Association for Project Management Reviews 77

I found APM very professional

Awesome and good experience, what are enjoy most is the seamless technology set up

The online learning was really useful and helpful and the quizzes and online mock exam was also very good.
The one day virtual event I found really complimented the online resources and helped cement and bring the online learnings to life.
I would say I found some disparities between the language/jargon used in the actual exam compared to the online learning which was a little confusing in the actual exam.

My learning experience was amazing and without stress. The course was well taught and terms well defined. Satisfactory.

The exam format itself os very straightforward and easy to navigate, however i do believe there are better software/apps that are more user friendly for the systems check and the secondary camera for online assessment.

Everything I needed in one place to work through at my own pace.

The APM-PFQ (Project Fundamentals Qualification) is a valuable stepping stone for individuals looking to enter or advance their careers in project management. This certification provides a solid foundation of knowledge in core project management principles, methodologies, and best practices; including project initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and control, and closure. The APM is a respected professional body in the project management field, and the PFQ is widely recognized by employers. By completing this certification, you can demonstrate your commitment to professional development and enhance your career prospects.

There is clear guidelines on how to prepare for the exam. The learning resource/ text book was also very helpful - it also contained sample exam questions to practice with.

Straightforward process on completing the exam. Setup was easy. Overall a good experience

It was a really well thought out course, well delivered, informative and enjoyable.
The only negative would be that a few of the questions on the test were not quite as clear as they could be.

My experience was very similar to the reviews posted below, which is really concerning. I really enjoyed the course provided by Knowledge Academy, however it became apparent that to pass the exam and obtain the cert wasn't about my competency as a project manager or the theory behind the practice, but about how quickly I could type in 3 hours and how many stock answers I could memorise!
It ended up becoming a really stressful experience and I dreaded taking the exam. I consider myself to be a good senior project manager with 10+ years of experience with PRINCE2 and Agile qualifications. But despite hours and hours of revision and practice questions I only managed a score of 49% and have been left very disheartened by the experience and pretty perplexed by some of my scores.
I have never "failed" an exam which has left me wondering, did I catch the examiners on a bad day (my answers seemed fine in comparison to those assessed by my tutor), did I loose marks because of the format of my responses or was the marking unfairly harsh to get me back and pay for a resit. It also took 7 weeks to get my result?! After which time a resit requires a lot more revision or a re-run of the course - all of which costs time/money - is this what accreditation is really about?
In short - based on my experience I would not recommend the AMP and don't plan on resitting - it might be a great accreditation to have for your CV, but I would recommend looking at others. The AMP PMQ seems to be assessed on how fast you can type in 3 hours and how much you can memorise. Absolute nonsense.

It was useful to me to be able to carry out the exam at home.

Questions seemed to try trick individuals, rather then test their knowledge.

I am a very experienced Senior Project Manager and have run multiple projects across the private and public sectors for many years and was very keen to complete the APM PMQ course and achieve the qualification. I have obtained the highest ITIL level and completed the PRINCE practitioner qualification twice and many other certifications, and so was keen to get this under my belt.

I attended the 5 days course with The Knowledge Academy and this helped me to ensure I knew the right terms and processes and was up to date with the relevant knowledge. I studied hard and booked the exam for 4 weeks after the course ended. I revised every day, prepared record cards and took a few sample questions and then took the exam. I found the exam quite rushed - 3 hours seems a long time, but answering 10 x 2-part questions in detail was actually surprisingly hard. I rushed the last question with about 2 mins left with no time to recap. Having said that, I was confident that I would pass and looked forward to my result, but was really disappointed when I received the result which was 50%.

The feedback received plus the additional information I requested didn't really help to guide me where I went wrong and basically just stated that I didn't have the required knowledge. The frustrating thing is that I do have the knowledge, but perhaps hadn't conveyed it in the right way? A lot of the information in the Book of Knowledge and the Study Guide is actually quite vague. It is written in quite a casual chatty way and tends to suggest how a project manager should behave and what they should do, it's not particularly clear and the example questions and answers are subjective and so it's quite hard to know how best to answer the questions. It feels like a bit of a mystery.

I had two choices, give up or brush myself down and really work hard to achieve this exam. So I decided I would re-sit the exam and pay for it myself (£400) and booked it for 6 weeks time. I studied every evening for one hour and I practiced example questions and scored myself (as best as I could) - I went through all of the course material again, went through the entire Book of Knowledge and the Study Guide and even created my own version of the Stakeholder Matrix and other documents, and I created a book of the details of all processes and terminology and roles etc. I really understood everything. I also listened to 5 hours of podcasts that Parallel Training have on Spotify and I was ready to re-take the exam. I took it and received a score of 51%!

Honestly I could not believe it. I then watched a Youtube video where someone has highlighted that APM is a charity and therefore are not subject to FOI requests and was clearly questioning the process and suggesting that it is actually a bit of a money making scheme, and I have to now agree that appears to be the case. If you want your exam to be re-marked then that costs £500 (£100 more than just re-taking the exam) - surely that cannot be fair or right? The pass rate is low, but nobody seems to know the exact figures.

I know several people who have failed at least once and have paid for a re-sit (generating more money for APM) and so my advice would be to avoid APM and go with the PMI instead - they are likely to be better in every way and I really wish I'd gone with them in the first place. I feel as if I have been conned.

On a positive note, I have learnt a lot of specific details and terms and processes that I was not fully up to speed with, and I feel like I could train anyone in the APM ways and approaches, but unfortunately I don't have the qualification.

APM are now changing their exams to be a Multiple Choice type from September 24, but I wonder how difficult these will be, and my expectation is that they will make it very hard to pass. What I do understand is that the new MC exam will not have a standard pass mark, as it will vary from paper to paper depending on what questions they include - this will make it very difficult to challenge as a score of 70% might be a pass on one exam, but a fail on another, and there is no way you can be sure of what the pass mark is of your exam and it will change each time, so you will need to trust the APM, and I for one do not trust them. Where is the governance and where are the details of their pass rates?

I think that this company should be independently assessed and reviewed to check that they are behaving fairly and from all of the evidence I've seen around people failing and honestly believe that something is seriously wrong with this exam. I was also told by a colleague that they took a slightly reduced exam (only 2 hours long) because they had passed PRINCE2, but the qualification had expired over 10 years ago! Apparently APM didn't care that it had expired and let them take the reduced exam! I also don't understand why they are a charity at all - why is that? I wish I'd never gone to the APM.

I spent a month doing pre-work during work hours, evenings and weekends ahead of the 3 day online course. It got to the exam and the exam questions barely reflected the course content and the exam was just a massive 3 hour stressful rush to answer 20 (not 10) questions. Calling a question part a and part b is misleading when they have no relation to each other! I spent a lot of time practicing exam questions and it was impossible to answer one in 9 minutes, to the standard they were looking for.
I do not recommend this course and urge anyone looking for a PM qualification to look elsewhere. I will be looking into PRINCE2 which I have heard is a better course.

Did the 4 day intense training and exam the next day, honestly worst exam I have sat. 70% of the questions in the exam were not even mentioned In the training. I feel that the low pass mark which is 43% at the time of my exam is because APM wants more money from resits or the £500 just to appeal! And APM don’t get back to you when you ask questions on the marking

I wish I'd read these reviews before taking the APM PMQ course through The Knowledge Academy. The course leader rushed through the content in 4 days (most days he finished early when the time would've been better spend going through the materials slower). I spent a month studying in my own time only to achieve a borderline score of 50% - it feels like the exams are marked down on purpose to make people pay extra to retake. The course leader especially was completely useless, most time was spent on self study. Total waste of time and money.

I bought the APM Body of Knowledge 7th Edition and the Project Management Qualification Study Guide when started preparing for the PFQ and PMQ exams.

The 2 books are a copy of each other, only the order of the topics is different. The content is only remotely close to what is required to know to sit the PMQ exam, as such, they are not very useful at all. As if this wasn’t enough and to further prove my previous point of not being very useful, 50% of the APM Body of knowledge is just a list of other APM books they suggest consulting to gain insight on each topic – this is ridiculous and unacceptable!

Buying both book it’s just a rip off because, as said, they are identical in content, word for word for most of the topics, the few differences I’ve spotted are due to rephrasing of contents rather than adding any new information.
P.S.: I passed both exams, so this review is not due to any bitterness and/or frustration that an exam failure might trigger.

4th June 24 - reply to APM reply
Thanks for taking the time to get back to me.

I appreciate your proactivity here however, saying that the books are complementary is a massive overstatement: they are almost identical and there is not one section, topic, paragraph that is in one and not in the other. The order of the topics is different, I give you that.

My point is that people buying both pay twice for the same book and this is not acceptable!

I embarked on the journey to obtain my PPQ qualification with excitement and optimism having been a manager for over ten years, working on project teams and leading projects. Having researched other methodologies the APM syllabus appeared to be a good option due to being a flexible methodology of "tools in a toolbox" rather than a set process which is more applicable for my work.

I enjoyed my course with the training provider (which at the time I did my course was the only training provider who was providing the new PPQ syllabus). Having sat several exams involving oral examinations I felt positive and well prepared after several months of revision and practice.

In advance of the exam I ensured I followed all of the steps in setting up my equipment. Within exam itself there were several incidents which made me feel uneasy and affected the flow and confidence of my answers:
- Challenges arose regarding my dual-screen setup, which was not detailed in the joining instructions or on the IT tests that are conducted prior to sitting the exam. The examiner asked me to move my camera to show the desk in front of me which I could not do, as the cables in the back and the weight of the screen prevent me from doing so. They questioned why I was using two screens and asked if I could switch to one. I explained this was not possible without disconnecting my set up as I had joined the exam through my MacBook but shared my desktop screen. I advised that I could partially shut the MacBook screen so that I could not see it as a solution, and this was agreed. I asked if I could use my mobile phone to show my clear desk and that I was not referring to the case study, but I was advised that this was for the written part only.
- Concerns were raised by the examiner about the volume of notes in my case study and advised that I could not refer to it during the exam this made me concerned that I could potentially be disqualified from the exam and left me feeling flustered.
- Throughout the examination, the audio of the second examiner experienced frequent disruptions, leading to his need to exit the exam on multiple occasions. This significantly disrupted the overall flow of the exam, resulting in a detrimental impact on my responses.

I left the exam feeling that some of my answers were very strong and some were weaker and I was not sure if I had passed or failed. When the failure result came through it was incomplete and APM apologised that the report had not fully downloaded. When I did receive my results I was shocked that the answers where I felt I had excelled were my weaker answers. I was confused and disheartened, however my results were borderline and so I asked for a remark as per information on the APM website. I was advised that due to the fact that two examiners assessed my performance a remark was not possible. A long series of emails ensued including me raising a formal complaint about accuracy of the assessment of my performance which was not investigated, APM citing that due to two examiners being present they would take no further action. Having been refused any detailed feedback by APM I applied via a subject access request through the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) to obtain the feedback about my performance. Both my training provider and I have reviewed the information and are no clearer why some of my scores were so low and I am reluctant to complete a resit as I am not clear on where I need to improve.

Several of my colleagues have sat and failed APM PMQ, mainly due to running out of time to complete the questions rather than a lack of knowledge or preparation.

My training provider has now ceased providing APM training due to the poor reviews on Trustpilot, the feedback I have provided and the decreasing reputation of APM as a whole.

In summary I would not recommend APM qualifications and I will be advising others to complete different qualifications that hold the same kudos but are provided by more professional and supportive organisations.