I passed my PMP exam on December 26th, needless to say I am ecstatic and I thought I can share my experience here for other fellow PMP aspirants.

Background – I am software professional with more than 10 years of experience. All the while I have worked on projects involving system implementations, roll outs and upgrades. So I had some background about how projects are managed in real life and I thought that helped me a lot while I was preparing for my exams. The real life work experience also helped me answer questions in the exam.

I am full time working professional, and have 2 small kids. One 3 year old and second one is infant, so I had very little time to study. I used to get up early morning @ 4 and study, since that was the only time I could manage out of my busy schedule.

Study Material & Mock tests – I know this is going to surprise a lot of people, but YES, I used only PMBOK for my preparation. I did not use any other book although I used Rita and Scordo for mock tests but as far as reference study material is concerned I only relied on PMBOK. It is my experience that you need to really know PMBOK well in order to pass the exam. I also find using multiple books distracting. So if you like the approach of Rita then stick with it don’t refer any other book, it will help you keep your focus and approach straight. I personally didn’t like the approach of Rita.

I also approached mock exams differently than probably most of others would do. Because I had prior experience in project management I started with mock exams (Rita’s knowledge area wise tests) and I was glad to find out that I was already scoring around 50% in most of them. This really helped me in identifying my strengths and weaknesses, which in turn helped to concentrate more on topics in which I was lacking.

After studying for almost a month I tried my hands on the exams again. I used Oliver Lehmann (75Q & 175 Q), Scordo (1000 Q), Certchamp (200 Q) as far as mock exams are concerned and I used Rita’s book for knowledge area specific questions. I was always in the range of 75-80%. I thought Oliver Lehmann and Certchamp questions of very good level, close to exam like questions. Meanwhile I had already booked my appointment at prometric for December 26^th.

Exam – I found real exam to be much easier than my expectation. My math section of exam went really well, I can remember almost 25-30 questions involving calculations (EMV, EV, CPM, lease vs buy). I got all of them right.

Also there were surprisingly no questions on ethics, I don’t know if they have discontinued that section. First 50 questions went tough for me and then I eased through the reminder of the exam. Almost all the questions I marked for review were from first 50.

Time wise I had 40 minutes remaining for reviewing my marked questions. People who are concerned about time management would be happy to hear that 4 hours are more than enough, even if you have to read some questions multiple times in order to understand them better. Please expect 15-20 such questions which you may be required to read multiple times and probably you still may not have a clue about what is being asked.

I don’t think memorizing ITTO is required as I don’t remember any direct question on ITTO. But yes it is absolutely necessary to memorize all the processes and sequence in which they are done. I found a you tube video by Richard Kraneis, which helped me in doing that. You can also visit his webpage @ www.richardkraneis.com for some tips and tricks.

Finally I wish all the best to all the PMP aspirants.