Dear All,

I am glad to share the experience of successfully completing the PMP certification exam on 29th of April. I could manage to get 4 proficient and 1 Moderately Proficient grades. Following is an extract of the tips and lessons learned from my exam preparation:

Books / Study Materials used :

1) Rita Mulcahy' Exam Prep Book 7th edition and Exam prep kit

2) PMBOK Guide 4th edition as a reference

3) Kim Heldman's PMP exam prep book along with prep CDROM

4) PM Study Tests (All 4)

5) Other free material and tests available online.

Exam Preparation Experience:

I gathered all the preparation material and started my preparation seriously from the 1st week of January. It started very slowly and gained momentum after I registered for the exam in March 1st week.

Rita's book is the perfect one to get things moving and to understand the basics. It's well written and has given stress to the important points that we need to concentrate upon. I have reviewed this three times. During my initial review I prepared handwritten notes that helped me during my further reviews of this book and on the penultimate day of the exam to brush up everything.

I reviewed PMBOK guide twice and just tried to firm the concepts and process flow rather than memorizing each and every point and ITTO's. However I would say it as a must read for the preparation in order to make sure that you are aware of ALL the conepts mentioned in the book.

I used Kim's book as my last resort and as it was arranged according to the process groups, I could correlate the processes better and after my review of this book I got almost 80% of the ITTO's by heart. However it's option to refer this book for the exam if you are well versed with Rita and PMBOK, I would highly recommend this book as a reference material just prior to the exam and after them exam as the real life scenarios explained in it are wonderful!

Practice Tests: 

This is the area where I spend the majortity of my preparation time.

PMStudy Tests :- I spent $60 for the 4 preparation tests at this site and would say it has beneftitted as actual exam questions were close to these tests in the format and difficulty level. 

Rita's prep kit :- The actual exam questions are not as lenghty as some of the questions in this question bank. But it would help you to understand the concepts and identify your weak areas.

Kim's practice tests :- The questions are tougher than the actual questions, but still a very good bunch to understand the concepts and identify your weak areas.

Free online tests :- Some good ones that I tried are, Simplilearn, Oliver Lehman, PM Road trip, HeadfirstLabs etc...

Examination Day:-

Eventhough I had to travel on the penultimate day, I made sure that i get a proper rest on the day before the exam. Please make sure your that you keep yourself healthy through proper diet and rest in the last couple of days as an exam of 4 hours is tiring and it needs a lot of presence of mind and good concentration.

However, I found my exam very easy right from the word go and could carry forward the momentum all the way till the end. Thanks to some of the tough pratice questions I went through!!

The questions were of moderate length and some of them were tricky. The mathematical questions were straght forward and there were a number of concept based questions. There is no need to memorize ITTO's for clearing the paper, rather you need to connect all the 42 processes and the ITTO's through logic.

I completed my exam in 2.5 hrs by answering all the 200 questions. I had marked around 65 questions for further review. i found them tricky and spent the entire remaining 1.5 hrs in reviewing them. While I was reviweing the last few questions, my time was finished, but I was confident that I had done enough to clear the milestone of becoming PMP certified.

There is an options survey that you need to fill which I completed. After that i experience the pleasure and relief of becoming PMP certified. Woww..it was awesome!! the pleasure of achieving a great milestone and relief of knowing that your hardword and dedication didn't go in vain. I was even more happy to know that I could get 4 P's and 1 MP (which is for closing process group).

I would like to thank all my mentors who supported me directly and indirectly (including PMZilla) and hope that my experience mentioned above would help the aspirants of the most coveted PMP exam. please feel free to contact me at vivek.vaisakh@gmail.com for any help..

All the best folks!!!

Regards,

Vivek