April 11th of 2016, I had been with TomTom for 5 years in a Program Management Office (PMO) where 3 of my peers had their PMP certification or Project Management Professional. I had been pushed by management to get my PMP to prove my mastery of the knowledge areas in lieu of having a university education. That was the day I purchased a copy of the fifth edition of the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK). This book is now on its 7th edition.
I studied in 2016 for this exam but as someone who squeaked through high school with a 2.4 GPA and had always bombed at tests, I felt the 700 page book was daunting and then there’s the 90 minute each way drive to a testing center for a 3 hour exam with 200 questions and just how difficult this was all going to be. Also, my work wasn’t willing to fund any sort of boot camp or study guides. They wanted me to have a PMP but really didn’t want to set me up to succeed and so for years, I dreamt of getting this certification even as my experience in project and program management grew. As someone who’s been in the management / project / program track since 2004 (20 years), I still always had PMP stuck in the back of my head as something I needed.
February of 2022, I purchased a PMP Boot Camp video on demand on Udemy and watched the entire thing. But I still didn’t feel prepared and ended up not taking the exam I had already been approved to take by PMP’s governing body, PMI.
When I started at Credit Karma in November of 2022, I told them about my goals of earning my PMP. My peers had heard of it, none had that certification but the topic that came up from colleagues and mentors was “you really don’t need the piece of paper to prove you know this stuff” and they were right. I think I am a more confident project manager today with a PMP but passing the exam didn’t fundamentally make me a better project manager.
Still, I had $3750 in educational monies that expired September of 2023 which would roll into $5000 in monies for the following year. My first 12 months at this job would have me sitting on $8750 in professional education budget that was use it or lose it.
I haven’t used it all yet but I have earned both my PMP and PgMP certifications.
I signed up for a live-classroom boot camp in Charlotte for the PMP through Project Management Academy. I don’t learn well reading books or watching webinars. Audiobooks help and I did study using some books on tape but I really wanted 5 full days to go to a physical location with an instructor and a few others where work and home life could be put on hold and I was just there to study.
PMA also gives you a lot of online resources like mock exams which tell you which areas of the PMBOK should be reviewed or where you’re weak. I took a mock exam before my boot camp and scored a 45%. After the boot camp, I scored a 60%. The boot camp works!
I signed up for their $2499 plan which not only gave me the in person boot camp and online materials but an extra free day that would recap all of the previous materials in just 8 hours intended to be taken a week before my exam along with evening study halls where you could have Zoom chats with other PMP hopefuls and instructors to review practice exam questions and why one answer was the best in the multiple choice parts of the exam. It also included 12 months access to “Club PDU” and another 3-day course good for 24 PDUs with an instructor that I felt would be a good use of the money I was being given from CK.
Here’s PMA’s boot camp options from the base boot camp of $1995 to their most expensive (I had a coupon code that took $500 off)
PDUs are professional development units and you need 60 of them to renew your PMP certification every 3 years. You can earn PDUs by doing project management work, giving talks, creating content, volunteering and by continuing education. I earned 24 after my exam from the Talent Triangle Bundle, another 30 PDUs for my PgMP boot camp and 2 more from attending a local PMI Chapter event. This extra $1000 for extra study days and PDU activities was well worth it. You can get PDUs for cheaper or even free by joining the PMI and being a member but PMA did a great job with these extra PDU opportunities. The Talent Triangle VOD service has been great, too with lots of courses on leadership and management that all count as PDUs and I watch them leisurely on my lunch break at work. The fact I earned 60 PDUs within 45 days of passing the PMP shows just how easy it is to keep your PMP active.
Following the boot camp, I spent all of my time reading course materials, memorizing the PMBOK process groups (PMA gave me a beautiful 1 pager that makes it easy to study) and the math equations I’d need for the test. After a month of studying, I was scoring 65% on the PMA online mock-exam which is full length and covers all of the PMP exam areas.
For extra effort, I also singed up for PMI’s official Study Hall just so I could encounter questions that may be on the exam from the official exam provider. Unfortunately, my scores were lower than I had hoped coming in around 60-65% consistently until the day before my exam.
I was scoring myself keeping in mind I’d need to be consistently hitting about 70% to pass the exam but I knew there were up to 3 attempts to pass (you pay a small fee to retake) and I went in on a Monday hoping to pass the first time.
3.5 hours with 2 scheduled breaks later, I was immediately greeted with a screen that said I had earned my PMP almost 10 years after I started studying and bought the reference materials. I scored in the 3 categories of study, Target / Target and Above Target but in truth, I was not way over the minimum requirements to pass but no one asks what you scored. Once you have the certification, that’s all that matters. Test taking, studying, it’s all my weakest areas and I’m so thrilled to have passed this exam and can finally call myself a PMP.
Following the exam, I signed up for the 3-day PMA’s Talent Triangle bundle for October which was instructor lead and I went ahead and went through their Agile video on demand course I had paid for. I also started thinking about what was next.
While I wanted my PMP for a confidence booster and to fight off imposter syndrome, I was technically at a level of the next step up which is PMI’s Program Management Professional (PgMP). This was their highest level of certification and focuses more on how you the individual navigate business challenges, strategy, operational and benefits management in a director role where you run a Program Management Office or PMO and manage Program / Project managers. It’s an exam that has far more stringent requirements.
The PMP requires 3 years of project management experience and a few other ancillary check boxes. The PgMP requires 7 years of Project Management experience and 3 years of Program Management experience in addition to a university degree. You can waive the university degree and some of the years of experience requirements if you have a PMP (which I did).
I also benefited because the $3750 I had for my first fiscal year at CK was spent on the PMP Boot camp, materials, PMI membership ($180) and exam costs ($405) but had rolled over in September and I was looking at $5,000 more to spend over the next 12 months.
I purchased the Standards for Program Management guide from PMI and signed up for another $2000 boot camp offered by PMA. This was not in person but virtual which I knew would be a lesser experience.
A note about PgMP as it relates to PMP. There are 383,000 PMPs in the United States and 1,386 PgMPs. The demand for PgMP study halls, practice guides, mock exams and boot camp is non-existent. PMA does a PMP boot camp every week. They do 6 PgMP boot camps a year and they’re all virtual. I found this test to be much harder because how I was basically on my own. I had the 200 page book, an online mock exam on PMA’s website (comes with the boot camp) and a few dozen YouTube videos each with just a couple of hundred views that summarize the process groups for program management. This was a 180 from PMP preparation. If you’re getting a PgMP to get a better job, it probably won’t pay off. If you search LinkedIN jobs for PMP, you’ll find thousands and if you search PgMP, you may find 3 jobs that mention it. I went for PgMP for myself.
Here’s an overview of PMI certifications and how many Americans hold those certifications.
The PgMP required a roughly 3,000 word application where you use PMI’s PgM terminology to talk about your many years of experience in project and program management. After you submit this, a few weeks go by and you’re either approved or denied. If approved, you pay $800 and await the panel review which is 5 members of PMI who are volunteer PgMP certified experts who look through your experience, ask questions and are the gatekeepers to you taking the exam. Luckily, this process went very smoothly for me and I was through the panel in just a week with no questions on my experience or audit-level requirements like statements from colleagues backing up my self-assessment.
About 30% of applicants get through this process.
I was then allowed to schedule my exam which I set for December 19th so I could enjoy Christmas break stress-free (if I passed). So in total, about $3,000 more was spent on the materials, boot camp and examination fee to take the PgMP. I attended the boot camp the 1st week of December after studying the materials for 30 days beforehand. I took a mock exam before my boot camp and scored a 50%. After the boot camp, I scored a 60% and ended up hitting about 65% score 1 day before my exam after reading the materials over and over.
The PgMP exam is once again proctored at an exam center. It’s 4 hours, 200 questions and you have no breaks. You have roughly 90 seconds to read and understand each scenario and choose the best answer. There could be 2 or 3 right answers but you have to pick the best.
I finished the exam in 3 hours and spent 40 minutes reviewing the 40 questions I had marked for review taking almost the full 4 hours.
I’m one of the 50% of people who passed the PgMP on the first try and, by my estimate, passed by just one right answer. I was nearly on the edge. Despite getting above target on 3 of the 5 knowledge areas and target on 1 of the 5, I scored below target on Program Governance and this heavily weights your score down by 20% which took me from the above target to right on the edge of being in the below target overall score. Oddly enough, Governance was only 5 questions but they weigh each of the 5 knowledge areas equally so ‘failing’ one impacts your overall score by 20% so my 81% overall score became a 61% by failing governance putting me on the edge of failing.
The stress of continuing to study over Christmas and retaking in January would have been rough and I’m honestly not sure if I had it in me. My daughter Matilda is 2 months old so studying and preparing for this exam has been significantly more challenging than the PMP process which was during Summer months with more free time. I’m so relieved I passed the first time.
I did not know this but my PDUs with PMI reset when I pass a new exam so if you have 59 of your 60 PDUs and take any other PMI exam listed in the spreadsheet above, your PDUs get zeroed out when you pass. Luckily, I had logged the 60 PDUs and renewed my PMP ($60) before taking my PgMP exam. My PMP was initially good through August of 2026 and is now good through August of 2029 with my PgMP good through December of 2026. I’ve learned to honestly not log any PDUs until I’m done getting certificates from PMI because they’ll keep resetting each time I pass.
To that point, what’s next? Again, looking at the spreadsheet above, the PMI-Agile Certified Professional is very popular and I see it on a few job listings. It’ll cost $435 to take the exam and I won’t be taking the $1200 boot camp and instead use a $50 video on demand course which is good for 21 PDUs and then I’ll have my ACP.
After that, I do want to get the RMP (Risk Management) and SP (Scheduling Professional) certifications and maybe one day go after the Portfolio Management Professional but I don’t have the years of experience needed for this exam since I don’t currently have any portfolio experience, only program. PfMP will be as hard or harder than PgMP so I’m not in a huge rush. I can knock out ACP, RMP and SP this year if I want. There are other easier PMI exams like DASM that require one day of VOD courses + a 50 question ‘open book’ test that only cost $200-$400 that I may go for in a weekend just for the experience.
Once my budget at CK resets again in August, I’ll be taking Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and at that point, I’ll have all of the relevant certifications I’d ever need for someone in my line of work. Then CK’s $5K a year becomes an opportunity to continue education and I want to learn more about banking compliance and immerse myself in more leadership focused educational activities.
Honestly, this is all thanks to my employer giving me $5,000 a year toward professional development that I’ve been able to do all of this. They also give you time off to attend the boot camps.
Am I a better project and program manager after getting PMP and PgMP? I think so. The study, boot camps and process really aligned me to industry standards. It did not make me a better leader, manager or person. It’s like getting an MBA doesn’t qualify you to successfully start a business but it gives you some fundamentals that help. 80% of this is experience that makes me a great program manager. The other 20% was helped significantly by this process facilitated by PMI and funded by CK which I’m going to be forever grateful.