TOPIC: Counting project management hours

Hi all, I am looking for some input about how to count my project hours, to determine whether I qualify to apply for the PMP.

I've worked for about 6 years as a policy analyst / business analyst. I am working on larger projects now, but I started out leading small projects where I was also the main resource. I've heard conflicting things about whether working on deliverables for a project (e.g. conducting research and writing up the findings for a research project) should be counted as part of my 4500 experience hours. These are definitely 'hours working on projects' but I'm not sure if PMI counts them as 'hours leading and supervising projects'. They could potentially fit under Executing but I don't find it to be clear - some people online say yes and others say definitely not. I asked PMI via live chat and they said it was up to my personal judgment.

These hours make the difference between being ready and not being ready to apply. I don't want to artificially inflate my hours but I also don't want to undercount and delay my certification unnecessarily.

Can anybody comment on what they've done in a similar situation?

Thanks in advance for your advice.

Chris, the key is to tie your work to aspects of leading, directing, and guiding Project Management within all the knowledge areas. For example on one project, you conducted research. That is executing, but were you in charge of the deliverable, did you communicate your findings and inform stakeholders. If so, you probably were involved with initiating (stakeholder analysis), planning (plan communications management), so on and so forth. If you honestly cannot relate your experiences under the knowledge areas and place them into separate and distinct projects, then I agree, PMI might not qualify you.

Thanks Michael. What I've done so far is count a proportion of the time I spent working on the project as project management - that is, I did spend hours working on initiating, planning, managing schedule etc. The part I'm unclear about is the time that I spent doing journal searches, taking notes etc. - it's definitely time spent on a project I led, but not clear if it's project management time. An IT analogy would be time spent writing code vs gathering stakeholder requirements, reporting on progress etc. In other forums I have seen people counting their coding time, getting audited and approved. I personally feel like that's pushing the definition but don't want to short change myself if PMI accepts it as legitimate experience.