Just wanted to take a minute and share with everyone that I passed the PMP exam today.

This was my first try so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

To prepare I read the PMBOK along with Rita’s Guide. After reading each once and skimming through once I started trying practice questions. I used Oliver Lehmanns 175, Rita’s Fast Track v8, and Scordo’s questions that can be found on the pmi.org website under e-reads.

I was scoring between 80-83% on Rita’s Fast Track

I scored 79% on Lehmanns 175 questions 4 days before the exam

And typically scored in the low 80’s on Scordo’s questions

I have heard that a lot people typically use up all their time for the exam. When I was doing the practice exams I was typically done with lots of time to spare so I was not sure if I was just quick or if the practice tests were shorter to go through. Turns out the practice tests are a good judge of the time it will take to write the exam. I had an hour and a half left when I finished my 200^th question. I took an extra 30 minutes to review questions I was not sure of. So I walked out of the room with a full hour to spare.

I was quite happy with the result;

Initiating: Proficient

Planning :Proficient

Executing: Proficient

Monitoring: Moderately Proficient

Closing: Moderately Proficient

So 3 P’s and 2 MP’s.

I found most questions to be straight forward.

I never spent time memorizing the ITTO’s. I had a fairly good understanding of them but I never took time to just straight memorize them.

I did not have a question on PTA which was good because I didn’t really know how to do it.

I had 4 or 5 questions on Forming, Storming, Norming, etc.

The Earned Value questions were straight forward.

The only formulas I used were for CV, SV, CPI, SPI, EAC = BAC/CPI, communication channels, (O+4*M+P)/6

Nothing on standard deviation.

Two or three control charts

Had to identify the incorrect line on the RACI chart (the one with two A’s)

Difference between quality assurance and quality control

Only one or two critical path questions

Couple questions on crashing and fast tracking

One tricky question that almost caught me sleeping said something like there are 4 stakeholders in region A, 3 stakeholders in region B and 10 communication channels in region C. How many people must the project manager communicate with?

I didn’t really have any ethics questions.

There were some tough questions on there, but overall I felt the exam was pretty straight forward. If you can do the practice exams then you can do the real thing.

Hope this info helps!