1. Schedule your exam NOW for 3-4 weeks into the future. You will have a firm deadline and a clear incentive to study. Do it now. You’ll be ready.
2. The next time you study for your PMP watch the Ricardo Vargas video. He ties it all together in the big picture. I watched it at least a half dozen times.
3. Probably the luckiest and BEST thing I did was getting my Scrum Master certification (agile).
I am not kidding when I say that more than half the questions include the words ‘agile’, ‘hybrid’, ‘scrum’, ‘product owner’ – MORE THAN HALF THE TEST INVOLVES AGILE.
4. Practice tests are my secret sauce. I learned this years ago when I sat for a board exam – I took dozens of timed mock exams.
When I sat for the PMP it felt like 'just another 180 question mock exam’ and I had about 15 minutes on the clock when I finished.
Eliminate time from your concerns. I used PM PrepCast for my practice tests but there are many to choose from.
5. Relax – the practice exams are a lot harder than the PMP. I didn’t get above a 68% on a practice exam but got 3 “Above Target” on my PMP.
Of course I knew agile very well when I took the PMP - the PMP will be HARDER if you ignore agile.
Trivia: I did NOT use the calculator a single time. I did NOT memorize the chart of 5 Process Groups,10 Knowledge Areas and 49 Processes. I did NOT memorize any math formulas. I DID know what an index above/below 1.0 meant. I DID know how to look at a few numbers to recognize a trend without doing a bunch of math (If your budget is $10 and you spent $12 you don’t need a math formula to know you’re over budget).
My pep talk: Watch the Vargas video while you have your morning coffee. Then study Agile (the book, videos, or even an online course). Study PMP by taking mock exams starting with shorter quizzes and ramping up to 3-6 full 180 question practice exams. It goes without saying that the idea is to learn from your incorrect answers. Ignore agile and you might fail but if you know agile the test will seem easy. Finally, one word: AGILE.
