I passed to PMP Exam today at a center with Above Target on all 3 Domains. I’m naturally a night owl, so I selected a time to take the exam when I knew that I will be at my best and full alert when responding to the tricky situational questions. I took my exam at 2:30 PM. I packed a little snack bag to keep my energy flowing for the duration of the exam which included chocolate and water. I took both 10 min breaks. My first set of 60 questions were very difficult compared to the 2nd & 3rd set of 60 questions, but maybe it was just my mind playing tricks on me. I used numerous resources to prepare for the exam because I didn’t know what to expect. Here are my keys to success and my experience, along with recommendations that I encourage future aspirants to take:
1. I felt like the exam was majority of Agile/Hybrid. I had very few questions that were strictly predictive. I know that PMI said the exam will be 50/50 far as Agile and Predictive, but if you think about it, Hybrid is a combination of an Agile & Predictive question all in one, so for me I felt like that is exactly the approach they took. You will have to select the best answer for the situation at hand rather it be Agile or Predictive
2. Have a Servant Leadership Mindset when answering questions. Always involve the team and stakeholders in any decisions that are made. Coach, Train, Teach, the team, stakeholders, resources, when you see that listed as an answer choice if it matches the situation. Empower the team, promote safety and trust
3. Always co-locate the team if they are in multiple locations to improve performance if you see this listed as an answer choice
4. Avoid running to the sponsor for help
5. Far as Predictive goes, do intense Studying on Integration, Stakeholder Management, Resource Management, Risk Management & Communication Management
6. Far as Agile goes know the roles of the Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Developing Team. Read the Scrum guide. You can download it for free at Scrum.Org
7. Know the key artifacts for Agile: Daily Scrum, Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Sprint Review Meeting, and Retrospectives
Some Resources that I used to prepare for PMP Exam are the following:
• Joseph Phillips Udemy Course. I mainly used it to review his Agile Sections
• Andrew Ramdayal Udemy Course. I mainly use this course for his Agile section as well and he has an amazing breakdown of the content outline and Mindset videos on Predictive & Agile. In addition, I attended his live sessions every Tuesday from 7PM EST-8:30PM that you can access on Youtube
• PMP Prepcast Simulator of course was a key to preparing for the exam. I took 3 of the 4 exams and averaged 61%. Don’t get discouraged by the scores of mocks, but make sure you thoroughly review your right and wrong answers and learn from your mistakes
• I also enrolled in the PMP 7 Day Accelerator by Scott Payne. You can look him up on Youtube. It is an awesome program if you want to invest in yourself and better than majority of the bootcamps that is out there.
I hope this helps you all. Thank You Prepcast Team. Hands down, this is still the best mock exam simulator that is currently out there. There are some awesome programs out there and I been part of a few listed above, but most still encourage to use Prepcast for mocks.
