PMP(R) Exam Preparation, Experience Submission – What are Examples of Projects? See 4-day or Two Weekend PMP® Certification with Exam Prep schedules.
By Nereda Haque, PMP – updated 9-23-2025
Rule of thumb: you don’t need a title of a project manager to qualify. For the PMP Exam, you must support the fact that you have led and directed the projects that you submitted on your PMP Exam application. Your role should be appropriate to reflect that you led and directed your projects. Recently, PMI has created a lot of questions with pull down menus that you need to answer and submit. You can do this during your week of training after class or after the class is over. We will provide guidelines and a checklist to pay attention to while you are working on your application. But first understand what a project is and what it is not, in order to determine your project management experience. Workflow No. 6 of our class materials is an excellent reference.
What a project is not: A project is not daily operations where you do the same things routinely with the same outcomes every day, every week, every year. Daily routine work belongs to business operations, even though projects are conducted within operations. Project managers may participate in some daily operations, as well as managing 1 to 3 or more projects at a time, but they cannot count the operations’ part of their management activities.
Process Groups: The project’s fall within 3 domains for the PMP exam starting 1/2/2021: People, Process, Business Environment.
About Projects & Project Phases: Long projects are often divided into project phases. Each phase is a complete project life cycle unless the project is cancelled at a toll gate.
The project manager is assigned a project and collaborates with relevant stakeholders throughout the project life cycle. When you are in class, you will learn about the role of the project manager who has lots of responsibility, but very little authority in most organizational environments.
Some people struggle with understanding the difference between a project and operations because in business, the military or in government organizations there are many projects; however, they are not always labeled “projects.” Your work doesn’t have to be labeled as a project; neither do you need the title of a project manager in order to claim projects. And often, not everything that they did is a project. A project manager performs a leadership role. Some project managers are engineers, medical professionals, etc., however, you will choose between the role of a project manager or the role of a leader.
Experience Qualification for the PMP Exam:
(1) If you have a minimum of a 4-year degree or equivalent: 3 years of project management experience is all you need and you can go backwards 8 years, but that is it.
(2) If you have a minimum of a high school diploma or equivalent: 5 years of project management experience is all you need. You can go backwards 8 years to collect your expect but no further also.
Example of Projects:
Business analysis
Strategic planning
Research
Training, planning, and implementation projects – A project like training counts the first time with one execution. A training effort can be reported as a project, and when it is revised, then you can report it again as it has a unique outcome. You can count training when you are preparing someone else’s training materials as they are new to you, so you have a learning curve as you prepare to do the training, or when you are developing it yourself. Each time you report it as one project. When you repeat the exact training it becomes an operation activity, not a project.
Revising Policies and procedures
Recommendations
Any military planning and implementation
Inventory
Special reports or reporting
Revamping the Retirement Plans
Writing company handbooks, policies, procedures
Revamping or redesigning business processes
Process improvement, process gaps analysis or process re-engineering, etc.
Events Planning
Prototype design for manufacturing: Includes the first Prototypes, and test products, and first product – after that you can’t count it
Sales projects, advertising projects, marketing projects or IT project management
Budget projects, inventory projects (twice per year)
Procurement Department is part of project management
PMO – where the PMO took over and led and directed the project team
Some voluntary work that does not conflict during the time span of your projects. This voluntary work is most offered used during periods of unemployment.
Reminder: There are many projects within Operations but routine, daily work is not a project because it is ongoing. The accountant who records cash in and cash out every day and reconciles reports every month is doing his / her daily job (operations). However, when they analyze year end data for reconciling and forecasting the next year’s budget, then they are doing a project.
How to Determine a Project?
Does your project have a start date and end date? Does it have a unique outcome, such as a product, a service offering, a result or a process improvement? These are the key elements of a project description.
The Project Management Institute provides a handbook for each and every exam. You can go to pmi.org and download it for yourself
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PMI, PMP, PgMP, PfMP, CAPM, PMI-ACP, PMI-PBA, PMI-SP, PMI-RMP, the PMI Logo, the PMP Exam Content Outline, PMI-ACP Exam Content Outline, OPM3, and PMBOK are the registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.
PMI, PMP, PgMP, PfMP, CAPM, PMI-ACP, PMI-PBA, PMI-SP, PMI-RMP, the PMI Logo, the PMP Exam Content Outline, PMI-ACP Exam Content Outline, and PMBOK are the registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.