Hi all, I took my PMP exam today in Harrisburg, PA and passed with 4 MP and 1 P (Monitor and Controlling). My feedback is broken into 2 parts.
1. Exam feedback (I wanted to start with this as this is what I looked for when I was looking at previous lessons learned)
2. My Preparations
Exam Feedback
I got to the testing center 30 minutes before my scheduled time. The check in process was easy and straight forward. Apart from the usual checking and locking in your stuff in the locker, what I learnt was once my locker was locked, I couldn’t open it until my test was done. I had a snack and a bottle of water, which I put in top of the locker, just in case. I wasn’t allowed to write anything on paper until I actually started the test.
Once I finished the initial tutorial, I was on question 1, with the timer on the top right. I wrote the 47 processes and some of the key formulas. That took me about 6 minutes.
The format and the navigation of the screens was very similar to the prepcast simulator with a few differences. The strikeout feature was neat, although I didn’t use it much. There also was a select and highlight feature, where you could select any text on the screen and highlight it in yellow. I didn’t use this feature at all.
The big things to note were:
1. There were zero direct ITTO questions. Yes, that’s correct zero. The ones which appeared were scenario based
2. There were about a dozen math questions. The n/w diagram questions were very tricky I thought and not straight forward. Cost questions were pretty straight forward
3. Questions were not very wordy at all compared to prep cast. The question however were very cleverly framed and I had to re-read a few of them multiple times
4. I thought I had a boat load of questions on risks, quality and project closure
5. The questions really tested my understanding of the different process and their interactions
The first 100 question took me just about 2 hours. I took a quick 4-minute break. The second 100 questions went much faster and I had about 15 minutes to review all of the answers which I wasn’t very sure about to review. As I was marking the answers for review later, I wrote down the question numbers of the ones which were a pure educational guess, just in case if I didn’t have time to review all the marked answers, I would at least review those. I however had enough time to review all of my marked questions and clicked end exam just under a minute to go. After the feedback screens, I saw the results. I was thrilled!
My Preparation
I studied for 4 months. I started December 2016. This was my plan (listing the milestones only) and I followed it making changes where necessary
1. December-Mid Jan – Read Rita. It’s a laborious read, but well worth it and remember to do the end of chapter quizzes. It helps your confidence.
2. Mid Jan-Mid Feb – Read PMBOK. Midway through I changed my strategy and only read scope, time, cost and risk in PMBOK and reread Rita for some of the key areas I was struggling with.
3. I had signed up online classes via pmtraining. I have heard only positive things about prepcast podcasts, but I had already signed up or pmtraining. I liked their summary slide decks for each KA which I used as a supplement guide
4. Also, starting February, I had starting using prepcast and pmtraining simulators and tested each of my KA via quizzes.
5. I monitored my score and focused on weak areas.
6. The first 2 weeks in March, I focused on my weakest area by reading Rita primarily and PMBOK for helpful diagrams if applicable and followed it up with quizzes.
7. The last 2 weeks in March, I solely focused on quizzes. I also took the first 3 PMP exams of the 9 listed.
8. I did not focus a lot on memorizing the ITTO. This was a calculated risk, based on what I was reading in lessons learned about PMI moving away from direct ITTO questions. This did pay off in my case.
9. Across both the simulators my average scores on the PMP exam was 81% and across all quizzes was 77%.
10. As I was studying I prepared a condensed summary of each chapter (14 slides) and I used it extensively the last couple of days. This may not suit everyone, but it helped me a lot.
I have two little kids and balancing being a father and husband along with a full-time job wasn’t easy. But with the support of my family and about 10-15 hours every week I was able to do it in my first attempt.
