PMP Audit Process: How To Pass PMI Audit The First Time

Hello and welcome everyone. In this lecture, we are going to learn how you can pass your PMP audit if you do get audited. So before we dive into the audit though, we have to back up and look at how we fill in the PMP application. And for those of you who are new here, PMP stands for Project Management Professional. It is a leading certification for project managers worldwide. So in order to start your application, you just go on to pmi.org and then you select PMP and then you click on the button that says ready to apply. So the first, first part of your application is actually pretty straightforward. This is where you're going to see once you start your application, it's absolutely free to start, so you can just go in and register for an account even right now. And then the first part is pretty mechanical. You just fill in things like your name, your contact information, where you got your education from, etc., etc. So it won't take you more than an hour to fill this part in. It probably would just take you around half an hour and so forth. The challenging part about your application is writing your project descriptions. Now, before we go into writing your project descriptions, let's first take a look at the PMP eligibility. So in order to get your PMP credentials, you can either meet it through option 1 or option 2. So option 1 is if you have a bachelor's degree. In this case, you will need 3 years of project management experience, not just any kind of general experience. So if you're working as a waitress or if you're volunteering at a church, that kind of experience, would not count towards your PMP. It has to be professional project management experience, at least 3 years in the past 8 years, and then you also need 4,500 hours of leading and directing projects. So the timeline of your first project to your last project has to span a minimum of 3 years, and then during that time frame between your first and last project, you need a minimum of 4,500 hours of leading and directing projects. Your projects can overlap each other, that is fine. And then the— in the second way that you can qualify for your PMP is if you have a high school diploma. In this case, you will need 5 years of project management experience within the last 8 years. During this time frame, you will need 7,500 hours of leading and directing projects. And whether you fall into option 1 or option 2, you will need 35 contact hours of formal project management education in either case. So now that you know the requirements to write the PMP, and if you do not meet these requirements, you're not out of luck. You can write the CAPM exam instead, which is very similar to the PMP except you don't need any experience in order to qualify for that. Now the way that PMI verifies that you have these experiences is is because they ask you to write a short description about the projects that you have managed. So you will give— you'll be given 550 characters to describe each of the projects that you have managed so that they know what you have done on the project and make sure that those projects meet the requirements. So in order to describe your projects that you have managed to PMI, there's a 3-step process to do that. Now remember, you only have 550 characters, so you don't have a lot of space. So step 1 is to firstly briefly describe what the project is and what your role on the project is. And then step 2 is for each of the 5 sentences that follow, use one sentence to describe what you did in each of the 5 process groups. And the 5 process groups in PMI is initiating, planning, executing, Monitoring, controlling, and closing. Right, so you want one sentence for each of the 5 process groups, and then in each sentence, make sure you include at least one terminology from that process group. And we'll take a look at the terminology, and we'll take a look at an example of a good project description as well. And then the 3rd step is just to briefly describe the outcome of the project, and it is still okay if the project is still ongoing. You can still include that project on your PMP application. Application as well. It doesn't have to be projects that are completed. Now here is a list of some sample PMI terminologies. This is not like a comprehensive list, this is just a sample so that you kind of get an idea of what kind of terminologies you can use. So here are some words that you can kind of fit within your project description. Now what you don't want is just a dump of terms inside your application. You want to use these terms in a way that describes what you have done on the project. And then we have some resources which I'll link below that includes more project descriptions that have passed the PMI audit as well. So I'll include a blog post that we wrote on that below in the description. Now let's take a look at an example of a project description. This is a real project description, by the way, that has passed the PMI audit. Let me just read it out to you and tell you why this description has passed the audit. So Let me just read this to you. This project automates the company's manual process for accepting work requests. So the first sentence describes what this project is about. My colleague and I defined the scope of the system, created a delivery schedule, and conducted weekly update meetings. We also procured service providers to launch the web portal. When the project ended, I helped create an online knowledge base to archive all permanent documents and reusable code. So these couple sentences describe what this person has done on the project. Now one quick note here, so let's say you didn't claim hours for a particular process group, then you don't need a sentence to describe what you did in that process group since you didn't claim hours for that, but if you did claim hours for a particular process group, make sure that you have at least one terminology for that process group included in your description. The end result is an online information management system. So the last sentence here describes what the outcome of the project is. So this is an example of a good project description. Now let's take a look at applications that's not approved. Okay, so if your application isn't approved by PMI, you could get an email that looks something like this from PMI that tells you that your eligibility requirement wasn't met. So in a case like this, you want to go back to your descriptions and ensure that you have at least one term from each process group in each of the projects that you have managed. And make sure that the descriptions that you have written is concise and fully describe what you did on that project within the character limit that you have, which is 550. So really go back and ensure that you follow this 3-step process. And if you want us to take a look at your description, that is a service that we offer here at ExamsPM, and you can get started by joining our free course at examspm.com. I'll bring a link to that in a little bit as well. So really go back and make sure that you follow this 3-step process, fix up your application. PMI is generally pretty forgiving, so they will give you another chance to resubmit your project descriptions again or add in any other projects that you may have. Another reason that we see that your application may not be approved is if PMI sees that your project titles are not really related to project management. One of the people who used to join Exam PM, he got his application rejected because he was working as an intern and he was trying to apply for his PMP. In that case, his application was not approved because PMI didn't deem his experience as an intern to qualify as full project management experience. Make sure that your title is project management or equivalent. on your application and make sure that your descriptions follow this 3-step process. And before you submit, make sure that you get your contact person to agree with what you have written, which brings us nicely to the next portion, which is getting audited. So there's a lot of rumors around getting audited. So there's no way that you can really increase your chances of getting audited or decrease it. This process is completely random. PMI selects a random number of people to audit in order to ensure integrity in the project descriptions that are written. The way that they audit this is they will send you an audit report that looks something like this, where you have your name, the organization that you listed, the contact person that you listed and all of their details, the start and end date of the project, the number of hours that you listed, and the role that you listed, and then the description that you listed. Essentially, it will list all the information that you listed for that project, and then what PMI will ask for is for that contact person to verify their identity and verify that you did do what you said you did on that project and sign. Now, a digital signature will not work. It has to be a physical signature, and so you need to go to your contact person and collect all of their physical signatures, then collect all of these audit reports together, and then snail mail it to PMI. It could be a bit of a process if some of your contact persons live far away. You have to snail mail this audit report to them, get their signature, and they have to snail mail it back to you, and you compile everything together and send it over to PMI. So it could be a bit of a process just organizing all of these audit reports together. And this is why it's very important that before you submit your application that you actually reach out to your contact person and ensure that they agree with what you have written on your application, so they agree with the number of hours you claimed and the project description that you have written. If you do get audited, they won't have a problem signing off for you. In the case that you don't do that, if your contact person doesn't agree and you find out only when you're audited that they won't sign your audit form, you could be in big trouble because PMI would deem you as lying if your contact person doesn't vouch for you, and you could potentially be banned from writing any PMI certification for life. So it's very important that you reach out to your contact person beforehand. Now some people may ask, what if my manager from my past project is no longer with the company, or I'm no longer in contact with them. That's okay. Even if your manager moved away from the company that you were both at, you can still use them for your audit report because they still worked with you on that project, and they can still vouch that you did do the work that you did on your project. That's really the point of this report, is to ensure that you actually did the work that you did. And lastly, if you are no longer in contact with your manager from a couple years ago, which happens, you can use any person that worked on the project alongside of you for your audit report. So it could be your project director, it could be your customer, it could be your client, it could be your colleague, it could be your tester, your BA, whomever, as long as that person has seen that you have done the work that you said you did on the project, and that would be fine. All right, so I hope you learned all you That's everything you need to know about the audit process that PMI uses. Now, in order to learn more tips like this, I hope you would join us for a free 1.5-hour class where we will break down exactly how you can get your PMP or your CAPM certification in the next 6 weeks. To sign up for this class, simply go to the URL on the slide right here, which is www.examspm.com/free. We will see you in class. Thank you so much for joining us today, and I will see you soon. Thank you.