Proves you can run a project end to end — plan it, control the scope, keep the schedule honest and close it properly.
Entry-level project work is learned almost entirely on the job, and that creates a specific problem: the skill is real but the evidence is not. You have chased a dependency that was quietly slipping for a fortnight. You have written a status report that told the truth rather than what the room wanted. You have sat in a scope conversation and known, before anyone said it, that the date was no longer achievable. None of that appears on a CV.
Certified Project Practitioner Plus exists to close that gap. It is an assessment of whether you understand how a project actually holds together — not whether you can recite the phases of a lifecycle. The examination is written around the situations that produce the difference between a project that lands and one that quietly slides: what happens when two workstreams need the same person in the same week, why a change that looks small on paper costs three weeks in practice, and how to raise a problem in a way that produces a decision rather than a meeting.
The credential sits at Associate tier, which means it assumes no formal training and no logged hours. What it assumes is that you have been close enough to delivery to have opinions about it. If you have coordinated work, tracked actions, or held a plan together for someone more senior, the paper is written for you.
We are not a training provider and do not sell a course for this examination. That is deliberate: a body that grades its own students has an obvious conflict, and we would rather the credential be worth something than sell twice to the same person. Prepare however suits you — the domains and their weightings are published on this page, and they are the same domains the paper is built from.
It sits in the Core Project Management track at Associate tier, and is issued with a unique credential ID, a two-year validity period and an independently hosted digital badge.
Coordinators, analysts, team leads and graduates who are already contributing to delivery and want the practice behind it recognised.
It is equally suited to people moving into project work from an adjacent discipline. Operations staff who have run a rollout, support leads who have managed a migration, engineers who have found themselves holding the plan — all of them are doing project management without the title, and all of them struggle to evidence it when they apply for the role formally.
There is no prerequisite certification, no documented hours requirement, and no eligibility review. You enrol and you sit the paper. What matters is whether you can reason about delivery, not how long you have been allowed to call yourself a project manager.
If you are already accountable for delivery outcomes rather than for tasks within them — if the date and the budget are yours to defend — the Professional tier is the better fit and assumes exactly that.
The paper is weighted across five domains. Weightings show how much of the examination each area accounts for, so preparation can be planned against them.
| Domain | Weighting | |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Delivery planning and scope control | 25% |
| 02 | Stakeholder engagement and governance | 20% |
| 03 | Risk, issue and dependency management | 20% |
| 04 | Schedule, cost and resource discipline | 20% |
| 05 | Closure, benefits and lessons learned | 15% |
Hiring for junior delivery roles is a screening problem. A recruiter reads forty applications that all say 'involved in project delivery' and has no way to distinguish between the candidate who ran the plan and the candidate who attended the stand-up. An assessed credential is one of the few signals that survives that filter, because it is externally tested rather than self-declared.
It also changes the conversation in the interview itself. Instead of describing what you did, you have something specific to point at: a paper you sat, a domain breakdown showing where you scored, and a credential ID the interviewer can check while you are still in the room.
Beyond the first role, the credential sets up a documented progression. Associate establishes that you understand delivery; Professional establishes that you can carry it. Holding the first makes the case for the second far easier to make, both to an employer funding it and to yourself.
No. The Associate tier assumes no formal project management experience and no prior certification. It tests whether you understand how delivery works rather than how long you have been doing it. If you have been close to project work in any capacity — coordinating, tracking, reporting — the paper is written for you.
Associate assesses whether you understand delivery. Professional assesses whether you can carry it. The Professional paper assumes you are already accountable for outcomes and makes trade-offs under real pressure, so the scenarios are harder and the judgement expected is more senior. Most candidates who are new to formal project responsibility should start here.
Scenario-based judgement, weighted across five domains: delivery planning and scope control, stakeholder engagement and governance, risk and dependency management, schedule and cost discipline, and closure and benefits. Questions describe a situation and ask what you would do, so memorising terminology gets you a small number of marks and no more.
No, deliberately. A certification body that sells the course and marks the paper has a conflict of interest. We publish the assessment domains and their weightings so you can prepare against the real thing, and you are free to use any third-party course, book or none at all.
Two years from the date of issue. The expiry date is printed on the certificate and shown on the public verification record, so a lapsed credential is always visible to anyone checking it rather than quietly presented as current.
A downloadable certificate carrying a unique credential ID and a verification QR code, plus a digital badge hosted independently by LiveCertification that you can add to a LinkedIn profile, a CV or an email signature. Both are issued automatically the moment you pass.
Yes, and without contacting us. Every credential ID resolves on our public register at pmpractitioner.org/verify, and the digital badge carries its own independent verification page. Verification never depends on us confirming anything by email.
You receive a result breakdown by assessment domain, so you know precisely which areas cost you the marks. A retake can be booked from your dashboard at a lower fee than the original enrolment, and there is no waiting period before you can sit it again.
Twelve months from purchase. You book the slot whenever suits you within that window, and a booked slot can be rescheduled from your dashboard if something comes up.
Online. The paper is monitored by a live proctor alongside automated integrity checks, so you can sit it from home or from your workplace. You will need photo identification, a working webcam, a stable connection and a quiet room you will not be interrupted in.
