TOPIC: First Attempt Success - 5/Sep/2016

A big thank you to Team PM PrepCast for creating the awesome videos and exam simulator, I was heavily relying on these sources along with PMBOK to pass my exam and voila it worked perfectly.

Synopsis:
Total Study Hours: 147 Hours (I was anticipating 170 Hours while drafting study plan)
Material Used: PM PrepCast Videos, referenced Rita Mulcahy, PM Exam Simulator & off course PMBOK guide.
Exam Result: Proficient in 2 Domains & Moderately Proficient in 3 Domains
Most Difficult Part of Preparation: Filling the PMI Application & Re-reading PMBOK

Lessons Learned:
1. Dont study from Google rather stick to one or two standard books like RMCL, Head First, Andy Crowe's etc, off course PM PrepCast is the audio version of PMBOK and it's a must - just like PMBOK. Verify the material you collect from internet, it happened to me twice that I downloaded material which published itself as 5th Edition but it was not updated (prolly 4th Edition), redoing wastes a lot of time and crashes your study plan too.
2. While listening PM PrepCast Videos I made all the notes in PMBOK (I used all the white space on the pages, you may attach an additional paper and pin it to the chapter), this has helped me in understanding the concepts as well as reading PMBOK at the same time, when I wanted to revise the concepts of any particular domain I would read the notes as well as PMBOK pages. I was able to read PMBOK 3 times (all 10 domains) before exam.
3. Consider writing one or two practice exams in a noisy place as I was victim of disturbance during exam which caused distraction to me. On top of this my prometric gave me a colored paper for rough notes (during preparation I practiced rough notes on write paper) and there was light hitting directly on the paper which caused me not to see what I was writing this was annoying and made me more fretting. So brace yourself for all these nuisance.
4. I didn't study the Data Flow Diagrams in any chapter until 2 days before exam and I found them to be very useful so make sure you know at least the DFDs for Change Request, Issue/Change Log, Deliverables & Work Performance Data/Info/Report.
5. Understand, understand, understand the difference & link between communication management process and stakeholder management process, there is very thin line difference between these two and its very important for exam.
6. Develop your own ITTOs speadsheet, this will help in understanding and analyzing the ITTOs.
7. Somewhere during my study I focused more on Scope/Schedule/Cost/HR I feel equal focus or rather a bit more focus should be given to these KAs HR, Risk, Quality, Procurement, Stakeholder (this is my personal preference). I suggest after listening to all PM PrepCast video start studying from HR KA all the way to the end and then start over from integration or scope.

Syed,

Congratulations on passing the PMP exam and thank you for sharing your experience and lessons learned on the forum.

Cheers,

Mark

Dear Mr. Syed,
first congratulations of the great achievement but please can you clarify how you red the PMBOK 3 times , watched PrepCast video, practice the exam simulator and the other study activities you mentioned in your lessen learned on just 147 hours?

Hazem,

I also read the PMBOK completely 3 times and then studied portions of it a 4th. I spent approximately 200 hours in preparation over 3 1/2 months which includes around 60 hours doing the SkillSoft learning modules to gain my hours for the PMP application. I also consider myself a slow reader. So, I don't think 147 hours is unreasonable. However, if I had to give someone advice on how much time they would need to invest to pass the PMP exam I would say that 200 hours is a good estimate, particularly if they need to also gain the 35 contact hours to complete the application.

Mark