Exam Structure, Weighting & Study Priority
Current exam facts used by the study system
The governing 00A control document records these current policy facts:
- Data Management Fundamentals is the required core exam for all CDMP certification levels.
- 100 multiple-choice questions.
- 90 minutes for the standard English version.
- Passing thresholds: 60% Associate, 70% Practitioner, 80% Master.
- Fundamentals uses 14 topic categories rather than treating all 17 DMBOK chapters as standalone categories.
- The exam is open book under current policy, with one book/reference choice rather than both the DMBOK and separate notes.
- Specialist exams draw from the whole DMBOK, so Chapters 15–17 and cross-domain relationships remain relevant.
- The included official Fundamentals practice exam is treated as late-stage calibration, not the primary learning tool.
Reverify official DAMA/CDMP policy before final exam-day strategy.
Fundamentals weighting
| Topic | Weight |
|---|---|
| Data Governance | 11% |
| Data Modeling and Design | 11% |
| Metadata Management | 11% |
| Data Quality | 11% |
| Reference and Master Data Management | 10% |
| Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence | 10% |
| Data Architecture | 6% |
| Document and Content Management | 6% |
| Data Integration and Interoperability | 6% |
| Data Security | 6% |
| Data Storage and Operations | 6% |
| Data Management Process | 2% |
| Data Ethics | 2% |
| Big Data | 2% |
Priority implication
The six 10–11% topics account for 64% of the Fundamentals exam. They receive:
- deeper Guided Learning Guides;
- larger question banks;
- more application and discrimination practice;
- more mixed practice;
- more frequent spaced review.
The 2% topics still matter, especially as prerequisites or context, but they should not consume disproportionate study time.
Readiness philosophy
Do not target the bare Associate threshold. The internal study goal is stable performance around or above 80% on difficult, mixed, timed original mocks, with no major 10–11% domain remaining weak. This is a study target, not a guaranteed official result.
Source: 00A-01, Section 1; Fundamentals topic weighting; Section 10.