Taking a step into gaining your Portfolio Management Professional – PfMP certification will get you aboard the rapid exposure growth of the credential.
But like most things in life, you need to work your way into earning it. In this article you will learn the needed background for you to embark on an amazing PfMP journey.
This article is available in video mode on our YouTube channel
Timeline
To start with, the required professional experience needs to be acquired within the last 15 years. So, anything beyond that timeline will be disregarded. Some would argue that this is too far back, but based on the market research, this is a valid prerequisite because it keeps the credential momentum going and leverages a healthy medium-term professional background.
Prerequisites
- If you possess a minimum of four-year degree such as a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent, you must have a
- Minimum of 48 months of unique non-overlapping professional portfolio management experience, and a
- Minimum of 96 Months of professional business experience
- On the other hand, if you possess a secondary degree such as a high school diploma or its equivalent, you must have a
- Minimum of 84 months of unique non-overlapping professional portfolio management experience, and a
- Minimum of 96 Months of professional business experience
Academic Education
Pay attention, professional certifications do not count as educational degrees, so, you cannot count having a PMP, Safe, or SAP certification for example as an educational degree. And your educational degree does not follow the 15-year timeline; you could have acquired your degree 20 or 30 years ago.
Please note that some bachelor’s degrees take 3 years and not 4, those are still counted as a 4-year degree
Role Assessment
You do not need to have a title of Portfolio Manager to be eligible. Some experiences go over and beyond a Portfolio Manager’s role while having an entirely different title. So, what matters is the role you have fulfilled or are still fulfilling.
Assessing that role is easy because there is no unique definition to it. We will define a few basic roles and responsibilities that you should have before applying. If you fit one or more of these, you should be good to go:
- Managed or implemented multiple projects simultaneously. Those projects can for example be software project implementations i.e., modules of an ERP system
- Was included or closely interacted with projects’ budgetary terms
- Defined sequencing of multiple projects
- Dealt with stakeholders across multiple projects
- And many more
Professional Experience
If we look at the prerequisites, we notice a key word, that is “non-overlapping”. Let us take an example to see what we mean by that.
In a certain year, you were managing 2 portfolios:
- Portfolio A from January to December, and
- Portfolio B from October to December
What we have in this case is an overlapping of 3 months: October, November, and December. So, if you want to use both portfolios as part of your professional experience, both will be counted for a combined duration of 1 year. In this case, we advise you to remove Portfolio B because it is what we call a stray portfolio in the application and will not give you any advantage if you leave it.
Moving forward, you will have to keep adding portfolios until you reach the required combined non-overlapping experience.
Business Experience
Business experiences are a way to balance a candidate’s experience for having the minimum number of years required for the level of the certification, which is around 8 years. So that candidates do not go and jump on having their PfMP credentials without first accruing an adequate experience.
When it comes to the business experience, the good thing is that it can overlap with your portfolio experience. So, you could have managed:
- Portfolio A from January to December, and
- Had a business experience as an engineering director from October to December for example.
Both are valid to include in the application.
Business experiences can include whatever is there on your LinkedIn profile.
Conclusion
A PfMP credential does not, till date, require the candidate to be neither a PgMP nor a PMP holder, and it does not require any PDUs to be collected.
Pay attention, lying or altering your experience facts will most probably come around and bite you. A lot of applications get audited; failing to comply with the audit rules by not sending the required documents, whether educational or professional, will result in you failing the audit and getting barred for a full year. You can learn more about the audit process in our audit video or read about it on our blog.
Next Steps
If you are not sure what is the equivalent of your degree, whether your experience fits or not, or require a review of your application, our courses and packages fit all your needs.