First of all would like to thank all the members and contributors of this group. I am very happy to share that i cleared the PMP exam yesterday with AT for all 5 process groups. Honestly that was a pleasant surprise to me. Following are the resources i used, followed by some tips/lessons learned:
1. Training:
a. Joseph Phillips - Udemy
b. Shiv Shenoy - Last mile prep course
c. Company sponsored boot camp (but this was an year ago)
d. Youtube videos of
i. Ricardo Vargas
ii. PMPWithRay
iii. Aileen Ellis
Towards the end, i realized i should have signed up for Prepcast training but it was too late by then
2. Study material:
a. Rita Mulcahy PMP Prep book
b. Course work from the aforementioned trainings
c. PMP Formula guide ( by Fahad Usmani)
d. PMBOK
e. Flash cards ( couple of different ones include Rita's Hot topics)
3. Mock/Simulator exams:
a. PM Prepcast simulator (Best one, a little tougher and verbose than real exam, but if you are scoring well in this, you are most certainly going to do well in real exam)
b. PMTraining (These may appear little easier but are also pretty close to what you will see in real exam. I liked the modular format especially the set of unique 50 question mock exams so you don't have to stretch for all 4 hours and the trend/performance analysis)
c. Rita's simulator ( I started with this as i had an employer issued license (its pretty expensive otherwise), but didn't get a great feeling after giving some tests.)
Tips/Lessons learned:
1. Honestly i didnt cover PMBOK cover to cover although i read this as one of the main pre-requisites. But i did refer to PMBOK while reviewing my answers in the mock exams. This helped me to broaden/improve my understanding.
2. PM Prepcast simulator: I just loved this. I could give only 4 full length mock exams (scored average 76.5%) and the most helpful thing was the explanation of each question. My tip would be, if you are one of those who dont find reading PMBOK end-end interesting, try giving these mock exams and review each and every answer by referring PMBOK. This way you would touch upon most of the important topics. P.S: It helped me, but please evaluate what works best for you
3. Mind maps: Shiv Shenoy's mind map technique of learning the core concepts (and each process) was very helpful in capturing the overall essence. I took the prints of these mind maps and reviewed few times. I wish i could have reviewed more number of times. What i liked in this training is, he will draw the mind map as he speaks and navigates us through the entire knowledge area in a methodical fashion
4. Make your foundations strong: Having done project management in real life, we know how stuff works (in real world), but the key to learn how it should work in ideal world (PMBOK style). Once we make our foundations strong on this then we can use our expert judgement to answer questions correctly (for the ones where we are unsure what the best answer choice is)
5. This could be atypical but i see a bunch of questions on Change management/PICC/ change request related topics. So please strengthen this area as part of M&C and executing processes
6. Practice the mock tests around the same timeframe as your actual scheduled exam, this will help tune your body and mind to be ready for prime time.
7. ITTOs: I ambitiously tried several techniques to memorize all ITTOs but it was just too much. But what i did was, i focused on the unique T&Ts and unique outputs across each process. This helped in stitching the context so i can easily visualize which T&T or output a process may generate
8. Spend sometime in reviewing the Data flow diagrams for each process and try to visualize why a certain input/data is needed for a given process, how other processes are input or output to a given process. This will help you establish the flow in your mind.
9. PMI practice exam: I had high hopes on this but somehow the experience was not so great and questions were way off (meaning more complex) than the real exam
10. Math problems: I had about 4-5 math questions with one of them being a little time consuming (related to TCPI), i spent 2 mins and marked it for review to revisit later. Please practice as many variants as possible.
11. Review the navigator grid to ensure you answered all the questions. Interestingly enough, somehow my response to a question was not registered and i only realized it when i looked at the navigator grid. Sometimes the mouse clicks may be deceptive so please make sure your answer choice was correctly selected.
12. I liked Joseph Phillips videos especially the PMP Coach videos where he gives motivational guidance and keep boosting our morale.
Hope these tips/lessons learned will be helpful to some.
Thanks,
Raj
