Dear Friends,

I wish to share my study schedule, lessons learnt etc. in the hope that some aspirants may find useful tips.

As, I've posted elsewhere, my grades are as follows

• Initiation - Moderately Proficient
• Planning - Proficient
• Execution - Proficient
• Monitoring and Control - Proficient
• Closure - Proficient
• Ethics and Responsibility - Proficient

BACKGROUND: Its my belief that someones lesson learned makes sense when presented with his/her background. In my case I started off with few advantages.

• My PM experience is around 6-7 years
• Experience includes a large project with big multi-location, multinational staff.
• Experience extends beyond PM, it includes, pre-sales and bid management, vendor management, portfolio element management
• I work with a well known multinational, so have the support of  mature project management practices, much aligned with PMBOK
• Had my first PMP contact program for PDU's in 2006 itself, but could not prepare for exam due to workload.

PREPARATION:

I had my recent PMP contact program from QAI in last week of May 2011. By mid June 2011 I received my PDU certificate. I registered with PMI. However, I got involved in some office work and was able to finally complete my application only by 18/19 July 2011. I got go ahead for exam from PMI only around 25/26 July 2011 and I booked my exam slot on July 2011 for 30th August 2011.

First and foremost I took one of the hard copy mock test provided by QAI. My score was 65%.

I started off with PMBOK on 29th July with no specific strategy in mind. By August 2nd I got an overview of the PMBOK content/book structure and then I planned a 3 round study schedule.

Round 1 was general reading line by line with some note taking. By this time couple of my colleagues cleared PMP. They earnestly advised me to take up Rita Mulcahy's Exam Prep and one PMP (2009 certified) even warned that there is no chance of passing without reading Rita's book.

Anyway, did 2nd round of reading PMBOK + Rita's book. Post study, I spent 3-4 days in consolidation and note taking. Begun taking mock exams. Scores were around 75% on average. Did some analysis.

3rd round of reading consisted of KA wise reading from PMBOK + Rita's book, instead of a single pass of one book. Mock exam scores in the 3rd  round were all in 80s.

THE EXAM:

Difficulty level is a subjective issue (I found it moderate to easy), however I say with certainity that the questions were not frivolous as one finds in many mock tests, they require you to read them with attention and analyse with a cool head.

MOCK TEST SCORES

Oliver Lehmann 75 - 70%

Prepare PM Mock 1 - 85%

Edwell - 70%

Headfirst - 84%

BrainBok Test - 78%

BrainBok ITTO Test - 80%

PmZilla 25 - 72%

Oliver Lehmann 175 - 73%

Prepare PM Mock 1 - 92%

Rita Mulchay's Chapter end tests - 81%

TechFaq360 - 86%

Exam Central - 81%

PmStudy 1 - 84%

PmStudy 4 - 83%

Beside these I had QAI provided 5 sets of online tests with scores 77%, 82%, 88%, 82%, 84%

ANALYSIS AND LESSONS LEARNT

Discipline - Forget about dining out, movies etc. Planned hours per day has to be honoured. And don't even skip a single day. This is important if all you got is a month for preparation.

Look out for good mock tests. Difficult tests with wrong answers do extensive damage to preparation. Stay clear of tests that try to be difficult by use of verbal sophistry in question. Genuine difficult questions are the ones with one liners with all 4 possible correct answers.

And test, test and test. I attempted around 4000 mock questions. Buy sets of mock tests from good ones like PMStudy. It is close to exam types and worth every paise spent.

Even easy tests are of good use. They expose you to variation in questions types without trying to be smart, being easy they allow quick feedback and that reinforces facts and concepts faster. They also prepare you for a rigour of sitting through a 200 set question on a higher difficulty level.

PMBOK is the bible. While referencing any other book look out for areas of disagreements between the two. Stick to PMBOK.

Rita's book is overhyped and dangerous for exam. Lots of non-standard terms and inconsistent process flows. I detected this during my 3rd round of study and in process have saved 8-10 questions in the exam.

Analyse your mock results. Reveiwing wrongs answers to know the correct answers is not enough. 

Which answers have I got right because I changed the response during last minute during review? Which answers have I got wrong because I changed the response during last minute during review? These will give a set of area (I had quality management a concern area during initial days of study) that you'll cover with minimal attention next time, because your are close to the concept but still harbour some confusion.

Accept that entire PMBOK cannot be covered. All of use are strong, moderate and weak in some area or other. Keep in touch with strong areas and attack wherever you are moderate. A simple cost benefit analysis will show that application of scarce time towards moderate areas will provide better results.

ITTO's are a bugbear created by non-PM's trying acquire PMP through rote learning. See how PMBOK maps to your own work. Artifacts may be used with a different name in your organization. Once done page 43 of PMBOK will make sense. If process positioning makes sense and you are able to relate a PMBOK artifact with your own, ITTO fear will vanish.

Last but not the least, wrap up all studies atleast 4-5 days prior to exam.

Good luck everyone appearing for exam.

Heartfelt thanks to this forum. No preparation is complete without advice, encouragement and benchmarking of peers in our profession, PMZilla played that role.

Regards

- Subrato