PMI Announces PMP Update Coming August 31, 2011

June 3, 2011 at 9:48 am | Posted in PMI | 6 Comments
Tags: PMI, PMP

Recently, a customer named Alex sent in a question asking about our current PMP practice test demo. He asked, “I would like to know if this sample test is representative of a current test or the one that will begin on 8/31/2011?” While our current practice test covers the content and format of the current exam, I realized that there were probably more folks out there wondering just what this new update means. So here I am again discussing PMP.

PMI announced that the current PMP exam that addresses the PMBOK 4th Edition will be updated August 31, 2011. PMI has published a new PMP Examination Content Outline for this new version. In addition, Global Knowledge has published a white paper that details the changes.

To sum up the changes as I see them, the Professional and Social Responsibility domain has been removed from the outline. However, this content will still be on the test, but will be located within the appropriate phase. Because of this domain removal, the weighting of the other domains has been changed. Finally, within each of the other domains (which are the project phases), new tasks (what we here at Transcender often call subobjectives) have been added. These new tasks are not necessarily “new,” but PMI has found it necessary to add these tasks. So a possible restructure of the existing content will probably be necessary, meaning some content in one task may need to be moved to a new task and/or new content will need to be written to cover the new task.

Because this update does NOT involve an update to the PMBOK, I don’t really expect any surprises here. But rest assured, we will be updating our practice test once the new exam goes live.

To discover more from PMI about the PMP changes in 2011, go to http://www.pmi.org/en/Certification/Project-Management-Professional-PMP/Updates-to-PMP-Certification-Exam.aspx.

To download the Global Knowledge article, go to http://www.globalknowledge.com/training/whitepaperdetail.asp?pageid=502&wpid=819&country=United+States&utm_source=twitter.

Keep in mind that we don’t really know what this means for the exam until we see the exam. So please, hold off on those “When are you going to update your practice test?” e-mails until AFTER August 31, 2011. Although I do have a crystal ball and a magic-8 ball, I have found them unreliable in predicting live exam content. But they are often reliable when predicting the outcome of those NCAA playoff brackets.

-Robin