New PMP Certification 2021 Exam Content

According to the Project Management Institute, the PMP Certification Exam is Changing on 2nd January 2021. The current Project Management Certification exam availability ends on 31st December 2020. 

The New PMP exam content outlines, the new PMP exam format will also be changed:

• 180 questions (currently is 200 Qs).
• Questions will be a combination of multiple-choice, multiple responses, matching, hotspot and limited fill-in-the-blank. 

The new exam is comprised of:

• 180 questions (the previous exam was 200) but the same number of questions will be scored
• 230 minutes to complete the exam
• One additional break for a total of two 10-minute breaks
• Questions will be a combination of multiple-choice, multiple responses, matching, hotspot and limited fill-in-the blank.

Please refer to PMI website here for more details.

The notable point here is the questions will not be 100% multiple choice anymore. Attached is the example of new question types like “drag-and-drop”, and “hot spot” question. This doc was downloaded from PMI website.

Why is The PMP Exam Changing in 2020?

Every 3-5 years, PMI® organizes research to understand how the industry has advanced, the effect of new emerging trends, and how the power, authority & workflow of project managers have changed. Based on the PMI research conducted in 2015, the current Exam Content Outline was announced in June 2015. Based on the next research results that came out in June 2019, the New Exam Content Outline was announced and will be effective starting January 2, 2021.

What is the Exam Pattern Changes?

3 Major Changes are:

Change # 1

• PMP Exam is increasing weightage on Agile & Hybrid approaches.
• Currently, the weightage of questions related to Agile + Hybrid is somewhere about 20%. The majority (about 80%) of the questions currently are based on Predictive or Waterfall Methodology.
• The expectations:
  1) Predictive or Waterfall: About 50% &
  2) Agile (Adaptive) + Hybrid: About 50%

Change # 2

• Over the period of the last few changes in the last 2 decades, one thing commonly found was that with every change PMP Exam passing was getting tougher and tougher. Not officially announced by PMI though, but what we found with all our candidates is that PMP exam passing criteria have gotten tougher over a period of time.

Change # 3

Currently, the candidate is evaluated under five process groups in PMP syllabus namely:

• Initiation
• Planning
• Execution
• Monitoring and Controlling
• Closing

With the new pattern, evaluation of candidates in the exam will be under 3 categories, namely:

• People – 42% questions from this category
• Process – 50% questions from this category
• Business Environment – 8% questions from this category

PMI – 2021 PMP New Exam Content Outlines – Download here

What should be your next step?

STEP 1:  Get Started to apply for the PMP Certification Exam today! 

STEP 2: Get training with the new PMI -ATP based material and acquire the necessary 35 PDUs!

(Check out our upcoming batch schedule on PMP Certification with the new ATP material)

STEP 3: Get Prepared for your exam! You can give your PMP Certification Exam from home via PMI Online Proctored Exam.

(Read a PMP Certified’s Journey with the new Online Proctored Exam)