TOPIC: Passed PMP First Try - I think I need an AC/DC song to go along with this...

Hi Everyone,

Passed my PMP exam June 9, 2016 with 4P and 1MP. Where to begin with all this!

I took a 120 hour course at Mount Royal Collage here in Calgary (3 online courses) back in 2005. I was going to write my PMP back then (should have) but decided not to.

Back in October 2015 I started studying. Dec and Jan were a write off as I didn’t study much then. March, April and May were serious study months. I started with reading the following (and doing all the Q’s and final exams):

Head First
Andy Crow (did all the Q’s and
Rita
PMBOK (read this about 1.5 months before exam)
Edwel (read this about 1 month before exam
Rita again (read this 2 weeks before exam)

About 6 weeks before the exam I started my brain dump. I wrote it out 3x a day for a week. After a week I remembered it and only did it 2x a day. When you are in the exam you want to be able to write this down without even thinking about it. I watched the following to create my dump.


Learning PMP formulas the easy way.ppt

I went through these exams as well:
Oiver Lehmann - 75 online, harder
Oliver lehmann - 175 pdf, harder
Head First - 200, easier
Exam Central #1 - 200 Q's
Exam Central #2 - 200 Q's

And then the PM Exam Simulator. I took all 8 exams(and quizes) and received 78%-84% in the exams. Mock exams are a must and I thought the PM exam simulator was very good.

What I did for this was took an exam day 1 then on day 2 read up / reviewed on everything. I started this about 16 days before the exam. It is too hard to take a 4 hour exam every day. Once you take the exam you need a break, then then checking your answers over takes another hour. You are looking at 6 hours for the exam and to check it over.

Other resources I used:
Edwards notes (I used these as review notes) edward-designer.com/web/pmp/
Learn the Definitions of the 47 process groups - by Anand Bobade - slideshare
Difference QA/QC Validate Scope - by Anand Bobade – slideshare

Realistically 3 weeks out from the exam you should be reading notes and taking exams. You don’t have to read through long books.

The only thing I would have done different was learned the ITTO’s better and the process descriptions better. For the ITTO’s I would have reviewed the PMBOK process diagrams more (the work data flow diagrams). I knew the process descriptions pretty well but there were some questions on the exam that stumped me (ie forgot). For example, there would be a question and I would forget if it was Manage Stakeholder or Manage Communication.

Exam day. Got to the center at 8am for my 9am exam. They poked and prodded me and then they said I could start it now. The exam took longer than the mock exams because of the pressure of being there. I finished the exam in 3:20, 40min to review. I was finished with about 2 min to spare. Clicked through their assessment and got the "Congratulation - welcome to your new and exciting life" on the screen.

Overall the exam was as hard as I thought or read about. I knew about 65% of it, 30% was eliminate questions and 5% were more on the guessing side.

If you have any Q's, please let me know.