The PMP Exam is changing on January 2, 2021

PMI® announced that the PMP exam will change in 2021. PMI’s Crisis Task Force has been monitoring the situation arising from COVID-19 and has decided to extend access to the current PMP until December 31, 2020, and reschedule the launch of the new exam to January 2, 2021. This postponement will provide candidates with additional time and access to training resources to help them prepare and sit for the exam confidently.

To begin with, the number of tasks to be completed will reduce from 42 to 35. However, the PMP exam will continue to use the PMBOK Guide Sixth Edition as one of the references, so the content does not change. Instead, how PMI will assess the students in the PMP exam will change.

While the current PMP exam content focuses on five domains as the stages of the project lifecycle (namely, Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring & Controlling, and Closing), new PMP exam content will be based on three domains: People (42%), Process (50%), and Business Environment (8%).

Based on the research conducted by PMI through the current project management jobs, today’s project management practitioners work in a variety of project environments and utilize different project approaches. Accordingly, the PMP certification will be reflective of this. About half of the examination will represent predictive project management approaches and the other half will represent agile or hybrid approaches. Predictive, agile, and hybrid approaches will be found throughout the three-domain areas listed above and are not isolated to any particular domain or task.