First, thanks to PM PrepCast, the lessons learned were invaluable.
No plan is tailor made for everyone but people can read the lessons learned, devise their own plan and through studying and taking exams see what's working and revise the plan. Most people, like me, came to the lessons learned for a bit of inspiration and seeking ideas to make a study plan. Well if I had to devise a plan (from my own lessons learned) for someone taking the exam it would be the following (It’s a bit lengthy):
1. Aileen Ellis program +PMBOK as reference
(i) The book “PMP Exam Simplified” (ii) The lectures and slides “Online Self Study Program” (iii) The quizzes “Online Sample Questions and Solutions”. I gave my review in Amazon. I should have invested in Aileen’s program first. Please get the PMBOK early. Some books, internet sources etc. seem to give contradictory information. Most of it is not. Use the PMBOK to clarify information (it’s the PMP standard), a lot of what seems contradictory is where some of these exam questions come from, if you understand what’s going on, you will be able to figure out those “gray area” questions as I call it where two answers seem to be the best answer. It’s in the details.
• PMP Exam Simplified - Review all chapters before the Introduction chapter, from the PMP Exam –Overview chapter thru Exam Question Strategy.
• Online Self Study Program – Great lectures and slides eases you into the PMP. I would advise to do all chapters first. Use the book “PMP Exam Simplified” to supplement your study
• Online Sample Questions and Solutions - Chapter review supplemented w/Questions and quizzes. I did lots and lots of these quizzes, very helpful.
• Take notes during each step.
2. Head First
The diagrams and sketches were not helping me (some love it, for me it did not work) but the end of chapter questions are good.
• Do end of Chapter questions.
• Revise notes.
3. Rita
• End of Chapter questions for Scope, Integration, Risk & Procurement.
• Review all answers, yes all, even the ones you got right.
• Read the chapters to understand how they came up with the answer. Don’t just know the answer, know the approach to get the answer.
• Review “Tricks of the Trade” & “Memory finger”
• Then review the Chapters (Scope. Integration Risk & Procurement) in its entirety. Try to understand the flow. How you get from one step to another. I had problems just reading the chapters doing exercises and then doing exams. I had to break it down and work backwards, so to speak, I’ve always learned thru quizzes (everybody is different but this works for me).
• Study the planning section in the Process Chart. Pg 50. Go into more detail Pg 75. Again understand the flow. This planning chart helped me big time. Very important.
• Revise notes.
4. Kim Heldman
• Review Initiating and Closing Processes. Again understand how everything flows don’t worry about memorization, try to understand. This book gave me a step by step process of what was going on. This book helped me understand the initiating and closing processes more than any other. I placed this at 4 because it helps if you have a general understanding before getting in more details. Once you have the foundation down, this book will fill all the gaps for those particular processes.
• Do chapter end questions for Initiating and Closing.
• Revise Notes
Time for some full exams
5. PMP Exam Simulator
• Take a full exam.
• Find your weak spots or “gaps”. First identify your lowest Process Group by % scored. Then zero in on the processes in that group. Use 77.5% (yes 77.5% not 75%) as the minimum, anything below needs work. This is what makes the simulator “GOLD” it shows you where your gaps are under exam settings.
• Go back to your revised notes, books, Aileen’s lectures and quizzes to plug the gaps.
Very important. Please put time aside for the exams mentioned below. The PMP exams are very situational. The more exams you take that are situational the better prepared and comfortable you will be for the exams.
6. PM Study – All 4 exams
• Do exam, review all exam questions wrong and right.
• Plug the gaps on all processes that are below 77.5%
• Please note PM Study has study notes. Use this to revise your own notes.
7. PM Zilla’s Final PMP Exam (pmzilla.com)
• This is a tough one. It’s meant to be done over and over again
• Review all gaps as they come up.
That’s it. Hope it helps someone. One thing I must mention, on exam day for some when they start, it may not make sense, don’t stay on questions for too long just keep going and answer what you can on the first sweep. What happens after a while your mind starts clicking and you see terms come up in following questions and some light bulbs start coming on. Don’t give up, you can and will get thru it.
Good luck.
