Passed on Nov 3rd.

Submitted by Jay22 on Sun, 11/04/2012 - 20:16

Good evening everyone,

I passed the PMP exam on the 3rd of November and thought I'd share the lessons that I learned during this journey. This isn't an easy journey but with some hard work and lot of common sense, you can do it!

I started my preparation around end of June this year when I started the application and started gathering the information needed for preparation. I had taken a couple of project management & software management courses in grad school, so I was familiar with the material but needed to take it to the next level to prepare myself for the exam and of course, learn the PMI lingo.

I started studying seriously around last week of July - started with Rita's book but didn't really like it one bit. Thought the tone was pretty negative she makes the subject material much harder than what it really is. A colleague of mine suggested Headfirst PMP, so decided to give it a shot. I instantly liked it and thought the material was explained in a very easy to understand manner. I didn't really used PMBOK (blasphemous, I know), but after each chapter from Headfirst, I perused over PMBOK to make sure that I didn't really missed anything and made sure I noted any new concepts/definitions I encountered from the PMBOK. I was able to cover the whole material in 2 months. I made sure I did all the exercises from the Headfirst book (found them quite beneficial - they cleared my concepts very well).

In Oct, I gave the following tests (along with the scores):

Head First - 85%

Exam Central - 75%

Oliver Lehman (75 questions) - 70%

Oliver Lehman (175 questions) - 75%

PM Study 1 - 70%

PMP for Sure (100 questions) - 67%

Initially, I had scheduled my test for 3rd week of Oct, but due to some personal commitments, had to postpone it to 3rd of November. One day before the exam, I made sure I revised all the notes that I had prepared and went over the glossary from PMBOK to ensure I haven't missed any key definition or terms.

The exam - well, I found the exam quite hard, much tougher than any mock I gave. I don't think any mock test I took was equivalent to the real test. The exam had 2-3 weird network problems which were quite hard to solve and took a lot of time. The EMV based numerical problems were easy, and I think there were 10-12 of those. The scenario based questions were quite complicated and at least 30% were quite lengthy. After around 60 questions, I didn't think I'll clear the exam but I kept going - took a one minute break after every 40-50 questions and took a 5 min break after 100 questions were done. I was done with the 200 questions around 3 hours, 10 min mark and after than started reviewing around 30 questions which I had marked. Ended the exam 10 mins before time and after the survey got the message that I have passed with 2 Ps and 3MPs.

Tips - make sure that you understand how the processes interact with each other and if a certain process has a certain input and output, make sure you understand why they are there. You will see a lot of questions based on ITTOs and a good understanding is necessary. Don't try to solve every question from every mock test you find online. Some of them are of pretty bad quality and won't help you much. After you solve the test, make sure you go over your mistakes and focus on your gaps.

If you have questions, feel free to send me a message. I also have some random documents that I found beneficial during my preparation and I'll be happy to send them across to you guys if you'd like.

All the best too all the applicants. I hope you're successful in this journey of yours.

 

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.
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go4pmp

Sun, 11/04/2012 - 23:36

Congratulations on passing the exam. Thanks for the detailed write-up.

Couple of questions for you, if you don't mind.

1. I agree with you views on Rita, however I have heard that her scenario based questions are pretty good. Any comments?

2. Regarding ITTO's, I am trying to understand how to learn them. For ex: Histogram is one of the TT in Perform Quality Control. Do I need to know every detail of what Histogram is, or just High level and the fact that it is a TT and remember other TT's for that process.

3. Do they mention the actual process name or twist it? For ex: will they call it Perform Quality Control or some other detailed sentence describing the process so that we are confused with the Perofrm Quality Assurance.

4. Did you see any questions outside the PMBOK? I am still debating if I need to practice Rita's questions.

 5. How many negavtive questions did you see, like the ones with Except, not in the following.

Thanks in advance

Tensed PMP guy

Jay22

Mon, 11/05/2012 - 00:10

Thanks, mate. It's understandable that you're tense, but make a proper study regime and stick with it - I am sure you'll do well.

1. I don't think I can answer that, I didn't do any questions from that book except from the first chapter.

2. No, you don't need to know every detail about every TT but you surely need to understand why that TT is being used for that process and what does it do. For example, you won't see a question asking you to explain what Monte Carlo Simulation does in detail, but you surely need to know that it's a data modelling tool and understand why it's used for a particular TT.

3. I would say you would see questions on both. There would be a scenario and you need to decipher what process they're talking about. In some cases, you will see the process name as well. But majority won't be straight forward.

4. Yes, I did. There were a couple of questions which I didn't had any clue about and they used some terms which I have never seen before. My advice would be to get one book and stick with it. Don't try to read too many book, but solving questions from multiple books won't hurt.

5. Umm, hard to remember, but I would say about 30% or so out of the scenario based question.

Let me know if you have more questions.

gachow

Mon, 11/05/2012 - 01:08

 Hi Jay,

First of all, congrats you for being PMP.

is that many questions need calculation (EVM, EAC, SPI....etc) and questions about contract type (FP, CPIF, T&M), need calculation of the payment for this contract??

Cheers

Gary

 

Jay22

Mon, 11/05/2012 - 01:10

Thanks, Gary. I don't think I saw any contracts based question which requires calculations. There was one based on make or buy analysis, though.

go4pmp

Mon, 11/05/2012 - 13:46

Thank You for your responses. Appreciate it.

anand2381

Mon, 11/05/2012 - 04:37

Hi Buddy,


Congrats on ur PMP.


Tips - make sure that you understand how the processes interact with each other.


What kind of questions we get which needs this process interaction understanding and how do we prepare for it?


Any exampel will be helpful.

Jay22

Mon, 11/05/2012 - 11:12

Hi Anand - As an example, a question may ask you what would you do first after the sponsor has cancelled the project you're working on. For that, you should know the correct sequence of events and processes. Another example could be the difference b/w verify scope and close project. Though they are in difference process groups, you should know the relationship b/w the two and what comes first.

Bottomline - when you see a process, try to visualise and understand the ins and outs of it instead of just trying to memorize the ITTOs, that will help you a lot.

Vishwanath

Mon, 11/05/2012 - 05:10

 Congrats dear friend,

         Could you kindly share the material at vishwanathshivaranjani@gmail.com.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Vishwanath

admin's picture

admin

Mon, 11/05/2012 - 07:58

Congratulations Jay. I agree with the tip you mentioned, which is dont try to solve every question from every mock tests as the quality of mock test may not be good, but I would just add that take some mock tests which are reputed sources seriously.


 

Jay22

Mon, 11/05/2012 - 11:14

Yes, certainly, I agree. It's very important to do 4-5 good quality mocks before you take the test. Anything more than that, in my opinion, is overkill. That time should be spent on focussing on the gaps and going over the mistakes you made so that they don't come back and bite you in the real exam.

Krishna_23

Mon, 11/05/2012 - 08:16

Hi,


I am also preparing for PMP exam.. Can you please send my any useful documents.. My id is - Kandareddy@yahoo.com.


Also, do you have any soft copy of Headfirst PMP Book?.


Thanks,


Krishna


 


 


 


 

jotkumar

Mon, 11/05/2012 - 10:44

hi

 

thanks for your tip.. it would really help.. i have another 2 weeks to go..

it would be great if you can share the documents- that you have, my gmail id is : jotkumar@gmail.com

 

thanks

kumar

Reeta

Mon, 11/05/2012 - 16:51

 Hi,

        Jay22, Cogrates for your PMP. Can you share the "random documents that I found beneficial during my preparation" in my mail id manoj625@hotmail.com

 

regds

Reeta

puneetarora1978 (not verified)

Tue, 11/06/2012 - 03:19

Hi Jay

Regarding the process interacion and ITTO's ,can you prescribe a logical way on how to understand ITTO's , i tend to forget them and also are there any paid mock exams you took

also can u  send those random docs at puneet01.arora@keane.com

smartcode

Sun, 11/11/2012 - 17:22

 Really something great to pass the exam.

congratulations

Are you with me that the difficulty of the exam depends on the features of the applicant. I heard that one of my friends found the exam is very difficult in India so he failed but very easy in Egypt.

he said also the master degree student will have varying difficulties that non-master degree.

Actually I failed the exam it was very difficult for me . I found lot of lengthy question which took from me too much time to anderstand its english.

What is your opinion

thanks alot

ismail

Jay22

Tue, 11/13/2012 - 14:11

Thanks, Ismail. It's hard to answer that, to be honest. I took the exam in the US and this was my first attempt, so can't really say whether it's generally hard/difficult. I have a masters and took a couple of project mgmt courses, so the study material wasn't new for me, I had an idea about most of the things in the PMBOK.

When I read the LLs, I feel like most exams are moderately hard, not too easy but not on the difficult side either - I would say 6/10, with 10 being most difficult. In my case though, it was 7.5-8/10 - atleast 30-35% harder than pmstudy and pmp4sure which are generally considered benchmarks for this exam.

Hope this helps, let me know if you have more questions.

AYMAN

Tue, 11/13/2012 - 18:25

Congratulations for passing the PMP exam, I am taking it soon, i would appreciate it if you can send me the random documents that you mentioned, I am sure I will benefit from them.

Thanks a lot

My e-mail is : aymanedelbi@gmail.com