Hi Everyone,

By the Grace of Allah Almighty, I have passed my PMP exam yesterday with 4 P and 1 MP (closing). It has been a tiring journey but would like to share my experience as I myself have been very interested throughout my journey to keep reading the lessons learned.

My journey started in Jan'15 when suddenly one fine day around mid of Jan, I figured out I haven't done something exciting in a long time so I should go for a PMP. Out of excitement really, I filled up application form and submitted and it actually got approved (I already had taken a course during university on project management so I had the contact hours). This was the time I realized I should now go for it. I booked 26-04-15 as my exam date and took things lightly till mid of March.

Started off with PMBOK and after first 3 chapters, I realized all I was doing was just plain reading and nothing was sticking to mind. PMBOK for sure is a dry read. Switched to Headfirst and although it made sense but to me looked very childish and felt as if I was reading some secondary school story book. (I have high regards for the content though as it is written in a very easy way to make life easy for the aspirants but still I needed a more serious text). Hence I switched to Rita and this is where things started making more sense to me. Did a first pass in around 3 weeks and kept doing chapter end exercises (scoring between 60-80%).

Around end of March, I switched to PMBOK and decided to go through it in detail. I actually started backwards beginning from the end!. Stakeholder management was the first chapter and the sequence went on. I would read a chapter in PMBOK in DETAIL focusing on each and every word, would then do a quick read of the same chapter from Andy Crowe, attempt Andy Crowe chapter end questions followed by Rita chapter end questions again and PM Study chapter wise questions. I would recommend doing PM Study chapterwise free questions as they are in a tutorial mode and help you solidify the concept. Here I would like to focus on one aspect of people doing 4-5 PMBOK passes and still ending up in a failure. Quality is more important than quantity as once you are making an effort to read through the dry text of PMBOK, make your first read COUNT. Focus on every word as literally each line of PMBOK has a meaning. I could manage this detailed dry read only because I had read Rita once and had laid the foundations. If you know the basic concepts, PMBOK will make much more sense although I would still say it is really BORING for sure.

Throughout the boring dry read of PMBOK, I had pmzilla to keep me sane. Hats off to this forum where everyone is like a community, ready to help and encourage everyone. I was most interested in lessons learned section as reading first hand experiences of people made me visualize how it would be like once I sit in the exam. Attempted 30 tough questions on pmzilla very early on during my preparation and managed only 50%. However it improved to 77% on my second attempt 3 weeks before the exam.

By second week of April, I managed to finish PMBOK and had 10 days to go through the practise tests. Spent an entire day searching which tests to attempt as there is so many available online but only wanted to focus on quality rather than quantity. Attempted PM Study free (78%), Oliver Lehmann (75 Q - 77.3% and 175Q - 69%), PMZEST free (56%, big disappointment!), Simplilearn free (70%), Scordo (18,17,16 - 82%, 80%, 78%). This was the time I needed something really tough to push my mind to the limits and after a careful consideration, I decided to by pmzilla e book (the only paid questions I attempted). 6 days before the exam, I bought it and went into a deep dive. I would certainly consider this $12.99 investment as probably one of my best ever spending. The questions were surely tough and I could only manage 60% in 200Q and 61% in 100Q but this gave me a real exposure to toughness. I spent 2 days on this book reading each and every detail to get the real concept and I should say after this attempt, most of my perception changed and I started thinking in a more organized way, looking at the bigger picture. I would also recommend project management institute 50 free questions as the quality is very good (72%).

2 days before the exam, did a quick pass from Rita to focus on whatever terms were confusing. One day before the exam, did nothing at all and I recommend doing nothing. Don't even think about the exam, rather go watch a nice movie and relax. However I made a big mistake of eating out the night before the exam and it turned me upside down. Woke up 7 am in the morning with exam scheduled for 12:30 pm and had high fever and food poisoning. Really started considering not to appear for the exam but my wife kept pushing me on to go for it. By 10 am, felt a little better to sit so quickly went through ITTOs. I would recommend not to memorize ITTO as it is practically almost impossible to remember every ITTO in the exact sequence. Rather just before the exam with a fresh mind,  do a quick pass and things will stick to mind as the concept is already there and just doing a plain ITTO reading will make sense with sticking some of them to mind for the exam. Outputs are never an issue as you would know by the process name what is the output. Even some of the T&T would also come to mind but inputs can be tricky. So before the exam, a quick review can help sticking some in the mind.

Left 11:30 am for the exam and lost the way. Maybe the health issue got over me as I knew where the exam centre was but somehow ended up in the middle of nowhere. Had to engage a taxi to guide me to the exam centre (height of stupidity I know!). Would recommend to rather hire a taxi than self drive as if a 15 year experience of driving knowing all the routes can fail, anyone can! Reached exam center 15 min late and a further 20 min went by finding the parking as it was the peak rush hour time. However exam centre people were cooperative and let me enter the exam.

Didn't spend anytime doing brain dump as just wanted to enter into the ring and so I DID. First 10 questions were confusing but than somehow things eased and started going smoothly. I clocked 50Q in 1 hour and 100 Q in 109 min. Took a 1 min stretching brake only and started again. Clocked 150Q at 190 min (these 50 were actually tough and consumed most time). Was left with 50 Q in 50 min and clicked 200 Q with 6 seconds left. My idea throughout practise exams has been to mark nothing. Keep spending decent time even if you get tough questions because once you read a question and go into a thinking mode, better to come out from that thinking mode with a solid answer. By the time you would finish 200 Q, your mind would already be tired and literally blocked to re-start the review process and again reading same question would only waste time to start going into that same thinking mode all over again. However this is my personal idea on how to go about and everyone has their own set of rules on attempting the questions.

Questions were mostly situational covering all areas with special focus on risk, quality, procurement and change management. Change managerment questions were particularly confusing and had to apply elimination methodolgy to get to the best answer. Around 5 direct ITTO questions and 9 calculations from cost and time section only (this was disappointing as I was expecting more and preaped well for that). 3 questions on decision tree, 2 on network diagram and only one on communication channel calculation. This was the last question and probably the toughest one. Comm channel questions are supposed to be a breeze but this question actually took my mind on a swing as the statement was so confusing that I had to re read 7 times to eventually understand. A 5 second job really once you understand to pluck values in formula and find the answer. However overall, exam was around 75-80% situational questional and will surely test a deep understanding of project management concepts.

It has already been a long read so to cut short, 2 months solid preperation should be good enough. Make sure you know PMBOK and you REALLY and TRULY know it. Focus on quality time spend and once you are making an effort to go through the dry text, make that effort count. Reading again and again can be boring and more boring (I assume). Attempt good quality tough questions (again quality over quantity) and go with a mind set that practise exam is only for preperation. Don't demoralize in case you get low score on a practise exam as the more mistakes you make, more you will learn. My practise exams were not high scoring but managed 4 P because I learned a lot while reviewing wrong answers. I would highly recommend project management 50 Q and pmzilla ebook (for sure) along with other good quality questions.

I have written a detailed LL as it would be great if my words can help relax future aspirants. If someone attempting PMP out of sheer excitement only and a high fever on exam day can end up cracking the exam, you surely can! Please let me know if I can be of further help to anyone. I will be occasionaly visiting pmzilla but since I am going for a month long vacation, I can be reached more quickly at mw.waqas81@gmail.com. Time for me to start partying and best of luck to all future PMP aspirants.

Regards,

Muhammad Waqas, PMP