Dear Cornellius,
After purchasing the PMP Prepcast and going through the PMBOK Guide I passed on my first attempt. Yippee !
I started my journey in May although I had bought the PrepCast course previous to this I just hadn't got past the first few podcasts. Your eMails had been reminding me that I needed to get my PMP. After completing a large project at work I found I now had the time to get on with it !
The main lesson learnt is the PMP exam is for project managers with experience and not just anyone who swots up on the material. I didn't need to learn every single process, I didn't need to know every output and input rather I needed to relate everything back to my own experiences and put on a PMBOK hat !!!
The study materials I used
1) PMBOK Guide 4th edition ( read it 3 times !!)
2) PM Prepcast
3) Rita's PMP Exam Prep 7th Edition
4) Oliver lehmann Free 75 question and a ton of other sample exams from the web.
5) Mindmaps they I created as I listened to the PMP Prepcast
Getting through the PMP Prepcast is a hard slog but well worth the effort. I created mind maps as I went along - this helped immensely. You need to know the knowledge areas and the project phases off the top of your head but knowing every single input and output is overkill. Generally you need to know concepts and how they relate to actual projects you've managed.
Rita's exams were excellent - I did them once before going through the material and then again after the end of the book just to see how much I'd improved. Be careful you don't become too familiar with the questions !! Any question I got wrong I went over to understand the answer. Oliver's questions are difficult but worth the effort since they stop you from becoming too complacent !!
I revised PMBOK guide's glossary to make sure I knew all the terms. Know the formulas - these are easy marks - don't remember one and then work out the rest like I did in the exam - I nearly ran out of time !!!
Make sure you pace yourself from the get go during the exam - don't think you can make up the time - I couldn't and only had five minutes to review !!
Good luck to you all and happy PMPing !!!
