After a first time failure I had to change my strategy. I have been learning, teaching and executing programs for years. However, the way that worked for me in the field didn’t get me through the PMP Test. As the old saying goes, “Miss it by that much.” Taking the free test questions alone didn’t help me really prepare for the four hours of never ending questions that where all right or all wrong and I had to pick the best answer or the least wrong answer. So what did I do different?
Read the PMBOK Guide with a companion book along side. Two companion books to be correct. 1) Achieve PMP Exam Success: A Concise Study Guide for the Busy Project Manager, Updated January 2016 and 2) Ace Your PMP® Exam (13 Book Series) Kindle Edition by Shiv Shenoy.
Read many online free articles like: The Complete Guide to PMP® ITTO (Inputs, Tools, Techniques and Outputs). Really, don’t memorize the ITTO’s, just understand how the work together.
Made flashcards with all the PMI constructs I needed for the test, hardcopies so by making them helped me to learn them.
Memorized the Table 3.1 as a gestalt, because it is. You must know how the parts fit together as a whole. This is real Systems Thinking. Remember, cutting a cow in half doesn’t give you two cows!
Ok, suck up time..yes the PM PrepCast was a great help in many ways. It when with me everywhere I went on travel. If I was riding my bike it was on. If I was on a long trip I plug the audio into the car stereo (They need to give us just audio files from the video files, the video burns up iPhone time.) I did the videos twice because I had a cross country trip by myself.
Then I took the PM Exam Simulator multiple times and got better each time after a new learning from the books and the videos. I just kept taking it as I did my studies. As a side note the day before the exams I took a different test from a book and did really bad, ouch! Not a good idea the day before the exam.
Not sure if I was ready for the exam but I dove in and took the PMP test two days before I timed out. Why so late? I was audited and it set my studies back because of “real” work requirements. Not a good idea to wait to the last minute. The test itself was no more fun the second time around than it was the first time. The only problems I was sure of was the math problems. (I’m an engineer, we like certainty.) Many of the questions were paired down to two answers and a coin toss. I completed ahead of time even with the time I took to do my Brain Dump. (Note: there is no single sheet Brain Dump that will help you, you have to figure it out for yourself.) A quick review of the unanswered/unsure questions and I was done, done, done.
As I pushed the finished button I thought for sure I had failed again. After a test facility survey I finally got my results. The funny part was I couldn’t figure out why they were congratulating me for failing? I had to keep looking at the computer screen to make sure it was for real. Still didn’t believe it when I had the hard copy in my hand. It took to getting my certificate on-line before in sunk in.
Bottom-Line: Read, watch, test, make flash cards, test (some more) and pass with or without high confidence!
