Hey everyone,
So I took my PMP yesterday at home and passed first time and am delighted/relieved.
I first started PMP study during a moment of madness in May 2020 during lockdown here in the UK. As lockdown became more chaotic, as did my life (full time job and home-schooling 2 children)...I started off with the PMBOK guide, figuring I'd read through it and familiarise myself with the content that way. I found this to be an impossible method of absorbing or applying any knowledge. After a few weeks of doing very little study, due to the dryness of the PMBOK, I purchased the PM Prepcast and Exam simulator and started plugging away at the lessons. This is when the content started to make sense!
For reasons I won't to go into, I didn't end up properly committing to the course and attacking the material until Dec 2020. It really does require a concerted, determined effort to get your head around the concepts. Be prepared, the PMP isn't easy and you need to 'attack' the course material with real intent.
As things were starting to click, of course the syllabus went Agile-crazy in Jan 2021...much to my dismay, giving me more content to have to learn for the exam.
I then triggered the Simulator and started doing regular, short exams in Jan 2021 in order to learn the Agile concepts. I started to find these really interesting and was pleased, in retrospect, that I took the exam in 2021 as opposed to 2020. Doing the exam simulator was by far the most useful aspect of my study. I also found flashcards extremely useful, which I made hundreds of and used every day until the concepts, formulas and terminology were stuck in my head. Learning the 49 processes and being able to write the whole grid out was also essential to my success: make sure you really know the order and the arrangement really well in your head before you take the exam.
I never took a full practice exam and think anyone who managed to do that deserves a medal. Instead I practiced 60question sprints until I was getting 75%+ on a consistent basis. The real exam is basically 3 x 60 question sprints, so I only wanted to put myself through the misery of 180 questions once.
I found the exam experience very unpleasant - nerves really got the better of me in the first 25questions and I wasted loads of time, meaning that for the majority of questions I only had a minute per question. I also drank too much water and kept needing the toilet, unable go go due to the strict Pearson-VUE rules. The moderators were annoying, nagging me not to cover my face and at one point coming onto the system to reprimand me when I was on a scheduled 10min break!
The exam really is a marathon...by the end of it I was so exhausted. The content was very agile-heavy. I got a few EVM questions and 2 TCPI questions. PMI really do now have huge emphasis on agile/hybrid and moving from waterfall to agile, so be prepared for this as a very strong theme within the exam!
At the end I was convinced I'd failed, and was almost delirious when the screen popped up with a message saying I'd passed. I also scored above target in all three areas.
I simply couldn't have got the hang of this content without Conelius' fantastic prepcast lessons and exam simulator. Cornelius has become a bit of a celebrity in our house after the previous 10 weeks' intense study with my family overhearing the prepcast music and Cornelius' dulcet tones. When I got the result yesterday me, my kids and my wife put the intro music to the PM Prepcast on our stereo system and all danced around the kitchen celebrating like crazed animals.
I thoroughly recommend the prepcast and exam simulator and will be leaving it a 5 star review.
Thank you OSP International and Team Cornelis!
