Student Profile: Von Katindoy, PMP

My name is Von Katindoy. I discovered project management through FranklinCovey’s public workshop entitled “To Do, Doing, Done.” A couple of years after successfully managing projects in training, coaching, recruitment and employee engagement, I qualified to teach my company’s in-house project management course.

I have always been fascinated by project management because of the idea of getting things done and being measured against the project objectives within a specific timeframe. I have had the opportunity to manage projects where most of my members were my direct reports just as I’ve been privileged to lead projects where my team members reported to functional managers. Looking back, the latter proved to be more challenging and, ultimately, more fulfilling. In such a work setting, you would need to leverage what Kouzes and Posner refer to as the 5 best practices of the leadership challenge to get the job done. Inspired by one of our senior leaders to continuously up skill and embrace lifelong learning, I signed up with PMI Philippines last year and subsequently attended my very first PMI National Symposium. I was so amazed and inspired by the speakers in the symposium along with the PMPs in the audience that I committed to working towards my PMP.

Value of reading the Official PMP Handbook

Reading the Official PMP Handbook cannot be overemphasized as the first baby step towards achieving PMP certification. This 39-page document covers everything one needs to know to prepare and work towards earning a PMP certification, from the overview of the PMP certification to the PMP credential, from completing the online application to applying to take the exam, from the PMP audit process to the PMP exam info, etc. Of course, to prepare for the exam, one needs to actively read the "PMBOK, 6th edition" along with the "Agile Practice Guide." From there it wouldn’t hurt to read the 9th edition of "Rita Mulcahy's PMP Exam Prep." To fulfill the 35-hour project management training, one must invest in the 5-day PMP Exam Review class. Had I known about the PM PrepCast, I would have invested in its review course. Alas, I only came across Sir Cornelius’s fantastic exam prep tool as I was approaching my last 2 months of reviewing. Nonetheless, the PM PrepCast Exam Simulator proved to be a very helpful learning tool to me to the extent that it made me better understand and appreciate the PMBOK through the situational questions and the post-exam analysis provided by PM PrepCast SMEs. As I wrote in the Lessons Learned section of the PM PrepCast, I eventually imbibed the thinking process of the SMEs who dissected 4 possible answers to each simulated exam question to a point where I found myself debating and defending why a certain answer is the optimal one for each exam question.

Advice on what to do for the last week before the exam

My advice is to master writing one’s brain dump in less than 10 minutes. At a minimum, it should consist of the 10 knowledge areas (i.e., from integration all the way to stakeholder management) and the formulas needed to solve for float, earned value, etc. It also wouldn’t hurt to continue studying your errors in the course of taking the PM PrepCast Exam Simulator 200-item practice exams. Lastly, your final week should be about synthesizing all your learnings from the past 3 months of solid preparation. As such, I would recommend capping your study plan by reading the PMP Examination Content Outline and reviewing the ITTOs from the output back to the tools and techniques back to the inputs. Rather than memorizing, seek to understand, what the output/s of a specific process is, what tools and techniques are needed to realize such outputs and what inputs are presupposed by the tools and techniques. The PMP Crash Course audiobook from Audible also proved helpful to me as I listened to a chapter on my way to and from work. Lastly, get enough sleep, mind what you eat, relax and engage in self-care activities like sports and meditation.

Von Katindoy, PMP, MA