If you’re a professional currently pursuing certification in project management, you’ve probably heard of the Project Management Professional (PMP) Exam Mentor app.
Free to use and rated highly, it has been downloaded 50,000 times on GooglePlay alone.
Developed by Sydney’s Kumud Sharma, the inspiration for it came from her architect husband while he prepared for the Project Management Professional (PMP) exam himself.
“After a decade of working in Australia, my husband realised that project management plays a valuable role in the successful delivery of all projects,” Sharma told Indian Link. “Understanding the critical role of effective project management, he decided to pursue certification in project management for greater credibility and advancement in his career.”
For the unacquainted, project management is the process of managing and leading a team using specialised knowledge, skills, and tools to deliver a project successfully and within the established constraints such as time, scope of the project, and budgeted cost. Project Managers help lead, remove blockers to success and provide support to those delivering the project. Life itself is full of projects from organising birthdays to weddings, building a house, or going on a holiday, we are all project managers in one way or another!
PMP is a highly valued certification and can be applicable to professionals across a wide range of sectors including IT and construction. The preparation is no doubt time consuming and expensive too but well worth it because it can lead to better roles and a potential salary increase of 20-30%. To maintain the certification once earned, project management professionals are required to demonstrate continuity by earning points for learning new skills, networking and volunteering, every 3 years.
As Kumud helped her husband prepare for his Project Management Professional (PMP) exam, which was demanding and exhaustive, she herself gained project management experience through her experiences at her work as a manager at a training institute.
“I became keen to help other project management aspirants to replicate the success of my husband, who achieved this certification in the first attempt,” Kumud described.
The idea came up of creating a tool that would make it easy for professionals to work on their certification process. Kumud turned this idea into an opportunity and the PMP Exam Mentor was born – a comprehensive learning platform free of cost.
To her advantage, she was able to collaborate with her own family, her husband and son (both IT professionals) who helped develop the app and provide technical support, while Kumud looked after content creation, marketing, quality testing, market research and customer support.
The app is made up of various sections, providing users with a multidimensional learning path, allowing them to choose how they learn, what they learn, and when they learn. It has 60 learning units comprising overviews, tutorials, exercises, and assessments – all of which also help those already practising to refresh their knowledge.
Kumud’s persistence with turning her idea into a real solution to help people can be an inspiration to many. “My greatest satisfaction lies in the fact that I am giving back to the community and making the exam and certification process smoother for aspirant,” Kumud reflected. “I am particularly pleased when people share that they passed the exam and can now access even better opportunities.”
She added with a smile, “As life always comes full circle, my daughter has now become a project manager and I’m hoping she uses my app PMP Exam Mentor to get certified.”
