Is PMP Exam totally changed after PMBOK 6?

PMP or Project Management Professional is a widely recognized professional tag. 

Now coming straight to the point, how does one get a PMP certification?

Well, PMP certified professionals have to appear and qualify an exam conducted by the Project Management Institute.

How tough is it to qualify the PMP exam?

The PMP exam is hard if we have to rate it. In fact, it requires the preparation wherein an aspirant must give it the utmost primacy. In layman’s term, it is extremely difficult to qualify, but of course, not impossible. It is a well-established credential for project managers and high-level executives. Thousands of PMP aspirants spend hours preparing for this dynamic exam. The 6th PMBOK Guide is the latest edition that is available for the aspirants right now. We can expect to see the 7th edition later in 2021. Candidates should also go through the Agile Practice Guide. As said, there will be three domains, 35 tasks, and 133 enablers. Enablers are basically pointers under ‘task,’ which vary in number across different tasks. So, the new pattern will comprise People(42%), Process(50%), Business Environmental(8%), with the number of tasks being 14, 17, and 4, respectively. As per the official announcement, there will be a change in the exam in pattern from January 2, 2021. There will be lesser domains than the previous number of domains, i.e., there will be three domains instead of 5. We cannot yet clear if the next edition will have a complete revaluation or not, but there seems to be an equal distribution in theoretical and practical properties of the exam. In the 6th edition of PMBOK, there are 49 total processes, two more than the previous edition, it also has three new additional new processes, and one process has been deleted. Candidates should be aware of the version of the exam they are about to appear. For example, December 31st is the last date to appear and schedule your exam in the current version. After that, the pattern would change, and a new guide book might be introduced for the same. There are several advantages of being a member of PMI, one of them is you can download an online version of the PMBOK Guide for free from PMI’s website. On average, it takes 2-3 months for a person to prepare for the PMP exam. 

Now we are going to address some common questions regarding PMBOK and certain changes.

The first question, ‘when was PMBOK 6th edition released?’, this question is important because it provides the candidate with the knowledge of changes brought about in the PMP exam by the guide change. The 6th edition was released on the 6th of September, 2017, and the exam was aligned to PMBOK 6 from 26th March 2018. 

The second question is ‘How will the change impact an aspirant?’, this by far is the most important question which is raised as it deals with the candidate’s mentality who will be facing the change. However, there is nothing much to worry about, as the changes made by PMI are brought about by detailed periodic study of project managers and circumstances surrounding them so that the exam, in turn, helps the aspirants. It prepares them for real-life situations by conducting those studies. 

The next question is, ‘Where one get can update PMP exam training and practice material?’ well PMI membership is the one-stop solution. One can also refer to Registered Education Providers (REPs) of PMI, as they have updated training and practice materials as per the PMBOK guide. So, an aspirant looking for updated material should definitely go for them. The REP of PMI Education is Whizlabs, which can help you achieve your goals. It is very carefully designed to cope up with the changes, and it has the major updates in the PMP course with new changes of PMBOK 6. Also, candidates usually have one question, what if one is trained according to PMBOK 5. 

Can they appear the exam based on PMBOK 6? The answer is yes, they can, as there are no major differences between PMBOK 5 and PMBOK 6. However, it is recommended to be trained according to the latest syllabus as it includes some news processes and some new tasks. So, start practicing and revise thoroughly.