TOPIC: PASSED 21st May 2015 - 2P & 3 MP

Relieved, Relaxed, Celebrated... Now Set for PDU's.

I would try not to write a very long post. Just the vital points I think should be set straight to get through with the PMP journey.

Background: IT industry with 8 years of experience, full time job.Family with a 1 year old kid.

Initial Prep: Planning Studies and fixing date for actual exam well in advance. Getting 35 PDU's - Prepcast did a wonderful job due to its flexibility of self paced learning, choosing a Simulator for practice - PM exam Simulator (bought it as a bundle)

Application Process: This takes a good amount of time to include all hours and should be started right from the day you decide to take PMP so earning your eligibility is complete by the time you earn 35 PDU's and your application with detailed hours is also ready. submit the application. Once approved set the date of exam which was thought of immidiately.

Study Plan: I took good long time to study as I was busy with projects, and family commitments so had decided to take at least 6 months to study at my own pace. Dint had any weekly targets but just kept studying as and when I had time an hour in a day to few hours on a weekend. I did bad here as my study hour was so random even with some multiple days going without any study.

Books: Started with headfirst 4th edition as that was available in local library finished till communication management then bought the Andy Crowe book and studied the remaining chapters and started revising the Andy crowe all chapters with my knowledge from headfirst. Dint refer to Rita or any other prep book. Along the way I read PMBOK 5 dint read entire book but till cost management and then started looking at glossary. Also kept going through the prepcast episodes things which were not clear after reading the prep books.

Exams: Took all chapter wise practise tests from Headfirst (till communication management) and all chapter wise test (Andy Crowe) and full length mock exam at the end (80 %) I also was doing lots of quizzes on simulator which I started 2 months before the exam date. almost 50 Quiz questions for each knowledge area to strengthen my understanding and the Question style.

I started taking full length Mock exams from PM simulator 1 month before the exam to understand my weak areas and then review those areas from prepcast. Started scoring 80 % consistently on last 5 exams I took on simulator; out of total 6 full length exams taken. That made me feel ready for the exam.

Exam Day: Surprised - Questions were not so straight forward but with a little thinking it was easy to answer, and that is the reason I took entire 4 hours to answer my last question with 10 seconds left for review. All my mock full length tests I completed in 3 hours . So early on I realized I wont get time to review so I took more times to read questions and understand them in depth before selecting an answer. Sometimes even made calculated guess work as I had to rush through few questions in last 10 minutes. My screen ended up with 2P (Initiating / Monitor & Control) and 3MP (Planning/Executing/Closing)

By the way I started this post thinking wont make it long, guess I progressively elaborated as I went through dumping my PMP experience here . Welcome to the work of Project management !!! and all the best to the aspirants.

Suggestions to PM exam simulator team:

1) Add a section for ITTO under Quiz that would be a great help to practice in the area where most people struggle. having 200 questions dedicated just for ITTO's was good but I dint ever thought of taking it. But I guess having quiz section for ITTO with flexibility of choosing the number of questions in the desired area can make it more efficient way to prepare ITTO's

2) Ability to review all wrong answered questions in one screen by clicking next to take you to next wrong answered question - this would help in reducing time spent in reviewing (only wrong) questions.

Thanks for all the info and advices to the members of the forum.
Suhel