How To Calculate Military Service Toward Pmp

In early 2007, my ship entered dry out dock for a two-year overhaul and upgrade. Subsequently several years of spending so many days at sea I had well-nigh forgotten what dry land felt like nether my boots; it was a welcome change.

Not long afterwards the ship was rested on blocks and existence covered in scaffolding, my Captain asked me to consummate a small project to help the coiffure stay expert in their at-sea jobs. We had a short conversation about what he wanted the final production to await like, when he wanted the project to be completed, and what kinds of resources I had available to execute this project.

I had merely had my showtime project offset coming together and didn't even know it.

In the time since that coming together, I've spent many years managing projects, earned my PMP certification, and learned many hard lessons along the way. I hope this guide will help your path to certification be easier than mine was.

Certification Types

The Project Direction Institute (PMI) offers a variety of certification levels for everyone from those just starting downward the path of managing projects to highly-specialized certifications for professionals with significant experience in areas similar Risk Management, Scheduling, and Business Analysis.

Each level of certification has dissimilar requirements to exist eligible to apply, but I'm going to focus on the two most common certifications for this guide, the Project Management Professional (PMP) and Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM).

The CAPM is an entry-level certification designed to let people to limited interest in pursuing a career in project management without requiring several years of experience managing projects. The requirements for application can be fulfilled past either i,500 hours of projection experience (notation: this merely ways existence on a project squad, non leading it) or 23 hours of project management pedagogy.

The PMP is the standard certification for experienced Projection Managers with a background leading and directing projects and projection teams. To even use for this certification, you'll need 7,500 hours (four,500 if you accept a four-year degree) of experience leading and directing projects and 35 hours of project direction educational activity.

This means that if you don't have a iv-twelvemonth degree and your total-time job is as a Project Manager, you'll need to piece of work more than three and a one-half years before you're fifty-fifty eligible to employ. This certification is meant not to prepare y'all to become a Projection Manager, just to brandish your experience and expertise in Projection Management.

There are other certifying agencies for Project Management certifications that aren't the PMI, and many offer preparation and certification specific to industries or methods that may be a better fit for what you want to do or where yous want to work. PMI certifications are the industry standard, and so that's what we'll focus on today.

Getting Started

The get-go thing yous're going to desire to do while on your journey to certification is join the PMI. Yous'll go access to some smashing learning resources, a discount on your examination fee, and a gratuitous digital version of the latest Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) among many other benefits.

The PMBOK is the standard reference text for projection direction. You'll exist using this constantly equally you log your hours and in your test preparation, so go a copy and keep it handy.

Logging Hours

Once y'all've determined which level of certification you want to pursue and gotten a copy of the PMBOK, y'all'll need to put together a log of all of your relevant hours of project work and gather proof of your grooming hours earlier you start your application. The PMI will accept hours over the last eight years of continuous projection work, so the sooner yous take advantage of your experience, the better off you'll exist.

The PMI audits virtually x% of applications for certification, so be prepared in advance with documentation of your hours and your life volition exist much easier. The results of the audits are one of three outcomes:

• Your information has been verified and you gain the power to take your test
• Your information is not correct (or verifiable) but it was a mistake on your part so your application is rejected and you start over
• Your data is not correct and they find you purposefully entered false information. You lot are at present banned for life from the Project Management Plant

The PMI will inquire you to carve up your hours worked into each of the five process areas:

• Initiating
• Planning
• Executing
• Monitoring and Controlling
• Closing

To exist prepared for an inspect (and to ensure you have the hours you lot need to submit your application), yous'll need to accept your hours separated by project and process surface area, so the sooner you start logging your hours the better off you'll be. There are tons of resources available to track your hours online so detect the one that works all-time for your needs.

I like a tracker that not only tracks the hours (for individual projects and the whole history), but likewise has spots for inbound information similar the Project Sponsor, Start and End Dates, and a short Project Clarification. You lot should be able to put something simple together in Excel to go y'all started if you don't demand annihilation fancy.

Translating Armed services Time

So, nosotros're finally to what you came hither for: Agreement how your time in the military translates to projection time. Well, there'southward skillful news and bad news.

The bad news is that there's no like shooting fish in a barrel conversion. You're going to have to spend some time interpreting what you did and how it nearly resembles a chore inside PMI's framework. It will be slow and annoying at times, but I promise information technology volition be worth it in the end.

The good news is that there are tons of resources to help y'all understand and the biggest one is the Project Direction Process Groups table in your PMBOK. This table changes with every version of the PMBOK, and so don't think that copy of the PMBOK tertiary Edition you lot picked up for 5 bucks from that guy on base is going to practise yous whatever good (the current version as of the time of this commodity is the 6th Edition, FYI).

You tin can come across that this table gives a lot of data equally to what tasks fall nether what categories. Let's practice a sample translation:

You just completed your monthly preventative maintenance bike on your division's equipment. The post-obit tasks were involved in this procedure:

• Scheduling your team
• Allocating and sourcing hours, tools, parts, and equipment
• Performing the Maintenance
• Documenting what items were completed, which are still outstanding, and any discrepancies

Once we compare this list to the Project Management Procedure Groups nautical chart, we can see some direct relationships between what we've done and how that translates to the PMI Knowledge Areas.

Scheduling your team might involve defining activities (6.2), sequencing activities (6.three), estimating action duration (six.4), developing a schedule (vi.5), planning quality management (8.one), identifying risks (11.2), performing qualitative and quantitative hazard direction (eleven.three and 11.4), planning risk responses (xi.5), planning procurement management (12.1), and identifying stakeholders (13.i).

Once we've identified which knowledge areas and procedure groups our tasks fall into, we can assign hours based on the distribution of piece of work.

If nosotros spent ten hours scheduling this preventative maintenance, we might assign 1 60 minutes to the Initiating process and the other ix hours to the Planning process.

You can see how this tin go tedious over time, but in one case you're regularly logging your hours you'll get a better feel for how to all-time assign hours and it will become second nature.

I promise this was helpful for unraveling the mysteries surrounding translating military tasks to project hours.

Other articles in this series:

• Part 2
• Function 3
• Part 4

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/converting-military-experience-project-management-1-prigge-mba-pmp

Posted by: conklingreirrom.blogspot.com

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