I passed my pmp exam last week with rating of "Proficient". It was a indeed a milestone for me in career and I planned and worked hard for it. I would like to share with all how I managed my preparation for exam.
My preparation started June this year. I started my first reading of pmbok by myself and found it to be very tough and hard to understand. Trust me, the first reading was very difficult. Its then I came to know that I will need some professional help in understanding some difficult concepts in pmbok. So I purchased the PM PrepCast by the end of June. In the month of July, I did second comprehensive reading of pmbok and extensively consulted videos of PM PrepCast where required to develop understanding of concepts. And it did help me a lot.
When I started 3rd reading of pmbok, I simultaneously started practice questions as well. I used the practice exam questions of PM prepcast simulator as well as Rita fast track. While solving questions, I would always try to understand the reasons for the right answer by only and only referring to relevant part of pmbok. This effort took some time but it clarified all concepts and enable me to understand how to apply the principles of pmbok in real life as well as exam.
In the last part of my preparation, I also focused on ITTOs. I thoroughly studied inputs and outputs of all processes and understood the logic that why a specific input/output is required for the process. Although, I initially thought of memorizing inputs/outputs, but then I realized that it was not required at all. Regarding tools & techniques, I used a different strategy. I prepared a list of tools & techniques and related to them to the 47 processes. This clarified in my mind which tools are most common, most unique as well. I did memorize the most unique tools only. To further clarify them, I played some freely available online flashcards which proved to be very useful exercise in linking specific tool which a specific process.
In the exam, the major issue that I faced was to manage the time. The 4 hours seemed to be insufficient, although I did manage to complete all questions in the end.
At the end, I must say that its a great feeling to have passed the exam. I would again say Thank you to Cornelius for his PM PrepCast which made my preparation a lot better.
