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TOPIC: Passed PMP Exam AT/AT/T/AT/AT

Passed PMP Exam AT/AT/T/AT/AT 3 years 10 months ago #24861

  • Marcin Sikora
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Hei all, here are my lessons learned

I'm an engineer working as a PM for 10 years now and i do have additional education in project management direction, including MBA in strategic project management, so basically, i fulfilled all initial requirements for scheduling the exam.

I started my journey to PMP in January this year, by reading PMBOK Guide from A to Z. Even though i thought i had a solid background already, the amount of detailed information in PMBOK Guide and my lack of thorough understanding of details in processes and their interdependencies made me think of re-planning my journey a bit.

I decided to take it easy, as the only time constraint i had was eglibility for the exam, so in theory i had 12 months or so. In practice less as of beginning of 2021 exam will change. Anyway, i still took it easy and i didn't want to stress myself to clear the exam in 2-3 months. I wanted to take an advantage of the learning process and do a quality job with my preparations.

I did not plan my learning in details, but instead i said that i need to spent at least 15h per working week studying and progress according to my capacity. Rule no2, no studying during weekends :). This way i dismantled PMBOK Guide into pieces in couple of weeks. and that time i think i got a good overall overview of process groups, but i couldn't yet remember details. I've done some free mock exams, but i did not perform very good in situational questions involving ITTO and those asking for details regarding using T&T. I was a bit confused.

I was looking for advices and I got one from colleague of mine. She passed PMP exam couple of weeks earlier and she recommended me Rita's book. So i bought it, i went through together with referencing PMBOK Guide with same pattern as before. max 15h of studying/working week, no studying in weekends. I did all tests in Rita's book and i was somewhere between 60% - 70% and i was still lacking confidence. I tried to read couple of other books, but their structure and difficulty level made me stop reading...i was a bit confused and i needed something good and comprehensive, same time relatively easy to absorb.

This was the time when i came across PM prepcast forum (around March 2020 i believe). I bought access to videos and Exam simulator. This step was a breakthrough for me. When i tried couple of quizzes i scored quite low, which made me a bit confused as i scored much lower then in other mock tests, but i thought OK, as for training, the harder the better, but same time i understood that there is no point of doing much more of the tests as im scoring low and i didn't want to remember questions to have a good tool for measuring my preparedness for the real exam, so i placed on hold excercises with Exam simulator.

So next natural move for me was to go through all videos of the PMprepcast...yeah, and that was a piece of journey. Many thanks to PrepCast team for that trip :). I do not know what was the phenomena, but the way it is build, integration with PMBOK Guide, a bit of humour, plenty of practical tips etc..etc.. it suited me 100%. I reviewed all videos, i made a lot of notes (over 500 pages in word) i read PMBOK Guide along and it simply worked. couple of weeks ago i went back to Exam simulator and the lowest score i got in full exams was 82% (ITTO) all others above. BTW, for entire PMprepcast journey i still used same principle - max.15h/week and no studying over weekends :)

What was most strange for me during learning was that everyone was saying not to memorize ITTO's, just understand the flow. For the long time i didn't believe that, even though i respected the opinions of more experienced colleagues. What happened with me was that i followed this advice even though i did not believed it. Through those couple of months i was trying to find a logic in processes, logic in how T&T are applied and why, what document is coming in and what the process is to produce etc...etc... And guess what, without putting much dedicated energy into it, i memorized most ITTO's without noticing it. I found this out when i was reviewing PMBOK guide appendixes. Especially one for tools and techniques. When i covered right side of the matrix to guess, where given tool or technique belongs, i just knew most of them, with few exceptions.

To my opinion PMprepcast is one of the best (or even the best, hard to say as i do not know all) and absolutely a game-changer. It is a great Guide to PMBOK Guide (yes, guide for guide :) )
But same time i think there are no shortcuts and I believe in hard work. PMPrepcast will not do a job for you, you still need to do the job yourself. Be honest with yourself, study hard and you will pass.

Regarding exam itself....

Day before exam (yesterday) i did some sporadic reading and played a bit with learning quizzes, as i had to travel few hours to testing center i spent night at the hotel, i ordered my favorite Chinese food, played some games what relaxes me and went to bed early.

So, today i went to sit for the exam with OK confidence, well rested and quite happy that i did good job preparing myself. I understood the majority of the content of the questions, there were enough information for me to see the answer i thought was right. After all i thought it was not actually that hard as i assumed it would be.

Sure, i still have some gaps, but i'll close them on the way now. I'm also quite excited about coming changes, i plan to do some more learning on Agile part and looking forward to PMBOK Guide 7th edition :)

Take care of yourselves and good luck!

Passed PMP Exam AT/AT/T/AT/AT 3 years 10 months ago #24887

  • Elizabeth Harrin
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Congratulations! I like the idea of no studying at the weekends :)
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