TOPIC: Passed PMP with 4 P's and 1 MP - Lessons Learned

Dear forum members,

I'm glad to share my joy with you - passed PMP at the 1st attempt with 4 P's and 1 MP.

Here is my story.
1. My overall preparation time took 3 months, while working full time job and having family with 3 kids. So I studied every day 1-2 hours, and every weekend 8 hours.
2. Took boot camp – total waste of time and money. The only added value was 35 PDU’s, which I could have got much more cheaper had I did market research properly and read this forum in advance
3. Read book by Joseph Phillips which I got on the camp – very disappointing. Seems like just user friendly interpretation of the PMBOK without too much added value. But being a diligent student, I’ve read it from the first to the last page, answered all questions in the end of each chapter, and practiced both full mock exams coming in the CD with the book. I don’t even remember how much I scored back then.
4. Read PMBOK once (while taking the boot camp) and then used it as a reference during the rest of the preparation time.
5. Thanks to some review I saw online I purchased Rita’s book which was the wisest decision in my preparation to the exam. Could you believe I didn’t know about this book when I just started to study? Read the book twice, made all exercises in each chapter, all questions in the end of each chapter
6. Purchased Rita’s PM FASTRack software and as mentioned above – took 3 standard PMP mock simulations and one SuperPMP. As mentioned above – scored 80+ on the standard and 65 on the SuperPMP. This was another wise decision, even though this software is so expensive! Absolutely overpriced. But, eventually, it’s paid off.
7. Purchased Rita’s flashcards – both book and audio version. Yes, I’m crazy. But this also was a good decision as I listened to the flashcards on the go and “played” with one of my kids on the book flashcards asking him to test me. He is 8 years old and now he remembers many things from those flashcards that I already forgot! Kids, you know, their brains are like sponge. Now he can be PMP assistant. Or Associate PMP
8. Purchased Cornelius Fichtner online PMP Exam Simulator and practiced all 8 full 200 tests. Scored 80+ on 7 of them and 75 on 1 of them. Didn’t do the ITTO’s test which eventually was not needed.

Fe words about Cornelius Fichtner online PMP Exam Simulator - excellent user interface, very convenient, light and helpful. But the most valuable feature of all (for me) is it's Feedback option - you have the ability to leave feedback for every question, and a professional PMP will answer you in less than 24 hours and will reply to your further emails. So you kind of having a personal coach during the entire preparation period as long as you have this simulator. Also, the simulator is more PMBOK “oriented”, so it’s easy to understand the questions and to understand the explanation of the answer, because it refers to PMBOK. But this is also the drawback of this simulator. It’s too heavily relies on the PMBOK rather than on the real project management experience. So it's probably would be better to combine it with another simulation software to make sure you don't rely on a single source.

Good luck to you all!

Stan
MBA, PMP
Yeah!