct, their performance should increase.

Ed Locke and Gary Graham developed a sophisticated model in their “theory of goal setting and task performance”, also known as “Goal Setting Theory” – developed / published in 1968 and 1990.

The basic idea ts that a goal serves as a motivator because it allows people to compare their current performance with that required to achieve the goal. To the extend they believe they will miss the goal, they feel dissatisfied and strive to improve their performance to meet it.

They describe different components and aspects in their motivation model

The Challenge

is defined through goal difficulty, goal clarity and self-efficacy
More difficult goals – as long as they are reachable – motivate more and avoid that one gets too lazy because the goal seems too easy to achieve. Unrealistically high goals are not accepted and have no effect on the performance of the individual.

Goals enhance performance by clarifying what type and level of performance is expected or required.

Self-Efficacy (Confidence) refers to the level of confidence that one feels about their ability to achieve their goal.

Moderators

The moderators Ability, Goal Commitment, Feedback and Task Complexity represent the factors that moderate the strength of the relationship between the goals and the performance.

Ability describes the orientation of the individual towards the goals – either it’s a learning goal where he wants to acquire new competencies and learn from it or it’s performance oriented where he avoids placing himself in situations that could lead to a negative evaluation.

Goal commitment is enhanced when goals are public and when goals are self-set.

Feedback makes the goal setting and evaluation process dynamic as it must provide timely response to the individual. It enables him to evaluate himself in respect to his goals.

Task Complexity finally effects the direct relation most. Goals for more trivial tasks lead to a more effective performance, whereas for more complex tasks goals do not lead to direct performance increases – at least we cannot measure it that way.

Mediators

The factors called “mediators” support the achievment of the individuals goals.

“Direction of attention” focusses on keeping the individual away (for the goal) irrelevant activities.

“Persistence” describes the duration the person is willing for work for the goal – the sustainability in reaching it’s goals.

The moderator “Effort” is the greater the more complex and the more difficult the goal ( in realistic boundaries) is.

Task Strategy is the way in which the individual approaches it’s tasks to approach the goal.

Performance

Performance is likely to be high when the challenging goals have been set, the moderators are present and the mediators are operating.
Rewards

Rewards are important to keep an employee at the high performance level he reached. Theory says that the rewards can be external (money etc.) or internal (like feelings of success) – which more accurately referes to the resulting extrinsic or intrinsic motivation. The latter cannot be influenced by an employer directly.

Satisfaction

The Locke-Latham model primary focusses on the employees satisfaction with his own performance.
Employees with too high goals may experience less satisfaction than others, that lower their goal. That does not mean a better performance at all.

Other factors like satisfaction with good working conditions, interesting colleagues etc are not discusses in detail, altough they seem to be the major component for many satisfactory situations for employees nowadays.

Sub-Summary for goal-setting

Goals affect people’s motivation because they have to develop plans to reach these goals and focus on goal-relevant actions mainly. It also spurts people to persist in their way, even when facing obstacles.

Limitations

Goal setting has shown to improve performance, but can fail if

a) the employee lacks the skills to perform the actions necessary to achieve the goals

b) these actions need a considerable amount of learning, which increases the time and resources considerably needed to achieve the goals

c) the goal setting system is just misused (as every system can be misused) or leads to appraising the wrong behavior (like mis-use)

Team vs. Individual Goals

Setting goals and measuring performance against individuals is an expensive method which costs often outweighed the potential gain in productivity. Some cases even report of individuals of a company fighting private wars to reach their goals – with a totally negative effect on the overall company performance. A typical system misuse.

In such cases the development of team goals should be selected with rewards for achievement allocated among the team members on a predetermined-share basis. In general this utilizes what I call “team-dynamics” for the goals’ effect. Something that’s missed for individual goals.