Study Material
1. PM PrepCast
2. Rita Mulcahy
3. PMBOK
4. PMP Exam simulator
5. Reference material and sample questions
Preparation time 9 weeks. Daily 4 hours after work and 8-10 hours on weekend. Took off from office a day before the exam.
I found PM PrepCast very helpful and effective. It gave me required 35 hours and going through all the videos and solving their sample questions created a framework for me.
Went through each module and made lots of notes while listening it on my PC. Making notes was important as I could quickly review it before my exam.
First pass of all the videos took me about 2 weeks then I took the exam to get the certificate of 35 hours. Next day I submitted my pmp application. I have already filled in details and saved the application before. PMI reviewed the application and approved it in about 3-4 days. Picked up the date for the main exam after about 7 weeks. This forced me to be more serious and committed.
Next 2-3 weeks I finished PMBOK. After watching PM prepcast it was very easy to follow PMBOK. Thanks to Cornelius for explaining the concepts in easy language.
After this picked up Rita’s book and read it carefully. This is a great book as language is very easy and concepts are explained in great length. I must admit that I have not completed all the exercise but focused on some of the exercise/area that were of gap from my first read of PMBOK and videos. Read it cover to cover and solved their questions end of each chapter. It took 1.5 week to finish it.
Attempted my first 2 hour exam and score was not good at all. I knew I need to revise. Did first revision of PMBOK and Rita in about 1.5 weeks and have another 2 hour exam. Score was better but still not satisfactory. Did another quick revision of PMBOK and gave 2 hour exam and score came around 81 %. Last one week gave some more tests (6 total) and I was averaging around 75%. Also tried 175 sample questions from oliverlehman.
For ITTO I’ve created a spreadsheet for easy revision but I would not recommend trying to memories it. Try to identify their logical relationship and that should good enough to answer exam questions.
Day of exam, reached 30 minutes, revised the ITTSOs once and started the paper. Exam questions were not close to any of the tests I gave before. Here is the quick run-down.
4-5 questions on team management, HR theory,
10-12 questions on various EMV formulas. 3-5 questions on RACI chart, 3-5 question on graphs.
Hardly 3-4 direct questions on ITTOs. Most of the questions were situation based. Some of the question has one correct answered so it was easy to pick that one unlike 2-3 correct answered and had to select best one.
By that time I reached to 199 th question and the time was up. Filled in the survey and saw Congratulations!! Whew what a relief! Passed the exam with 2 MP and 3 BMP.
Good luck to other aspirants!
