Hello All,

I haven't actively posted on here but used some of the lessons learned to prepare for the exam. I figured I would pay it forward and share my experience and hope it helps someone else! Here are my thoughts:

STUDY PLAN

• I have been planning on taking the exam for well over a year. I've dabbled in the Rita book but never really took it too seriously until about 2 months ago.
• I strictly used the Rita book to study for the exam. I didn't use any other resources and never opened the PMBOK. Not saying this is my suggested path, but it worked for me and I felt the Rita book prepared me very well.
• I also didn't take any free exams or anything out on the web. Recieved some advice from a PMP that it can confuse you and you're not always sure about the quality of the questions so I stayed away from free exams online.
• I read the Rita book cover to cover and took each chapter quiz after finishing the chapters. I made note cards of anything in the book that I felt I didn't understand and questions I missed. The most useful resource in the Rita book is the explanation of each answer which allowed me to get a better understanding of what the question was asking and why I missed it. I averaged a 60%-70% on my first pass through the questions in the Rita book.
• I probably made 10-20 notecards per chapter. I studied these until I had a thourough understanding of each of them. I then went back and took the chapter quizzes in the book again. I averaged a 90% the second time through. Surprisingly, I didn't remember most of the questions so it was almost like going through them for the 1st time.

THE EXAM

• I was very nervous going into the exam because I didn't know what to expect in regards to the types of questions the exam would ask. The advice about the difficulty of the exam I had recieved and read was varied.
• About 20 questions in to the exam, my nerves were calmed because the questions were tough, but not to the extreme level I was thinking they would be in my head.
• I will say this: the questions in the Rita book VERY closely resemble the questions you will see on the exam. If you can get through those and score well, you should do well on the exam. AGAIN: Understanding WHY an answer is correct or incorrect is the biggest asset to the Rita questions.
• Memorization (outside of the equations and types of charts) doesn't do a whole lot of good.
• Things to study:
  • Tuckman's 5 Stages: I thought it would be enough to just know the stages, but there was probably 5 questions about this on the exam which was more than I thought there would be. It would be wise to dive a bit deeper into the 5 stages and the characteristics of a team during each phase
  • Know the different chart types. Many questions about what charts are the best to use.
  • Lots of CPI and SPI questions. Knowing that if CPI or SPI is over/under 1 and what that means will help you answer multiple exam questions

I should have posted sooner as some of the details of the exam are already starting to get fuzzy. As I said, I just wanted to post some knowledge that will hopefully help someone out in the future.

Good luck to all those PMP aspirants! Study hard! Don't make the test a monster (which I did)! If you put the hours in and understand the material you will be just fine!

Thanks,

Ryan