I never had the PMP in my plans. But while doing my MBA, I took a project management course in my last semester (this Spring that I just finished). It got me really interested in going for the PMP, and I'm very glad that it worked!

 

Rita (skim/fast read once)

 

Head First (read once)

 

Rita's FASTrack test

 

 

Being almost done with the MBA, and doing a university Project Management course really helped alot in giving me the first push.

 

I started with a quick read over Rita just to be familiar with the concepts, and read a bit on the weird ones. When I finished, I went back to do the end of chapters questions. Did bad in the first two, then things got much better in scope, time and cost chapters (the main things covered in the course), then bad again in the rest, especially in communication and risk. 

 

I then went through HeadFirst with a much slower read to close the knowledge gaps.. and honestly, it was a much better read than Rita with its visuals. Did the end of chapter questions, and thing were getting better over the board. 

 

Yesterday, I decided to do a mock test with the FASTrack test. VERY BAD IDEA to do this right before the real exam. I learned A LOT from fastrack, and it could've improved me greatly if I've done more practice with it.

 

I seemed to have rushed to it because I'm graudating and leaving soon, but I should've done more practice to be on the safe side.

 

 

- Master the "mathy" parts, like schedling and EV questions. The school course was a big help here, and I faced tons of these questions in the exam. Easy points here with not so many concepts to understand.

 

- Have a strong understanding of the big picture. Sometimes you get overwhelmed with all the processes and ITTOs, when you are still not sure what is the difference between scope and quality chapters. Take a step back, and understand the main steps.

 

- Maintain a log for errors in questions and main points for each chapter. Don't write everything here, otherwise it will be too big to be valuable. Many points are logically obvious or you know them by heart.. don't add them here. Focus on adding new information. Keep reviewing this document everyday.

 

- Something I was contemplating doing in case I failed was drawing or summarizing the whole 5 phases with just the key steps.. no details. Just to have a good picture of how things go. The guides focus on the knowledge areas, but I think having a strong grasp of the sequence of things over the 5 phases will be greatly helpful.

 

I hope I was of some help. I still have some shaky knowledge of some parts of the PMP, but as I said.. scheduling and EV parts boosted my score. Master these, then attend to the others.

 

Good luck!