Dear PMP Enthusiast,

I am an Engineer and I passed the PMP – 5^th Edition on 7^th April 2014 in the first attempt with 3P and 2MP (Planning & Closing) with about 2.5 months preparation time. The key for me was that I memorized the ITTO’s or at least seriously attempted to and probably could remember about 95% of them on the day of the exam. I am a serious advocate of memorizing ITTO’s as:

         i.            It is a very easy process to memorize, although very painstaking as explained below.

       ii.            It will help you understand and appreciate nooks and corners of PMP processes.

      iii.            It will help you pass the exam.

     iv.            It will penetrate into your subconscious and will be a well-developed tool for your project management work.

I don’t know if memorizing will be your cup of tea. I know I haven’t performed better than many who have not memorized. However, I felt confident while doing it and it made me understand chapters. It gave me a backbone to build on. I felt that I learned something from PMP and have taken something from the whole process of PMP certification.

My PMP certification story is as follows:

I researched online on many forums like Pmzilla, etc. and got a basic idea of the PMP certification process and then went ahead and registered on September 2013. Started reading PMBOK immediately but stopped as I got busy with work. Only around end of January 2014 I got serious about taking the exam.

I started again with PMBOK but I found it was lacking in context, it was more like a dictionary of processes. So I started with a very fast reading of Headfirst. Did all the tests, exercises and Q&A’s. It took me about 20 days to finish reading headfirst - again busy with work.

Around this time (end of Feb 2014), I knew I had to go on a tour on 9^th April and so I knew if I don’t give my exam before that I would not be able to think about it for another few months. So I started to prepare to give the exam around first week of April. I did not book my date till 2^nd April just to be safe- But the time pressure was real as I did not want to go for the tour as a failure and worked my ass off with laser sharp focus and commitment. I think without this time constraint my PMP exam would not have happened, just shows that constraints make projects happen!

After that I reread each headfirst chapter and then read the same chapter in PMBOK. Then wrote down all the ITTO’s for the chapter - again and again till I got them right. It would take 3 to 4 attempts and would take 1 hour. This solidified my understanding of the processes. I would understand the flow of things and how the PMP worked like a well-oiled machine. Each document, input the processes, the output started making sense. I would make short forms/stories/poems, etc. to memorize as required.

After that I would read the same chapter in Rita to sink everything in. I would also do the entire Q&A at the end of Rita and Scordo and note my score in an excel worksheet. Before calling it a day I would write the ITTOs for the chapter once more to confirm I have a grasp on it. It would take me 3 days max to complete each chapter this way.

Before starting a new chapter, I would write down previous chapter ITTO’s that I had already memorized. As more and more chapters got completed I did not have the time to write all down so I would only do the last 2 or 3 chapter ITTO’s. Whenever I would do a previous chapter ITTO, I would forget many key elements including entire processes. So I would write them down again and again till I remembered over 90% correctly. Only after this I would start a new chapter.

This way I completed all chapters of PMBOK. After that I would spend half my study time doing a memory dump of all chapter ITTOs and the other half doing a full mock exam or checking/correcting a mock exam I did the previous day or rereading all chapters from RITA for my 3^rd and final reading. Somedays I didnot have time to do ITTOs or mocks, etc. 

By now I could write ITTOS for all chapter and get about 80% correct. Most frustrating would be forgetting key elements. However, I would just correct my mistakes – understood why the element is there in the first place and write down again and again till I get it right. I gained much insight in this stage. Each element of the ITTOs is there for a reason. And this reason gets understood only if you have the work experience dealing with it with it or you go through the memorization path and realize you keep forgetting about this element and then wonder why it is there in the PMP process in the first place, refer to PMBOK and realize how important the element is. Writing down all chapter ITTOs, correcting mistakes and writing all chapter ITTO’s till I got over 95% right would take me 3 hours at this stage. Every day from now on I would write all chapter ITTO’s and it started taking less and less time and I started getting more and more correct. On the day of the exam which was scheduled at noon, I wrote all chapter ITTOs in the morning in under 30 mins! Using shortforms or initials only, etc. My point is that it gets easy only after you cross the impossible stage!

Regarding mock exams, as I spent majority of my time with ITTOs I only had enough time to do a mock exam on a given day and had to use the next day to correct my mistakes. towards the end, on somedays I didnot do ITTOs as I was very busy, but I tried to avoid this. While correcting mistakes, I would note all mistakes on excel. I would also check ALL answers, even if I got it right. I did not pay for any mock exam. I did 4 mock exams and about 5/6 Scordo set of 50 Questions. I was scoring on average 78% and was spending less than a minute on each question. Intrestingly, at the beginning of the mock exam I could visualize which process the question is talking about, what are the ITTO’s for that particular process. Towards the end of the mock, with all the mental gymnastics,  I would start forgetting all the ITTOs and would panic – however I still found the questions very easy and I still understood the process well – Just started forgetting the ITTOs. By practicing more mocks this issue also disappeared. I could call out any process ITTO correctly even on the 200^th Question. Please note that I did not need to call out ITTOs for over 90% of the questions as they were easy.  Only few questions required ITTO of the processes to be called out. By going back to the ITTOS the correct answer was easy to tap into.

On April 2^nd I thought I have everything covered and went ahead and booked for 7^{th April 14}. Few days before the exam I started panicking as I would forget my ITTO’s and had to keep polishing my memory. I felt because of this I did not understand the big picture and was just depending on memory. Read some websites that advocated not memorizing the ITTOs but understand them, etc. Although it was a foolish thing to read such posts and website at this stage – I realized I did both – I memorized and understood the context and reason behind ITTOs – I went a step further by putting in effort to memorize ITTOs. Day before the exam I was really stressed and I felt I would just forget everything so I decided to do one more full test exam. This made me feel better.

On day of the exam I said forget it – if I fail it is not the end of the world. I went for the exam not confident but indifferent. I found the exam to be very easy. Infact, it was easier than any of the mocks I took. Few questions could have had two correct answers but when I thought about it by visualizing ITTO’s – the answer was obvious. I didnot do any memory dump as I had remembered all ITTO's, formulas, etc.

Materials I used were:

HEADFIRST 3rd Edition- Very good book to start with and get the momentum going and to feel confident.  It really makes the PMP easy to understand. But that is it – you cannot use it to pass the exam. The 200 questions at the end are very good – I felt the exam was close to this.

PMBOK 5th Edition– Amazing book when you have read Headfirst already. Each chapter is written by a different author and the style changes with each chapter. 1 or 2 chapters could be better written while majority are very smooth to read. Overall a very good book – I will be referring to this throughout my career.

RITA8th Edition – Very good book to finalize understanding of chapters and cover knowledge gaps. I particularly found the chapter on Quality and Risk amazing. A must read for PMP exam.

SCORDO TESTS – The free SCORDO test at PMI website were good to do. I did all the chapter wise tests while doing all chapter preparations as well as the 15^th to 18^th 50Qs. PMP Qeustions were very simmillar to this.

Oliver Free Tests – Both the 75Q and 175Q are very tough and good. It helped me understand the Network diagram questions well. PMP Exam was not like this test.

Examcenteral, PMStudy and Simplilearn – Good exams to practice on. Not the best and defiantly mistakes in language, etc, but worth it if you don’t want to pay for mocks.

PMZilla tough 30 – As the name suggests, its Really tough 30 Qs.PMP Exam was not like this test. This is good to not be over confident and realise how questions can be framed to be difficult.

Some really pathetic free tests are also available on the internet, I cannot remember the name but they are popular on such forums. I found the questions were bad in logic, English, Grammer, etc. I stoped after doing 10/15 questions. Avoid these as the can destroy your understanding of Chapters.

Also note, the above mentioned mock test websites have their own pass/fail methods - usally around 75%. They have to sell their products and so I think they mix the mock exam questions optimally to be as close to the pmp exam and yet just tough enough so that you fail their exam and feel compelled to buy their products.

Sometimes you will find different tests giving different answers for the same questions. I dont know what to do if such a question shows up on the exam. I had planned to just go with what I thought was right.

My scores for the mocks are below for reference.

All the best in your journey!

Nishant