Dear All,
I want to share with you, my experience of passing my PMP EXAM in 7 weeks
of preparation (5 to 6 hours on average per day).
The first thing to do is to manage the preparation of passing the PMP as
real project, so you have to set up the full process in place, write
project charter in which you name yourself as a project manager (take
pledge to pass the exam in a realistic time window), and identify the
stakeholders who will benefit or will be impacted by your project, in my
case my family, and here I take the chance to thank my wife Sihem who was
very patient along the PMP preparation process, as I had sacrificed many
nights and weekends, and lock myself in my house.
My project plan was scheduled on 2 periods of 4 weeks, and 1 period of 4
weeks of idle time, during this time I promise myself to not go through the
PMP preparation materials or perform any PMP mock exam. The idle period was
attended to let the knowledge “marinated” in my head and so absorb the
maximum of information in the 2nd period.
After setting up my plan, the number of tests and mock exam, and the score
to reach before I should take the real exam (this was my quality management
plan), I also take the decision to purchase the Rita PMP Exam Prep,
8th edition for exam preparation.
1st period (4 weeks):
1- I download all the materials of the PM PrepCast and started going
through the videos and reading the PMBOK in parallel, this task were
performed in 2 weeks.
2- After the videos watching and, PMBOK reading, I started reading the
Rita exam prep, this task completed in 10 days.
3- I have completed all the question samples provided in the PDF
documents for each chapter (PM PrepCast) + all the questions in Rita book.
4- The following period (4 days) completed in taking mock exam, I have
took in total 4 exams, the score started from 58 % and increased to 72 %!
IDLE PERIOD started (3 weeks):
I took 3 weeks to rest (idle time) instead of 4 weeks initially forecasted,
during this period I just relax: no revision and no PMP mock exam. After 3
weeks I felt that I have forgotten all PM knowledge, and my methodology
will fail or I will not meet the plan that I have set up for my project!
2nd PERIOD (3 weeks):
1- I started the preparation by going through a specific PM videos
where I feel that I have some weak points such as: Quality, HR, Risk,… also
I have reviewed all videos related to chapters: 00 (Lxx.00) which is the
summary of each knowledge area.
2- I started a 2nd round of Rita Exam preparation.
3- I Elaborated a summary of ITTO, but I did not memorized them, it is
very hard to do so, it is better to focus on how they are elaborated and
understand the logic, and how each process is interrelated.
4- I planned 3 exam per week, in total 9 Mock exams that I have to
accomplish, my score were enhanced and I started to get all my results
above 75 % and 2 exam I remember were 82 % and 80 % but it was not easy to
maintain such score.
In total I have passed (~ 262 hours):
PMP preparation ~ 210 hours (an average of 5 hours per day)
13 x Mock exam ~ 39 hours (an average of 3 hours per exam) almost 2200
questions (2 or 3 repeated exam!)
PMP exam correction 13 hours = 1 hour per exam reviewing my exam results.
Finally, congratulation for those who have passed the exam, and I wish all the best for those who are currently preparing for the
PMP exam, and I say never give up.
