Hello All,

I appeared and passed PMP exam today in my 1st attempt. I scored 4 Ps and 1 MP (Closing). I hope you'll find the below content useful for your preparation as well.

Background -

I am ITIL V3 Expert and work as ITIL/ITSM/SAM Consultant with ~10 yrs of total experience in these domain. My application/exam duration was about to expire on 30-Aug-13, so I finally decided to take the plunge and appear for the exam.

Preparation -

1) For my PMP application, I bought SimpliLearn online course in Aug'12, which frankly, I didn't go through at all. :-)

2) I then bought PMPrepcast Podcast by Cornelius Fitchner, which again, I didn't go through and gave up as PMBOK was so boring to read through.

3) Then, back in Jul'13, I decided to give a genuine and fair attempt @PMP exam and enrolled for Knowledge Woods PMPSure Program (4 days Class-room training). It was definitely worth the time and money. Those 4 days "actually" introduced me to PMBOK in an easier and comprehendable way. They made us solve lot of questions after each module/key concept (on average approx. 100 questions every day) which helped in clearing all the doubts.

4) Then, again, I got distracted by my office work and started feeling suspicious about my chances. I started my actual preparation from 10-Aug-13 (Total - 9 days) and spent approx. 5-6 hrs every day since.

5) First, I read PMBOK 5th Ed. thoroughly and it was like a breeze it as I already had a good grasp on the key concepts from the class-room training. It was then a matter of memorizing them for the exam.

6) Then, I took Knowledge Woods Mock test and scored 67% marks. But, I could pin point my weaker areas for further studies. Then, I went through their Slide hand-outs to clear the doubts, memorize key ITTOs and formulae.

7) Then, I went through their Mind Maps book during last 2 days and also attempted PMStudy Mock Exam (77%), SimpliLearn Mock Exam (75%), Oliver Lehmann (75 qsn - 77% & 175 qsn - 80%). I started feeling lot more confident in last 2 days at my chances to be PMP in 2 days time.

8) I was completing mock tests in approx. 2 hours and not paying lot of attention on questions, resulting in wrong answers, so pledged to spend more time in reading questions thoroughly during actual exam.

Exam Day -

- The Prometric Centre @ Gurgaon, India was very near to my office so, I managed to reached there @ 7:30 AM for my exam @ 8:00 AM.

- I finally started exam @8:10 AM after extensive frisking and solved approx. 40 questions in 1 hour, which was alarming for me that I might be spending too much time on each question. I then started marking questions for review later and speed up for the easier ones.

- I was able to complete 100 questions @ 1 hr 45 mins. Took a 3 mins break and solved remaining 100 in 1 hr 15 mins. (3 hours total).

- I then spend 30 mins on approx. 20 Marked questions and finally submitted (I guessed final Critical Path question as it was too lengthy and was feeling restless now :-D).

- It took about a minute to display result and hurray!!!!!!!!! :-) It was way better than what I expected.

OBSERVATIONS/LESSONS LEARNT :-

1) Class-room training is a must. Not only from understanding point of view, but it forces you to spend 3-4 days listening, talking, reading and thinking about PMP. You get to meet like-minded people wanting to pass PMP and learn few tips/tricks from them.

2) Go through PMBOK 5th Edn. thoroughly. I believe it's the "de-facto" book and if it makes sense to you, then don't look at other books (no offence to Rita, et all).

3) Don't forget to go through the Appendices and Glossary of Terms at the end of PMBOK.

4) Memorize/understand the key ITTOs and all 47 processes and 10 Knowledge areas.

5) Solve atleast 800-1000 questions (including Mock test) to get a grasp of actual exam question format and learn how to apply your knowledge during exam.

6) Practical Project Mgmt experience is very handy and makes the job 50% easier.

7) I thought skimming through the scenario, question and available choices and then reading the whole scenario/question in detail may help as for many questions, the scenario/context before the question was useless for the answer (e.g., all dollar values mentioned, then in the end CPI/SPI is also provided and you are asked how is the project performing, which can easily be made out from CPI/SPI).

 I thought the exam was too easy and I was very lucky/fortunate. As far as I remember, there were atleast 15 formulae questions (8 on EVM, 3 on Communication Channels, 4 on Critical Path/Float) and approx. 4 questions on Storming/Norming/Forming, etc.

I hope the above will help you in preparing and successfully passing PMP exam very soon! Please feel free to ask any specific query related to the exam/preparation.

All the best and Happy Learning! :-)

Anurag Mittal