Steven,

Great to see that you have been making progress in your ITTO understanding as well as your exam 1 retake score. You are clearly developing a better strategy into how to approach the exam & the questions. If you have time and feel like you are prepared for Exam 5 then I say go for it and see where you are at that point. That will give you a better indication if you are truly progressing and on the right path. Unfortunately, I never had the time to take the ITTO exam. I don't think there is any "correct time" at which you take that exam. Personally, I would wait to take that one until I had done as much as I can related to ITTO study. So, I would agree with your strategy on that one.
If you decide to go forward as originally planned then that would leave you with one exam left per week which would be good. Remember to schedule in some down time the day before your actual exam so you can give your brain a break.

You should be doing your brain dump every day regardless of whether you do it on the actual exam or not. It will help solidify the information in your mind and give you more confidence.

Persevere and please let us know how you progress on your subsequent exams.

Cheers,

Mark

Hi Mark,

I have been incorporating as many of the suggestions possible that you shared with me in the time I can. I am starting to get a better understanding on the ITTO now after I did the mapping and find a method that works in me learning them. I am still having trouble with some which I am going to use your suggestion to build the ITTO sheets.

I ended up yesterday re-taking Exam 1 as it has been over a month since I had taken that one. I didn't remember too many of the questions which required me to go through them. The first time I had taken Exam 1, I scored a 65.5% on the test without a brain dump. I ended up creating a brain dump with all the processes & knowledge areas this time so I can visually see where things were at. Between creating the chart and dumping formulas, it took me about 16 mins. I was able to do more answer eliminations than previously, and had better understanding on ITTO related questions . I tried reading answers from the bottom up and in some cases trying where I could by reading just the last few sentences. In reading the last few sentences, I found 6 questions I knew the answer to, but because I skipped over a key piece of information in each of those questions, I selected the wrong answer. On 2-3 questions from a review, I reversed my answer from what was initially right to being wrong. I utilized more of the time available to think through on some of these as well. I did take the test at the time I am expected, which is 12:00 pm Noon (12:00 pm - 4:00 pm). In the end, I was able to move that 65.5% up to an 81%. The mistakes I mentioned cost me 4% from an 85%. Nevertheless, I was happy to see some progress.

After this week, I have to make a decision to either push from the exam date or go for it by Monday 1/16. I am hoping there is good indication for me to go for it on Wednesday 2/22. Do you recommend that I go ahead with Exam 5 (as a fresh exam) to baseline against? If I proceed forward, this would leave me with the other 4 Exams. Is there also a recommendation when I should attempt an ITTO Exam? (possibly within a few weeks to give me more time to study on these so I know what is sticking and not?)

Thank you Sir!

Hi Mark,
Thank you for sharing me some of your ITTO sheets. I am going to follow with doing what you have done for some of the ITTO that I am having difficulty remembering where they all appear. I will let you know about my progress after the end of next week. Thank you!

Hello Mark, I'm also preparing my exam on 2/2. I would like to email you also for the ITTO sheets u have, thanks very much

Steven,

What you have done to map out the path/steps for deliverables is very good and any time you can do something like this it will help you to better understand the process and ITTOs. Your steps you have outlined look correct to me. Studying the data flow diagrams like that on pg. 101 PMBOK can be very helpful in really understanding ITTO. It may not make sense to do this in every case and probably makes more sense when applied to the Inputs and Outputs. I will look forward to receiving your email later.

Cheers,

Mark

Thank you Mark for your responses and for the encouragement to keep pressing on with this, along with your suggestions and advice. I am going to go back to review my previous exams as you suggested and dig in deeper. I will also email you to get the samples of the ITTO sheets you have created to see if it is something that I can begin doing as well.

Yesterday, I went through the Memory Jogger material and audio. I found that to be interesting on the type of methods that can be applied to learning, but more importantly, giving consideration to finding the best learning method that applies to me. I did something interesting that took me some time as I ended up taking my note cards and creating a few spreadsheet views of the ITTO Input & Outputs, and then another ITTO Tools & Techniques mapping. I quickly was able to begin seeing patterns and what is commonly used or rather unique.

I did an exercise with the ITTO Input & Outputs Matrix as I was curious about the flow of Deliverables. Please let me know if my understanding is correct as I never realized this before until last night upon review.

Step 1 Deliverables leave from Direct & Manage Project Work
Step 2 The Deliverables are received by Control Quality
Step 3 Once inspected internally for quality, they are now Verified Deliverables
Step 4 Verified Deliverables are sent to Validate Scope
Step 5 After customer inspects the Verified Deliverables, upon acceptance, become Accepted Deliverables
Step 6 Accepted Deliverables now go to Close Project or Phase
Step 7 Accepted Deliverables are then released to the customer for final product, service, or result transition

By analyzing and doing the trace like this, it made me really think about what is happening and is seems to be something I can remember. I like I think I have a combination of learning style between a rote, symbolic, and conceptual memorization. Do you think it may be worthwhile for me to start documenting these types of flows down on many of the key inputs and outputs first? I am seeing in the matrix that there are just some one offs that may not warrant a lot of attention to, or something to note they only apply in a certain place of the process. Maybe there is some hope for me yet!

I will be in touch later today with an email to you.

Thank you Sir,
Steven