PMP Exam Mindset

In psychology, a mindset refers to a set of beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions that shape how an individual interprets and responds to situations. It influences how people perceive their abilities, approach challenges, and make decisions.

PMI expects us to approach the scenario-based questions presented in the exam with a specific mindset, and this mindset is greatly shaped by the PMP aspirants' knowledge of project management processes, tools and techniques, ethics and values, personal experiences, exposure, cultural influences, upbringing, and other psychological factors like resilience, optimism, compassion, humor, etc.

To ace the PMP Exam on the first attempt, it is essential to calibrate our mindset to solve the scenario-based questions the way PMI expects us to solve them. Otherwise, we will end up answering many questions incorrectly and may fail in the exam.

In this blog, we have covered 13 mindsets we need to keep up to approach and solve exam questions correctly.

1. Follow PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct

PMI takes ethics and the code of conduct very seriously. The role of the project manager is a trustworthy role, and hence the project manager is expected to uphold ethics and values in carrying out project management activities. There are 4 values defined by PMI: Responsibility, Respect, Fairness, and Honesty.

You can refer to this PDF for more details about PMI's code of ethics and professional contact: PMI Code of Ethics

The project manager shall always exhibit ethical behaviors in managing the team and stakeholders, carrying out project work, and while making project decisions.

Being disrespectful to people (both directly and indirectly), hiding project status or sugar-coating bad project news to avoid conflicts and confrontations, being unfair to team members when it comes to rewards and recognition, bribing government officials for approvals, selecting vendors for vested benefits, not taking ownership of his/her actions or decisions, and shying away from responsibilities are some of the behaviors not expected from PMs and these are against the 4 values defined by PMI in their PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.

In the exam, at any cost, do not select options that directly or indirectly violate any of these 4 values. Also, you can use this mindset to eliminate incorrect options to make your question-solving process easier.

Remember, ethics and values are above money, project schedule performance, quality, and even customer satisfaction.

No matter how tempting or convincing the option is, if it is not aligned with any of these 4 values, then you must not choose that option.

2. Be a good human

To be a good project manager, first, we need to be a good human. This means being kind and respectful to your colleagues, team members, and other project stakeholders. Not doing anything that will harm their well-being. This mindset is very important to solve questions related to team development and team management. A good project manager should act as a mentor, genuinely focusing on the development of her team members, and offering them a psychologically safe environment where people are comfortable being themselves at work.

The following are some of the qualities of a good PM from a people management point of view. The PM is expected to show compassion (empathy) to understand things from others' perspectives, act as a servant leader addressing the concerns and problems of the people, act as a coach/mentor for the team members' development, practice active listening and exhibit high level of emotional intelligent and must not take any actions that are good for the project objectives but will affect team members' well-being.

Example: Your customer is expecting you to complete the project 2 months sooner than the originally planned end date, and for this, your client is expecting you to make your team members work for 14 hours per day for the next 8 weeks and also agreeing to reward $1,000,000 if the project is completed 2 months earlier than the originally planned end date. What would you do?

Please do not make your team members work for 14 hours per day because this is inhuman and will severely affect the well-being of your team members. This approach will create work fatigue, increase stress levels, and affect the work-life balance of employees. Instead, you should talk to your client for an alternate solution.

So before selecting any option in the exam, ask yourself how it may be bad for the other human. If so, please do not select that option.

3. Compliance is our highest priority

The role of the project manager is crucial for project success. Typically in project where the stakes are very high, which includes the reputation of your company, investment, anticipated benefits from the project, addressing stakeholder needs, and so on.

So the project manager is expected to follow all the applicable regulatory norms and standards that are set by the government, lawmakers, and industry bodies.

Not fulfilling the applicable compliance requirements shall backfire on a dramatic scale, and this will not only affect the project in which the non-compliance occurred but also affect the whole organization that performed the project.

Your company might be charged billions of dollars in penalties, be barred from doing business, face a loss of reputation, experience resignations of people in high-level positions like the CEO and board of directors, jail terms, and so on.

Considering the magnitude of the impact caused by non-compliance, a project manager must comply with all the applicable processes, regulatory norms, and standards set by your company, government, and industrial bodies. This includes procurement guidelines, labor laws, quality policies, employee safety, environmental laws, income tax, handling sensitive data, etc.

While solving scenario-based questions in exams for the sake of completing the project faster, satisfying the customer, or for cost-benefit reasons, if you choose to compromise on compliance, then you are choosing the incorrect option.

Example: The building plan you created for the new construction project is not in line with the construction safety standards established by government property development authorities, and you have identified this in an internal review. Due to tight project deadlines and resource constraints, it's very difficult to redo the building plan incorporating the features and options stated in the safety standards. What would you do?

Option a. Go forward and submit the building plan, and if there are any objections raised by the authorities, then modify the building plan.

Option b. Make the required changes and comply with the safety standards, then submit the building plan for approval despite incurring a delay in your schedule.

If you had chosen option a, then you are not ready for the exam.

4. Foster and Demonstrate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion behaviors

The strength of the team lies in its diversity. A team is made up of unique individuals with different skill sets, nationalities, ages, genders, and cultural backgrounds. In scenario-based questions, it may sometimes appear counterproductive to prioritize diversity and consensus-building, yet it is crucial to consistently promote and showcase DEI principles.

In general, individuals taking exams often opt for solutions that are straightforward and enable them to promptly address the issue presented in the question. They might perceive choices related to collaborative decision-making, conflict resolution, thorough comprehension, and gathering input from junior colleagues as ineffective.

One common error individuals often commit in approaching the PMP exam mindset is favoring choices influenced by power or authority instead of those based on consensus.

Examples of options that are aligned with practices like brainstorming, nominal grouping technique, voting, surveying, self-organizing teams, or any similar participatory decision-making and idea generation techniques. Yes, you might feel like this is going to take a lot of time and affect the productivity of the project; however, in the long run, these kinds of practices will help us develop a better understanding of the problem, generate creative ideas, and come up with better solutions by materializing the benefits of collective wisdom.

Many of us will be very cautious when it comes to DEI, but still you might encounter some tricky scenarios. For example, in a construction project, you observe that some of the women employees are suffering because the work is physically demanding. Considering this, you wanted to assign them some tasks that are not physically demanding. In this situation, what you did seems very humane and reasonable; however, you have decided to go against equality. You are unknowingly committing gender-based inequality by underestimating the strength and determination of women employees.

You should only accommodate a request for a change in task assignment from women employees if they specifically ask for it. Otherwise, it is important to treat both genders equally and with respect.

5. Demonstrate accountability

As a project manager, we shall make a lot of important project decisions to resolve problems and to manage project constraints. Project managers are expected to own their decisions and demonstrate complete accountability for the outcomes of those decisions. As a project manager, we should never shy away from our responsibilities, and this includes managing to solve project issues that can be solved by the project manager with her authority and resources. A project manager is supposed to escalate issues only if they warrant a person with more authority and abilities to resolve them.

Example: There could be a major risk in the project that can be better managed at the program level, and the project manager may not be the right person to deal with it. Therefore, it can be escalated to the program manager for risk avoidance or mitigation.

After understanding the problem stated in the question, the option related to escalating the issue to a higher official for immediate resolution seems to be very appealing and often seems to be an effective measure to address the issue immediately. However, we should not choose this kind of option unless it is essential. Most of the time, these types of options shall be incorrect, so go with the option that talks about how the project manager is going to resolve it with her capacity and resources. Of course, this way the project manager will take more time and effort to resolve the project issue than escalation, but still, it's okay.

6. Be proactive. Avoid being reactive

Prevention is better than cure.

A project manager is expected to manage project uncertainties and issues proactively for overall project efficiency.

And this is the very reason why we do risk management. In risk management, we foresee the future and anticipate all the potential threats and opportunities that can impact the project at a later point in time, so we manage them proactively by creating required risk responses. This way is very productive as we won't need a lot of time, money, and resources to manage the potential future issues in contrast to managing the issue after it occurs.

Consider the possibility of important data on your computer being targeted by ransomware. Will you wait until your computer is affected by ransomware and then pay the hackers to recover your data, or will you proactively safeguard your information by regularly backing it up and installing and updating high-quality Internet security software with a firewall?

The latter part is obviously the optimal solution as it requires relatively lesser cost and resources to manage the anticipated issue.

Taking measures to retrieve your computer data after getting infected by the ransomware is about being reactive, and this is all about firefighting.

In the exam, you always need to take measures and decisions that are inclined towards being proactive rather than reactive.

7. Please don't choose the option that seems to be the ultimate solution

Often, PMP exam candidates tend to select the choice that offers a solution or appears to be a decisive step. To gain a clearer understanding, consider the question below.

You are on the verge of completing your project, and many of the deliverables have been accepted, and you have also closed some of the contracts. At this time, you have been notified by the customer that you need to implement a major scope change. What would you do now?

Option a. Escalate to the sponsor

Option b. Politely refuse the customer's request, stating that at the last moment, it is not possible to implement a major scope change.

Option c. Set up a meeting with the customer at the earliest and ask for further details about the scope change

Option d. Implement the change following the perform integrated change control process.

You may feel pressured when the client requests a significant scope change towards the end of a project, and our initial reaction might be to decline. Nevertheless, for the PMP exam, the correct choice is option C. The question specifies that the customer has recently informed you about a change request. Therefore, your next step should be to gather more information about this proposed change and then make an informed decision on whether to proceed with or reject the request.

In this scenario, all options appear to be strong choices except for option c. Nevertheless, it is more prudent to select the weaker option that may not provide an immediate solution to the problem.

In the same way, if you encounter a question that outlines a specific problem and inquires about the next steps, avoid rushing to choose the seemingly quick fix. Often, the right course of action would be to communicate with the stakeholders.

8. Never be authoritarian. Always apply a participative leadership style

Never direct people on what they have to do or make decisions on behalf of the team. Of course, as a project manager, you will have the authority to make many project decisions, but it is good to involve the team members in their decision-making process. Sometimes the PM needs to involve team members and listen to their opinions, and as a leader, you can make the final decision or empower the team to make the decision while you facilitate the decision making process.

Also, When its come to Self-organizing teams, you need to respect the decisions taken by the team and should not change the decision based on your assessment.

Let's say you empowered the team members to do task estimations. After reviewing the estimations done by the team members, you found that one of the estimations seems to be unrealistic. So, you are helping the team members arrive at a more realistic estimation for the task based on your experience. Can you do this? No.

This is an example of an Directive leadership style. Even though your approach was very polite and your reason to change their estimate was valid, you cannot apply this. Because the team has been empowered, we should respect their decision. If their estimations are not accurate, they will learn from the mistakes and tend to make better estimates in the future.

This might be a little hard for many project managers to digest, but trust me, if you don't follow this mindset, you will solve many questions wrongly.

9. Avoid blind acceptance and complacency. Prefer tailoring and be adaptive

Every project context is unique, so the methods and practices used to manage projects should be tailored based on the attributes of the projects.

This is why we have different development approaches like adaptive, predictive, and hybrid. Also, this is one of the reasons why we have an adaptive leadership model. Based on the maturity of your team development, you are expected to apply the right leadership style.

So don't be complacent to follow defined processes as they are. If you have a genuine need to tailor your project management processes and the methods you use to manage your team and stakeholders, please opt for them.

In the exam, if the scenario presented in the question demands tailoring, choose the option that is aligned with tailoring.

10. Do not resist change.

We all know that change can cause discomfort but inevitable. A project manager should act as a change catalyst. Whenever we are asked to implement the change, the PM should act as a change catalyst and help the organization to achieve its envisioned future state by deploying the change. Also, we need to help the team and other stakeholders to support the change implementation.

In the exam, if you see any question related to change implementation, always consider the possibility of how to implement the change rather than resisting it.

11. Do not look for quick solutions

Always choose options that provide long-term and permanent solutions. Never choose options that are good for immediate remedy but will not address the issue in the long run. These options may not seem very attractive or productive.

Example: One of the stakeholders is not happy with the way her expectations are managed and is not receiving vital project communications. How would you resolve this situation?

Option a. Send her an apology note and assure that future communication shall get better.

Option b. Set up a meeting with her to understand her concerns and update the stakeholder engagement plan and communication management plan based on the findings.

It's quite obvious that we must go with option b. Option a seems to be a quick fix, the solution is neither professional nor the right way to resolve this situation.

12. Understand the question type and solve it accordingly

In my analysis, there are a total of 11 types of scenario-based questions. They are Next, Prevent/Avoid, Solve, Except/Not, Intertwined, ITTO/Process Flow, More than one option seems correct, Wordy, Ethics, Math, and Critical Thinking.

Each question type must be resolved with the appropriate solving strategy. Please watch the video below to understand how these questions should be identified and solved.

13. Follow the PMBOK and not your own experience

Many people who take the exam might have a lot of project management experience, but at times this tends to work against them instead of offering a helping hand. The reason for this is the way we manage projects and how PMI expects us to do it could be slightly different. This is analogous to practical versus theory. Of course, whatever is stated in the PMBOK are guidelines, and we may not follow these guidelines exactly as they are in managing projects for our organizations. However, to pass the PMP Exam, we should be 100% aligned with the PMBOK, and for this, we need to read PMBOK7, Process Group: Practice Guide, and Agile Practice guide published by PMI for the Exam.

I know this could be a little harder on you, but trust me, this is essential to crack this exam and one of the reasons for people to fail.

Conclusion

The idea behind PMP Exam Mindsets goes beyond simply passing the PMP Exam; it also strives to raise individuals to the level of outstanding Project Managers. Merely applying these mindsets during the exam without incorporating them into project management methodologies would lack professionalism.

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The views, facts, and opinions expressed in this blog are based on the author's professional experience, beliefs, and facts collected from reference materials mentioned under References and citations. We did our best to ensure the content's correctness to make it reliable. Learnings from this blog help the learners, in general; however, we neither guarantee this blog will make the learners clear any project management certification exam nor its correctness. We are not liable for any consequence of applying this blog's learnings and advise readers to do things at their discretion.