Hello Everyone,
I'm very happy to share with you all that I have cleared my PMP Exam in first attempt today.
My journey actually began with the start of this new year resolution and I'm glad to have achieved it although it took more than half an year.
I started with reading the Head First PMP book early in the year, cruising through the chapters one per day and believe me all the graphical visuals, day to day examples helped me in answering the questions or striking out the wrong options even after more than 3 months later after reading the book in the actual exam. Then I realised I needed to understand the processes in detail.
That was when I moved to the amazing Rita Mulcahy book which is a must read for every PMP aspirant. It really helps to understand the concepts, key relations like stakeholders and communication management, Valide Scope against Perform QA etc. I read the Integration chapter after reading all the chapters and it was easier to understand how the Integration concept works, balancing the constrains, change requests etc. Solved all the end chapter questions. Then read it once again. Rita process chart helped me a lot in answering the questions in real exam.
I finally got the courage to book the exam and after going through some free exams but would take a lot of time searching, then I purchased the PM Prep exam simulator package and practiced around 6 exams in the last two weeks. The simulator helped me fill the knowledge gaps although I wished it had more calculation questions for practise.
Although I felt it was very short time and advice everyone to have allocate ~3-4 weeks for the practice exams if possible. That will help understand the relationship between different processes.
On the actual exam, I got simple calculation questions on EVM, no Ethics based questions. many situational questions on change management in Execution and M&C like what would a PM have done to avoid the situation etc.
A big thanks to this group for sharing their lessons learnt.
