Hello all!
This past monday I did my test and passed. Believe me, you will love it when you press END EXAM (or let the clock run out, squeezing every second out of it) and see the congratulations page.
That being said, I would like to share with you my lessons learned.
A little bit of my background and my battle plan:
I have been thinking about getting PMP certified for a couple of years now and decided on September that I would finally do it. Before the new exam came around. Be certain that you really want to get this certification and that it is a good thing for your carreer. The amount of study needed is not something to be taken lightly. You will need to be relentless and focused on the goal.
On October 13th my application was accepted and I scheduled the exam for December 14th.
Total study time: 8 weeks, 160hs +/-
Application:
- Read all that you need to do a proper application and do it at once. Write about your projects and work experience before hand and just copy paste it into the final application
Study plan:
- I created a simple study plan where I said that in 4 weeks I want to be answering 65% of the questions right, in 6 weeks I want it to be 75% and so on. My final goal was to get at least 80% of right answers in the 1st try
- I used 4 sources for my study: 1 - PM PrepCast Premium + formula guide, 2 - PM Prep Exam Simulators, 3 - "How to pass on the PMP Exam on your 1st try" by Andy Crowe and 4 - PMBOK Guide (more as consultation)
- Try and study with different methods as it helps keeping things fresh. I created flashcards for ETC, EAC and PERT formulas (things that were new to me)
General tips:
- It took me some time but helped me a lot. I created my own ITTO spreasheet. I went through the 49 processes on the PMBOK and created an Excel where each line was an input, T&T or output, with details of what Process group and Knowledge Area it was from. It helped me to connect things and see the flow of outputs becoming inputs to other processes, for example
- Always take time to practice questions. Don't be discouraged if you get a lot of wrong answers. Better to be wrong now than when doing the exam! Do 10, 20, 30 questions everyday. Start to adjust it towards answering questions related to the Knowledge Areas that are more difficult to you
I recommend you reserve the last week or so before your exam date to do a couple of simulated exams every other day and in between, check the questions you got wrong. I believe it helps a lot for getting into the exam vibe (time management, can-do mindset, learning to mark questions to review later) and fine tunning your skills in areas that could still be lacking.
The exam is long and you will get tired, no breaking news there. I would say don't count on a lot of time to review questions, focus on reading twice and understanding it well enough to give your best answer on the first pass.
Hope this can be of help to some and wish you all the best.
Cheers,
Felipe
