Good day folks!,

Finally after painstaking months of preparation, I cleared the PMP exam on 2nd September 2014 on first attempt. The magic word ‘CONGRADULATIONS…’ on the screen brings in a great relief and a sense of satisfaction, especially after putting all those hard work and the long hours of personal time in reaching this far and achieving this key milestone.

On the preparation front, I read PMBOK twice, gone through the glossary section of PMBOK, which will really help you to familiarize with few terms which aren’t mentioned in PMBOK chapters. Rita Mulcahy’s PMP exam Prep is another excellent source which helped me in preparing the exam and understanding the concepts especially those related to mathematical problems. I have practiced all those simulation exams, which are available online for free. From my personal experience, There are quite a number of these simulation exams online (say like oliverlehmann, preparepmp, headfirstpmp are few good online simulation sources for free), which will give you a bit of real time experience, the tips provided in answer keys will also help you to approach the questions in a different perspective. The more you practice, the more confident you will become in appearing for the PMP exam and these simulation exams also helps you to identify the areas you need to focus more.

The questions were spread across all the process groups. There were many scenarios based questions on procurement and change control. Types of contracts, quality, Human resource management tools and techniques etc. Questions related to new products / start of a project and what the sponsor should do or a project manager should perform. Quite good number of questions on procurement closure. Few questions on WBS and scope statements, few on crashing, fasttracking, 2-3 questions on Tuckman ladder model, with an indirect reference of this model using team building activities.

On the problematic questions, there were questions on Critical path (using Finish to Finish relationships), at least got about 4-5 questions on EVM, in those few with BAC, % completion and Actual cost asking to calculate the earned value. About 2-3 questions on communication channel (some with the number of channels provided and to calculate the stakeholders). couple of questions on EMV (e.x. R1, R2, R3, R4 risks and their probability and impact and Management reserves asking which risk to focus first). A control chart with data running for x days, asking which day’s data to be focused on etc. 2-3 questions from PERT.

You can expect questions with big charts and paragraphs running in length (in my case there were few such questions) , but don’t get panic, all those may not be needed for answering the questions, many will be just dis-tractors, focus on what’s been asked . If you aren't sure of what the answer is then eliminate the worst possible answers, and from the rest, pick the one which will ‘solve’ the problem defined. Unless you are clear of the basics, it will be really tough to tackle. So keep reading, understand concepts well and practice as much as you can before the real exam.

Thanks for all the tips and help provided by this forum. For all those out there who are planning to appear, All the very best!!