Exam lessons learned register of Eric Kahiga, PMP.
USING EARNED VALUE TIME MANAGEMENT TO ACE THE PMP EXAM
BACKGROUND
I took my PMP certification exam on Thursday the 6th of February, 2019 in Nairobi, Kenya.
My exam was scheduled to start at 9 am but instead started at 1130am due to a technical hitch at the Person VUE exam center in Westlands, Nairobi. The center had also, a few hours prior installed timber worktops and applied a coat (or several coats) of pungent varnish or turpentine on the workstations in the exam testing room. This made my eyes tear and my nose run the moment I entered the exam room. I had to be excused for 30 or so minutes as I could not take the exam in such conditions.
The people at the center were very understanding and they went out of their way to aerate the room by switching on the air-con plus open the windows. I was able to start my test 30 minutes later. Amazingly none of the other test-takers left the room. We had 1 other PMP exam taker and 4 other gentlemen taking the GMAT exams at the same time. They endured through all that even though they all complained about the fumes. Kenyans are resilient and this was sure proof, we even run marathons in under 2 hours.
LESSONS LEARNT
1. Anything can happen
# On the day of the test, anything can happen, be ready to adapt, be flexible and flow with whatever is thrown at you. In my case 2 spanners were thrown into the works; a two and a half-hour delay before the start of the exam and a half-hour delay due to strong fumes.
2. Time management
# If I could only have one skill you could take to the PMP exam, then time management would be the most vital. Remember you have 200 questions to answer in 4 hours. This requires you to spend a maximum of 72 seconds per question. Ideally, you need to spend 60 seconds or less per question. You need to do that using a countdown timer that counts down from 240 minutes, remember your nice watch and phone are not with you in the exam room.
# This is how I managed my time:-
2.1. I used the excellent Prep cast exam simulator provided by Cornelius and team.
2.2. Every time I did an exam after a knowledge area, I used the “timed mode”. This gave me the skill to work fast. Initially, I noted that time was running out on me before I did all the questions. This was especially prevalent with network diagrams which took me at least 4 minutes to draw.
2.3. I, therefore, used the MGM technique elucidated by the prep cast. I M-arked, G-uessed and M-oved on whenever I encountered a network diagram question.
2.4. Before I started any of the 200 questions, I looked at the remaining time on the countdown timer and (mentally) deducted 2 minutes and wrote that down on the scratchpad provided by the exam center. If (say) the timer read 220 minutes, I would write down 218 on my pad, I would then answer the question. After answering, I would look at the timer and (say) it read 219 minutes I would (again mentally) deduct 2 minutes and note that down. Now my scratchpad would have 218, 217 … I would continue like this on all questions and just by looking at my pad I could tell that I was spending just one minute per question. At times my scratchpad would look like this 218, 217, 217, 215, 214, 214 … This would quickly inform me that I was answering some questions in less than 1 minute. This method ensured the following:-
2.4.1. I was creating a time buffer that allowed me to have a time reserve for the time-consuming network diagram questions.
2.4.2. Allowed my eyes to rest from screen glare by not staring at the very bright computer screen for four and a half hours
2.4.3. Enabled me to finish all 200 questions with 16 minutes to spare.
3. A combination of all the above techniques plus others taught by Cornelius and team allowed me to ace the PMP exam of my first try with 3 Above Targets and 2 Target scores in the 5 domains.
Until next time!
