Hi Everyone,
I am happy to say that I passed the PMP exam on my first attempt. It was a long sometimes uncertain journey, however I eventually found out about the PM Prepcast; made the purchase and my confidence started to grow after watching the very first video.
In my country the PMP credential is only now really becoming as recognized as it is around the world, so one institution decided to start a class, which I signed up for to earn my 35 contact hours and prepare for the exam, turns out I wasted more than 3 months with this class and lecturer since she was not a PMP and therefore was somewhat clueless about the PMP exam.While she had received project management training, she could not provide the relevant guidance to the class for preparing and taking the PMP exam. I eventually expressed my disappointment to the said institution since I finished that course with less confidence that ever. On the positive side I realized it was time to develop a strategy for intense independent learning. When they eventually got a PMP to teach the course by then I was well advanced in my preparation and was asked to join the class, which I refused to do.
During the course I started off of course reading the PMBOK guide, however this was quite a task since its not the most "exciting" material. However after several weeks I made it thru after which I started answering some question just to see where I was. I was nowhere!
Then there was my internet research which made me also realize the lecturer at the institution was not doing a very good job. I encountered lots of helpful information from selfless PMP's all around the world such as edward chung and countless others. This site was especially helpful in understanding focus areas and key formulas.After all my research it became obvious that I needed some additional material.
Based on accumulated information I started out with Rita Mulcahy finishing the entire book, which I believe had some good practice questions and tips then I heard of the Prep Cast and the Simulation Exams and this became my final phase of preparation. This course provided the consolidation I badly needed and the vital exam simulations, 9 in total. I was very confident in my exam strategy including time management. Based on the scores I was obtaining 79% to 85% I knew I was on the right track.
I terms of the famous Itto's I laid out on my wall knowledge area summary pages with all of the ITTO's for each process within the KA and started to observe patterns for eg. EEF's and OPA's as inputs; movement of outputs from one process to inputs of others; like work performance data, work performance information and work performance reports. Itto's I realized are all about patterns, logical relationships, and understanding exceptions; forget cramming you would only get confused and nervous trying to remember them.
I did minor revision on exam night and was anxious to get the exam started. In my case it was paper based so that was a bit different from my computer based simulations of the prepcast. I didn't even feel the need to do a brain dump since during my preparation I took the time to understand all the concepts, formulas and ITTO's instead of cramming. In the end, thank God I was successful, and with the right strategy any PMP aspirant can also do it.
