TOPIC: Studied for 2 months. Passed with AT/AT/AT/AT/AT

Know Thy Enemy

If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
-Sun Tzu

I have benefited much from this forum and its time to payback. Hope it helps.

Started my PMP journey sometime in the early days of June 2020. Even though I heard a lot about PMP and how taxing it is, I never took a deep dive into this ocean. So I spent few days understanding the crux of the subject, exam format, passing criteria, few study plan shared by previous exam takers etc.

Wait…Did it say 5 Process groups, 10 Knowledge areas, 49 processes, 200 questions, and 4 hours straight exam??? Its not going to be an easy ride. 3 things came out of this initial study:

1. Since it will be demanding on your mind and body, you need a strong motivation to prepare and pass the exam,. The motivation factor need not be primarily career. PMBOK is prepared by a bunch of intellectuals that covers almost all areas needed to undertake any endeavor – be it professional or personal. So it’s a recommended skillset to add to your arsenal.
2. Emphasize on understanding the concepts, what is PMP trying to evaluate us on, and evaluate your weaknesses around these. This forms the base of the gap analysis which can be addressed over the period.
3. The moment you see the beast, kill it at the first site with the strongest blow Have a tight study plan not procrastinating; not exceeding more than what is bare minimum. Or you tend to drift away and the restart will be difficult and daunting.

Resources used
* 50 days study plan
* PMBOK 6th edition
* Rita Mulcahy 9th edition
* Youtube
* Mock tests

• PMP exam Christopher Scordo
• PM Prepcast
• PMI exam simulation
• Oliver Lehmann 200Q

PMBOK guide was a drag so supplemented it with Rita Mulcahy 9th edition. Finished each knowledge area from both the books, first from PMBOK and then Rita Mulcahy and then moved to the next knowledge area. I found it helpful as it prepared my mind to build focus. After the first read, started taking mock tests to evaluate my concepts, followed by second review of PMBOK. PM Prepcast exams were the best. Kudos to the team for creating great quality questions and the explanations were crisp, clearing many of the concepts. PM prepcast exams are tailored more close to the real one.

PMP exam is not a difficult one but tricky and needs your extended focus for straight 4 hours. For me, this was challenging as each question requires your full focus to understand first the question and then the mischievous answer choices.

Lessons learned register

1. Go for PMBOK revision after attempting few practice exams. Doing so gets our attention to many areas and topics which we missed earlier and many of the stuffs will start making sense.
2. Mock Exam Post review is as important as the exam itself. I cannot stress more on this. If the exam took 4 hours, the post review will take 4+ hours. Go through all questions, right and wrong ones.
3. Prepare notes and go through it often. The notes represent the gap in the knowledge as mentioned earlier. This will help during reviews.
4. For the exam, try to finish 60 questions per hour. Before you start the exam, write the following on the notepad:
210 minutes --30
180 minutes---60
150 minutes --- 90
120 minutes---120
90 minutes ---150
60 minutes---180
30 minutes---200

5. You will get a 10-minute break once you click next on 89th question. You cannot review previous question after this. Ideally you have time to review questions only if you were able to reach 89th question when there is 150 min left.
6. Following youtube videos were really helpful
Ricardo Vargas process flow:

Outputs of the PMBOK:

Tools and Techniques:

Estimate At Completion explained:

PMP Exam Prep 25 What would you do next questions:

All the best!

Thank you, Sumar, for sharing your experience that will undoubtedly inspire others who are planning to take the exam.

Every good plan and it helped me pass the exam.

Hi
Very good information.
How do we know the result for online PMP exam?. The customer service is saying that it will take 4-7 days to show the result.
I just took the exam, but how do I know passed or failed?

Hi,

Once u click the final submit it will show you the result. A congratulation message. In 2 days u will get the official email with the certificate and your profile in pmi.org will get updated as well.