TOPIC: Its time to share

Who bothers which day I passed and how much I scored, right? If you don’t have time to read just check underline text and scroll down to lessons learned and exam day tip.

About exam:
• Passed PMP on 19th Nov 2016 with 3 Proficient, 1 Moderately Proficient and 1 Below Proficient (Closing )
• More than half of the question where situational and demands 'what should a PM do next?' Most of them real life activity type of questions.
• Only 4-5 very simple straight formulae questions, mostly on EMV.
• No direct ITTO questions like those we see in mock exams.
• On some of the questions I felt none of the answers are correct, picking the best one was difficult. This was new for me.
• Most of questions 75% or more where long text with big story and required at least 2 round of reading to correctly understand the situation
• Answered all questions on the first run itself and marked those required to be rechecked. But got only last 10mins time to review and could check back only 10 marked questions. My brain was so much cooked by then as i didn’t had any breaks and end the exam just on time.
• Brain dump was not allowed. The prometric person told I am not supposed to write anything in worksheet till i see first question on screen. Btw I was not planning to do any brain dump so it was ok for me.

Preparation details:
The last time i read a book was 13yrs back for my Bachelor’s degree exam. Like many of you I am not a 'book reading' type person, I rather like to read from websites, pdfs etc, but not in a sequential manner. I like pulling details which I want to know from where ever possible to learn.
I finished my contact hrs class from Udemy May 2016. I got a pretty good overall understanding of PMP and direction to go forward. After that bought Rita and started reading. Every time I start reading, within 10mins my brain will shut down to go to sleep. I think, with lot of effort I finished till time management chapter and left it.
Didn’t read PMBOK also completely, from start to end. Now you will be wondering how I learned.
The materials I extensively used are
-Study Notes excels from many people, which I collected from different forums
-Highlights of answers from different question banks. Tip and tricks, kind of 'Did you know?' information from question notes from others. This is very useful and saves lot of time. It’s like you taking a test and checking answer in one go. If you know the answer - well and good, skip and go to next. Else research and learn and then go to next question.
-Made my own excel Pivot table to filter out different ITTO combination in whatever way I want to see data quickly. This is just to understand what happens in the process and which input constitute to what output.
-In total did around 2000 questions from all different websites. Mostly online only some 200 max in paper. Prepcast and exam central were my main online question arena.
I did only 6 full mock test, all others where done in learning mode. Learning mode means select answer and check immediately whether it is correct or not. When I read/try a question and don’t know that topic/answer I stop there and ask help from google Yes, any topic you search you will get a bunch load of information from google, make sure you add PMP at end of your search so that you will get relevant results. The thing I made sure is, once I read a topic I made sure I know in and out of it and confident with it so that next time I see similar questions I am 100% sure to answer it. In & Out means, don’t miss any minor details in that. For eg: you learnt everything about NPV with lot of practice exams and the question can be what type of rate is used in NPV? Discount, interest, depreciating etc….
IMP: Never skip any of the wrong answer without understanding what went wrong. Remember, we do mocks and questions not to score marks but to learn new concepts and correct our mistakes next time.
Talented people can understand things easily, I am not so talented - so I need to go through the concepts in detail to safely save it in my brain. Remember, it’s only about the time you take to understand the concepts. Once it’s done highly talented and less talented guy will take same time to answer the question and score it!. So for any section or topic you touch you make sure you slice the heck out of it and make it through so that you never need to come back again or lose any questions from it. If you byheart things then you may need to revise things more often, but you understand the real concept then any time in your life you can remember and use that! Same case with Brain dump, if you are by hearting things without proper understanding Brain dump may be required. If you ‘know’ things anytime you can get it from your brain directly without any dump.
Best way to finalize your learning is to explain it to someone and it helps to save it permanently in brain. If you don’t have a study partner like me then explain it to your spouse or friend or parents or even to your 1yr old kid. Doesn’t matter whether they understand or not but will help your brain.

Lessons Learned:
>PMP Intention is not to confuse you with complicated details. I felt that in none of the question they tried deliberately to confuse you, like we see in many of mock test with Not, Least, Avoid type of words which we sometimes miss. PMI ask proper logical, real life scenarios and your PM experience and understanding of concept only is required.
>Another important point, In mock test we have a lot of direct ITTO questions which we answer with the ITTO chart understanding. There are two problems with this. 1. PMP did not ask ITTO questions directly, its put into a situation and you need to decipher the process, situation to decide on ITTO and then the correct answer. So, like we read in many places by hearting ITTO is no going to bring you anywhere close to the answer. eg: If you don’t know in which situation and why a reserve analysis is done and how it helps in the process then it will be difficult for your to answer a related question. Just knowing reserve analysis is a TT used is of no help. 2. With around 20-30 direct ITTO question in mock, which we can do in 10sec per question we will be saving lot of time from our total 4hrs. None of the mock test I took went above 3hrs (with review). But in exam I didn’t get much of those kind of one liner, time saving questions and it will push you to the limit of 4hrs. So if you are taking 3.5hrs+ for you mock exam i suggest you better prepare well to read faster!

Exam day tips.
>Usual one - if you are not familiar with prometric location then go there some days before to find exact location, where the door is and where to park you vehicle etc. Worst case you can use Bing and google maps street view, birds eye, 3D view to understand the location very well before going there. It’s not going to be a good feeling if you need to search for building or for parking on exam day.
>For the questions you plan to mark and comeback later, use your right click to strikeout obvious wrong answer so that next time when you come you can save time by avoiding reading those wrong ones and concentrate on the doubtful ones.
>Most of prometric exam monitors are set to 100% brightness. You dont need that, it will put lot of strain in your eyes and will overload your already fuming brain. Reduce it to 30-40% and have contrast up to 80% so that text will be clear. Keep your monitor as away as possible, still in your eye level and sit straight to have more blood can travel to your brain. That’s the engine which is powering you for 4hrs in right direction and make sure that the fuel for it reaches correctly
>It’s really important to rest, sleep and eat well previous and on exam day. If you are still studying on the last days and not clear with concepts, better to reschedule the exam.

Disclaimer: Everything above is as per my point of view and everyone may not agree to it. No intention to debate on any topic

Al Sameer,

Congrats on passing the PMP exam!! Your exam experience was very similar to mine. Thank you for taking the time to post such a comprehensive experience and lessons learned. Much appreciated. Best of luck to you as a newly certified project manager.

Cheers,

Mark

Thank you for the nice writeup. I've seen it written multiple times that None of the answers seem correct. For these questions do you recall if they are asking a question where there Should be a correct answer, or is it one of the "What is the best thing to do" type of question?

Al Sameer,
Thanks for the elaborate lesson learn.
Its very useful.

Do you have a sample of the ITTO pivot tables? I am not an Excel guru and need some help getting started with putting something like this together.