Hello folks,

I’ve just passed my PMP exam. Eagerly waiting for this day and do my bit for this wonderful forum.

First my thanks to PMZilla for providing such a good platform.

 

Reference materials

1.       PMBOK guide, 4^th edition

2.       Headfirst PMP.

3.       Rita Mulchay, 6^th edition.

4.       How to Pass PMP, Andy Crowe

I did start with PMBOK guide and then midway moved on to Head First PMP. From beginning I felt this book extremely attractive. I refereed Rita Mulchay and Andy Crowe(even to a lesser extent than Rita) for the chapter end questions only. Didn’t get any CD for questions or otherwise. I came across the word Bootcamp only in this and other online forums!

I started preparation from last week of May. Did one complete round of PMBOK and then reviewed with the Q&A sections of Rita. Somewhere in between I shuffled between Head First PMP and Andy Crowe’s book. Finally I settled on Head First PMP and bought a book for myself. These books were already available at my work library though. I did the exercises in HF PMP. Didn’t do too many chapters from this book, but completed all the crosswords religiously!. This was the most enjoyable part of my study!.

Exam Test papers and scores. (Suggest others to publish their scores too because its very much important for aspiring candidates to understand where one stands.)

1.       Head First PMP (85%)

2.       Oliver Lehmann 175 q (75%)

3.       Andy Crowe (89%)

4.       Oliver Lehmann (70.1%)

All the above are freely available with the book or online.

 

D day !

Scheduled 9am test at Mumbai prometric centre. I wanted to avoid the rush later on.

Reached 35 min before the schedule. To talk about the security will be just going to the extremes!. As part of my work, I have worked in US and travelled quite a lot. But the security feature here was higher than anywhere I’ve experienced to date!.

Started my exam with a cool mind. Did a download of the pg 43 on the scratch paper provided, along with Chapter 7 formulas. Started the test and took a break after I completed question 85. Later on I did not take any breaks. Did practice Pranayam (ancient Indian form of deep breathing) before and during the exam. Don’t worry about learning the technique, just simple deep breathing should suffice. Your oxygen levels get depleted after some strenuous mental work and need to do a ‘refill’. While I was giving the exam, I felt that forget 200, I can appear for 1000 questions too!. But honestly speaking I was stressed out due to eye strain at the end. Had completed 20 mins before time. When I read earlier I could not understand when people said that they completed in 3 or sometimes 2.5 hours only to comeback to the 50 odd marked questions!. For me it was at one go. However I did mark 4 questions. Changed only a couple of them. Rest I did review few questions as I had some time left. Finally less than 2mins to go, I prayed and submitted the exam!. As the facilities were good, I gave a pretty good feedback for the nine questions and then finally did the last submission. I was continuously praying to God. After the blank screen, I saw the most wonderful scene appear in front of my eyes. The white screen turned blue with ‘CONGRATULATIONS’. I myself know what it meant to me. With the way I performed, I expected a decent score.

Later on I see my exam report. I scored PROFICIENT in four of the total six domains. The remaining two had Moderate. Thanked God for the success.

 

Generic tips

I referred to two good lessons learnt and took a printout and read on the evening again before the exam for the umpteenth time!.. These references are as below. My real life exam scores also did match with both of them!..

 

Time to move on!

Its two days since I completed the exam and even today morning too rechecked some of the answers from PMBOK!. Simply can’t stop thinking about it.

Its currently heavily raining in Mumbai due to the monsoon season. After the exam, headed straight to work, no breaks!. Life is tough in Mumbai and we are tougher! Jai hind!

Regards,

Sam, PMP