I have passed my exam on March 11 on my first attempt. Here I leave my lessons learned:
- Choose a system, trust and follow it. I've listen to PmPrepcast and decided to use one of the prep books. After a while I felt the need to have another prepbook, even after listening Cornelius saying that is not recommended. I end-up using only one. The one I used was "Achieve PMP exam success".
- I listen all episodes of PmPrepcast to get the initial 35 contact hours, but this product is much more than that. PmPrepcast is a great complement to the other study material. I say listen because I mainly played it on my mp3 while commuting or any time I could and it works very well on this audio only version. Any way I have watched the full video version at the end of a chapter for review.
- I Have read the PMPBOK and Prepbook following the chapters order (knowledge areas), and created a resume with all the major topics but following the process groups logical order, so I review following this process group order which helped understanding the processes relations.
- I have used the PM Formulas. They an excellent basis for the memory dump sheet, and the sample questions that come with it are excellent to understand how they work.
- I've used the PMP Essentials Study Guide to review on the night before the exam.
- I've done 6 full length 4 hours exams on the PM Exam Simulator and several partial exams and isolated questions.
- On the exam day, I think the most important thing is to have a strategy very well defined and trained on a simulator. I have followed this one: Answer all short questions and without calculations first. I just marked the other questions. In the short ones, if i was not sure, I choose one option and mark the question for review. I followed this until the last question, and then take a 5 minutes break. Then I review only the unanswered questions (the long ones and with calculations). After finishing those, and taking another break, I review all the marked questions.
I hope this can help some go through this process. Good luck and good work !
Best regards,
Miguel Prego Gaspar
