I am glad to be hearing reporting my success and lessons learned. Here is my report -
Requirement - study and get certified in 12 weeks
Constraints - full time job, 2 kids under 5 and an aggressive timeline (I chose that because I have been meaning to do this for a few years now but there was never a good time)
Study plan - I scheduled my exam the third week of November 2016 and then started studying (had about 12 weeks). Into the 2nd week of reading the PMPBOK, I realized that I needed some additional help, so bought the PREPCAST (best decision and would definitely recommend) mainly for the simulator and to listen to the lessons. I finished reading PMPBOK completely by Jan 15th and took my first exam on the simulator to decide if I need to postpone my exam. I scored 78% but felt that I could improve a lot over the next month. So decided to keep the date and march forward. I made a set of flashcards for the 47 processes (ITTO) and many of the key concepts (like prevention vs. inspection, HR theories etc) and hung on to the cards every waking moment for the next 4 weeks. I had also a made a small booklet of all the flow diagrams of the processes from PMPBOK. Constantly looking at them (I had made notes on what EEF & OPA were needed and what PM plan docs got updated etc) helped me tremendously. I took 2 full exams every week from different sources. The answer key with reference to the PMPBOK guide helped me go back to read those portions again and make my concepts strong. My scores:
PM Prepcast - 78%, 82%, 83.5%, 84%, 84%, 84.5% and ITTO 95%
Oliver Lehman - 68% (75 q), 72% (175 q)
iZen - 82%
Headfirst - 85%
Simplelearn - 84%
Sean Whitekar - 78%
The practice exams helped me review various type of questions and manage time.
Exam - It was nothing like any of the practice exams. It was completely situational, no direct ITTO, no trick questions with "not true" "except" etc and 100% from PMPBOK guide. You really needed to be strong in your concepts. The first 50 questions for me were tough and it took me that long to get the hang of it. I was not so sure about passing by the end of 50 questions and having used up just over an hour. As a PM, I decided to give it my best shot with the concepts I had learnt and experienced. The exam got better after that. I was able to complete it with 15 minutes to spare, I reviewed the 15 questions I had marked and ran out of time at the last one.
What I could have done different - Maybe read another PMP book, finished listening to all the prepcast audio
Yes, I could have studied more and prepared more but with what I had I went with Pareto rule of 80-20 and took my chance. I was able to pass with 3 MPs (Initiation, Closing and M&C) and 2 Ps (Planning and Executing). It was a overall great process and I am glad to have reached this stage.
I decided to write this as a lot of lessons learned actually scared me looking at the number of books people read and the number of weeks people were able to spend in preparing. I just wanted to make sure that if there is someone similar to my situation, they could use my experience as an analogous estimate for their prep.
Thank you prep cast team for your help. You were definitely a key source for this success.
