Yesterday, I passed the PMP exam. I wanted to share my experience, as I benefited from reading previous posts from others.
I started my journey on January 26th when I started the PMP Exam Prep workshop I took through my local PMI chapter. Everyday, I studied between 2-3hrs (not joking). By studying I mean, reading chapters, watching youtube videos, finding helpful information on Pinterest, etc. The PMP exam prep course was every Saturday (745am to 430pm) for 7 weeks. By the 3rd week of studying, I had memorized the PMP process chart using a mnemonics method, I feel like this really helped me start putting the pieces together. As far as guide book, the PMP prep course provided Rita Mulcahy's prep book as well as the flash cards, the other helpful resource was Rita's process chart game. I read through Rita's book once and would follow up with reading the same chapter in the PmBok. I felt that I understood the PMBok better after reading Rita's chapter. Around the same time (week 3 of studying), I started taking quizzes using Rita's simulator. By week 4, I took my first full practice exam, even though I had not yet finished reading all the knowledge area chapters in both books (Rita's & PmboK). In total I took 5 full practice exams. I will list the results below.
Exam simulator evaluation: Now having taken the exam, I feel that PM PrepCast simulator better prepared me for the actual exam compared to Rita's. In Rita's often times the information above the last sentence had nothing to do with the actual question, so I would often just read the last sentence. With PM PrepCast, there were no questions that you didn't have to read the info above the last question, which lined up with the actual exam. I think it is important that you get accustomed to reading the entire question and dealing with having to read 200 questions and complete the exam in the 4 hours.
Formulas: I did memorize the formulas for CV, CPI, SV, SPI but not EAC or TCPI, or any of the other ones. I was willing to risk getting a few wrong answers than having to worry about memorize all the potential formulas. In all I believe I had between 5-10 questions where I needed to use a formula, or have a general understanding of it.
ITTO's: Definately did not memorize the ITTO's. I had a general understanding of the difference between the 4 and the major inputs to most of the processes.
Exam simulator results:
Rita Exam 1 (2/24/2019) 72%
PM PrepCast Exam 1 (03/03/2019) 70.5%
Pm PrepCast Exam 2 (03/09/2019) 68%
PM PrepCast Exam 3 (03/10/2019) 81%
PM PrepCast Exam 4 (03/13/2019) 72.5%
PMP Exam 03/18/2019 Overall: Above Target
By Process Group:
Initiating: Above Target
Planning: Above Target
Executing: Target
Monitoring & Controlling: Above Target
Closing: Above Target
Most of the questions on the exam for me were, "What should the PM do first?" "What should the PM do next?" "What should the PM do?". You can imagine that the potentional answers are not straight out of the PMBOK or the process chart. They challenge your understaning of what being a PM means, and your role and how to deal with the most immediate concern first.
I definately would agree that the exam simulator helped tremendously, I didn't just do the practice exams, I did the quizzes as well...a lot of them...around 2-4 a day. But do not rely on the quizzes, practice exams only. Read the prep book, read the PMBOK, watch videos, what ever you need to do to understand the information.
Apologies for the lengthy post..I just want to provide my feedback to help those out there preparing for the test. I was in your spot just a day or so ago. Do the work, take the test when you feel ready (what ever that means to you). I got to a point where I was burnt out, I had been hearing.."Take the exam when you have scored above 80% on multiple exams in sequence" and as you see, I did not do that...I was done, I was ready to take the exam and deal with the results.
Good luck!
, appearing in the exam soon. I need your further guidance for assuring, m i going in the right direction or not. I am planning to appear in the exam soon.