I accidentally reverse-engineered the formula for assessing PMP® exam results

Disclaimer: The following article was not reviewed or approved by PMI. It reflects my personal opinion based on public information.

Have you heard about the PMP® certification from PMI?

It’s a world-renowned certification that many find both challenging and essential. While it’s highly sought after by employers, it’s equally dreaded by employees due to its difficulty and ambigiuty.

The steps to get PMP® certification involves submitting an application and passing what is often considered one of the toughest exams.

PMI performed exhaustive research on project manager role in organization ant it boils down to 3 main domains of works with 35 tasks in them. Therefore, the exam is assesing your ability against this metric.

The exam question body is divided into three main domains:

1. People: This domain includes 14 tasks and accounts for 42% of the total score.
2. Processes: This domain includes 17 tasks and accounts for 50% of the total score.
3. Business Environment: This domain includes 4 tasks and accounts for 8% of the total score.

What good manager do?

Time of project manager divided daily

However, little is known about how the exam results are calculated.

I accidentally uncovered the formulae, and here they are:

Formula for assesing Agile part of the exam

Formula for assesing Predictive (Waterfall) part of the exam

The final step is to combine these two numbers

where:

• Pe — People domain
• Pr — Processes domain
• Bu — Business Environment domain

The numbers 1–14, 1–17, and 1–4 represent the number of tasks in each domain, respectively. These tasks are assessed using two approaches: waterfall and Agile, according to the Dreyfus model using numbers from 1 to 6 (see the next Figure).

Each domain’s score is calculated by summing the weighted scores of the tasks within that domain. The total score is the sum of the scores from all three domains.

Metric for estimating each task

I have developed a self-assesement tool that you can use to evaluate your chances of passing the PMP® exam.

The self-assesement tool

This tool allows you to carefully examine each domain and the tasks within these domains. You can grade your skill level in each task for both Agile and Waterfall projects from 1 to 6. After completing the calculations, the tool will help you gauge your likelihood of passing the exam.

By using this tool at your discretion, you can get a clearer picture of your strengths and areas for improvement, allowing you to better prepare for the PMP® exam.

The scores (Do you see that the highest possible score is almost exactly as how many questions in the exams and equals 175!)

P.S. Why I Think This Formula is Correct?

Do you see that the highest possible score after applying all sixes (6) to all three domains and 35 tasks is almost exactly the same as the number of questions in the exam, which equals 175?

The real exam consists of 180 questions, but don’t forget about the 5 questions that are not scored, so it’s exactly the same.

P.P.S. Why Else Do I Think the Formula is Correct?

Because if I were tasked with developing a scoring system to grade the exam, these three formulas are what I would create.