I took the PMP Exam yesterday (Nov 25, 2012) and passed "The First Time" with 4 Proficients and 1 Moderately Proficient 

Below I will tell you...

• How I studied
• What I studied
• How long the studying and exam took
• I will also tell you what to do during the exam to pass.

Studying...

I put in only 3 weeks of preparation for PMP exam.  I had time off work, so I studied 6 hours a day M- F, and 2 hrs every Saturday... so 96 hours of total study time.

Week 1 - I read Rita McCulay's 7th Edition cover to cover and did all practice tests twice.  Everytime I got an answer wrong, I would go back to book to fully understand and redo the question until I got every question right in the book.

I memorized Rita's Process Groups flow on pg 41, more elaborate then PMBOK's pg 43.  This helped me visualize every concept and where it was in the process groups.  

Week 1- I read PMBOK 4th edition to page 150, its reads like an encyopedia and was too dry for me.  After page 150 I decided that I would skim the rest of the book, which I did in 1-2hr.  Make sure you study the glossary at the back and know the terms, and understand the difference between whats in the project plan and whats in project documents (see appendix for this).

Week 1- I downloaded several study notes packages off of PMZilla's forum made by fellow PMP exam aspirants who passed. This is one of my best moves and biggest time savers by far. Here is who I downloaded...

1. Abhishek's Version - Rajesh Nair PMP Notes.xls (Almost all you need) 
2. ITTO's by Jaya-Prashin (Perfect summary of all ITTOs in excel)
3. 00_PMP_Formulae_CheatSheet_Anil_Tanguturi.pdf (All formulas are here)

Week 2- Read thru all of 'Abhishek's Version - Rajesh Nair PMP Notes.xls' , I read this slowly and throughly making sure I understood everything.

Week 2- I read thru ITTOs excel sheet by Jaya over an over again understanding the different Tools an Techniques.  Understanding how they were used was better than memorizing because I could easily deduct what process they would be used in.  I never did memorize ITTO's, apparently there are 517 for all processes.  I decided the gain was not worth the agonizing hours I would spend memorizing this. Some people use mnemonics to memorize the tools and techniques - I didn't.

Week 2- I went thru Anil_Tanguturi's formula sheet, copying it to a notebook, over and over again until I had it memorized. 

Week 2- I registered for BrainBok $50 membership.  I took every test on that site twice.  For me taking the tests after having a foundation from reading Rita's Book was great.  Whenever I would get a wrong answer, I would go to the PMBOK or Rita's book to learn the concept until I fully understood then retake the tests.

Week 2- Results from BrainBok tests

• Mastering PMBOK Guide 4 -50 questions: 58% 1st time, 74% 2nd time, 95% 3rd time
• The Formula Challenge 75 Qs: 70% 1st time, 85% 2nd time
• PMP Practice Exam 1 200 Qs: 58% 1st time, 78% 2nd time, %84 3rd time
• I tried their ITTO Quiz for 2hrs and learnt ITTOs by trial and error.  

Week 3- Just took tests over and over and over again, studying where my gaps presented themselves. I took the following tests.

• Oliver Lehman 75 Qs free (these questions were tough) - got 78% first go
• Head First ('O'Reilley) 200Qs- got 84% first go.
• PMStudy 1 200Qs free (most like actual PMP exam) - got 86% first go
• SimpliLearn 200Qs free (found these questions hard to understand grammatically - thought alot of the answers were wrong too) Got 70% first time, would not reccomend this testing site.

Week 3- I memorized elements of...

• Statement of Work (SOW)
• Project Charter
• Project Scope Statement,
• Pg 43 all knowledge areas an process groups in PMBOK 4th edition
• Perform Integrated Change Control
• Closing a project/procurement sequence of activities

2 Days before exam

Make sure you know where you testing location is and how to get there. 

1 Day beffore exam

Relax - don't study, get a good exercise in and go to bed early. 

*Unfortunately, my brain wouldn't shut off, and I got two hours of sleep. 

Day of exam

Get to the exam center 1hr early.  Do a practice brain dump in your notebook, make sure you can brain dump everything in under 12 minutes.

Sitting at your testing station

You get a 15 minutes to take a tutorial on how to use the computer.  The tutorial can be read in under 3 minutes and basically tells you how to use a computer mouse and calculator. I used the 12 minutes remaining to brain-dump the following.... 

• Pg 43 of PMBOK- Knowledge Area and Process Group Matrix, 
• All formulas: EVM,  # Communication Channels, PERT, Sigma & Varience, PTA, FV, PV, SYD, etc..
• Contract Types (ordered from left to right in risk to buyer)
• Components of Project Charter, SOW, Proj Scope Statement
• I was able to dump all of that down in 12 mintues on 3 pages... so you can too

Test Begins....

I paced my self to answer 50 questions an hour, which gives you 40 minutes to review your test at the end of the exam.  

I 'marked for review' every question I was hesistant on during the exam... by the end of the exam I had marked about 30 questions I was unsure about... I changed about 5 of the answers.

Types of questions on the exam...

• Lots of scenario based questions.
• Lots of questions on Monitoring and Controlling and Perform Integrated Change Control.
• About 10 questions on straight ITTOs (see it doesn't pay to memorize)
• Lots of questions on Network Diagram
• Lots of EVM questions

I finished my first pass at the exam at 3h:20m exactly, I took a washroom break, and came back in and review my 30 marked questions - changed 5 and then submitted exam.

The monitor goes white for about 2 min, then you are asked to take a survey.... then monitor goes white for about 1 min, then I got the 'Congratulations... you've passed your PMP exam' 

• Profecient in Initiating
• Proficient in Planning
• Proficient in Executing
• Proficient in Monitoring and Controlling
• Moderately Proficient in Closing

That's my lessons learned... thanks for reading.... study smart - not hard.  I would say if you're focused and you make a study plan, test your self frequently, fill your knowledge gaps, memorize the key areas noted above, then you can rock the exam within 3 weeks of preparation.

I was motivated to get this done before end of the year because I heard PMBOK 5th Edition is coming out January 2013, it has over 600 ITTOs and 20% more content - I imagine that exam will be much more dificult than the PMBOK 4th edition exam.

Cheers,

Chris