PMP exam - Lessons Learned

This article in basically for the group 'I want to be PMP' but due to post limitations of 600 characters, I had to create an article.

I passed my exam on 19th March and it was my 2nd attempt, last attempt was on 11th Jan 2016.

I would like to thank PMI the most that they keep on modifying PMBOK after some time this somehow acts as a trigger for some of folks like me and it happened in both the attempts which I made for this exam.

On Jan 11th ‘16, the news was that that there would be some changes in the existing PMBOK 5 so I rushed through preparations to attempt the exam but I knew that I lacked preparation and was somewhat sure that I would plunge.

After failing, I decided to reattempt within 30 days but kept on delaying due to some or other priorities, then finally I gained momentum in August 2017 and decided a date 17th Sep ‘17 after hearing about 26th March EOL for PMBOK5 but again lost momentum after a day or two, again decided a date as 19th Feb but no concrete preparation was in place, then finally, I decided to buy membership on 18th Jan '18 and started preparing thoroughly, being satisfied with my preparation I filled in the application form on 9th Feb and submitted exam fee on 18th Feb for 19th March exam.

Cut long story short, unless you dent your pocket and that also in dollars you do not gain momentum.

Exam breakdown

Some of the major topics which I remember appeared in my exam for just an idea to the aspirants:

Risk, Stakeholder, Communication and Quality found these as the major KAs appearing in the exam and most of them were situational questions. At least two of the options were correct out of four in most of the cases but mostly found two options were very straight forward to strike through.

Integrated Change Control, this had nearly 5~6% of the situational questions

EMV, near about 5% but none of them were complicated, just needed logical thinking, correct answer was easily detected

CPM, only logic was needed to solve even after drawing the network diagram, in some case no backward pass was needed to calculate.

Quality tools, near about 15% and a good understanding of these tools was needed to solve the questions.

Conflict Resolution and Risk Responses appeared in good number maybe 5%

Project life cycle, Organization structure, role of PMO, OPA & EEF also appeared in the paper with at least one question each

Estimation techniques & Group decision making techniques were also in good number may be 5%

Contract types, maybe 3% or so

The percentages mentioned are just ROM(didn't count or something), still having PMP hangover so can recall many of the questions which appeared

None of the Project Selection numerical, decision tree or any other appeared in the exam.

Maybe I was lucky to have very few long paragraph questions, if I remember correctly they were only 3~4 which I parked.

Exam strategy

Targeted to solve 75 in first hour but actually did 72 questions, next 2 hrs 10 mins completed all 200 questions then took a short break.

I parked 8 harder ones on my first attempt, I wrote down these numbers on the provided rough sheet and attempted after the break, once the pressure of what’s next question in line was released.

During first attempt, I also marked lot of the questions for review on the screen but side by side took care in writing them down on the rough sheet, they were in all 18 questions and I had to visit again without fail, to my wonder, I had to change nearly 11 of the answers which were already marked out of these 18.

Bottom line - Manage you speed/time better and try to spare as much time as possible for review.

Passed with 4 domains as 'Above Target' and Executing domain as 'Target'

Pretest Tutorial

Also, I would suggest to go through pretest tutorials for sure as you will get to know how to use marking and strike through techniques, this is very handy when you have to drill down your answer to last two between the ones you have to decide the last resort.

Preparation for the exam

On whole, it took nearly one and a half month to prepare for this exam and gained momentum as soon as dollars were debited form my card.

PMBOK went through twice

RITA 8th Edition once but thoroughly, do learn Planning Process Group chart in the same order as it’s given in the book

Andy Crowe once

Sean Whitaker's, PMP Rapid Review, very handy book to correlate the domain wise tasks

Edwel's Bootcamp, I see it as one of the best book for quick review and getting to know some of the things which are not there in any other books.

Head First used this to go through some of the tough topics like, Risk Responses, Conflict Management, Contracts etc. the examples in the book were handy

Edward Chung’s - ‘47 PMP Easily Confused Terms w/w In-depth Explanation’

Fahad Usmani's - PM Study Circle, has loads of study material with great examples, explanations and query resolutions. Think of anything related to PMP and you will get it on this site.

Saket Bansal’s videos using white board/marker were very very helpful, he is a gem

Bought “PMP Training: The Last Mile Program” which helped me a lot as a tutorial “6 hour live class recording” of Daniel Ryan helped me on the second last day of preparation to go through everything in one go and Shiv Shenoy’s mnemonics were very very helpful to create some for myself. Shiv's notes were also very helpful.

Emphasize on Mnemonics

I would suggest since there are lot of things to remember so mnemonics play a vital role in preparing these items, try to create mnemonics based on your local language and it is something that you don’t easily forget.

When I started preparing for 11th Jan ’16 exam my wife, Noor Rizvi created some for me. To remember KAs in order she created one which in fact makes no sense but made me remember these in order in one go, she created, “I Safdar Tutu C Quality, Hoon Carta Rehta Project Sahi”… I, my middle name, she calls me Tutu, see, am in Quality Assurance, works as project manager and do it right.. this is baseless for anyone else in the entire universe but since I could correlate so remembered it. She created many more for me some of them were personal as well but it was fun.

Mock Exams

Now the mocks which I did and found somewhat resembling the main exam, though I did lots and lots mocks but to name some.

Rita’s PM Fast Track Simulator – 10 days from exam attempted seven '200 questions', '4 hrs exams' using simulator and this really helped me in accelerating my question reading/answering speed, used to attempt these late in the night.

Edwel - 200 questions – very helpful

Sean Whitaker – 200 questions and 400 questions book

Simplilearn – 200 questions simulator

Exam Central – 112 questions

About 10 days from exam attempted Oliver L.'s 75 questions but just managed to score 55% so decided to skip the 175 questions set.

Bottom line – don’t just go through the hardest of the questions while doing mocks as the exam is not as hard as some of the mocks available and even do not get disheartened in case you do not fair well in any of the mocks but yes do not skip reviewing the wrong answers thoroughly.

Don't learn ITTO's rather there will be no need to learn once you would built understanding of the Processes

Gratitude

In the end, I would like to mention my special thanks to Parveen Jain, Anmol Sinha, Farhan Nadeem, Saket Bansal, Cornelius Fichtner and Nalinee Singh who provided me help/guidance in some way or other.

I also want to thank Sriram Maniram, who shared his success story on www.pmstudy.com, in his lessons learned, he recommended to become part of the group 'I want to be PMP', this group is really very motivating and informative, where you also get to know at least one person across the globe getting PMP certified every day, this keeps on actuating you. A big thanks to the owners for creating this group.

Last but not the least special thanks to my family (parents, wife and kids) who stood by me during my preparation.

Best of luck to all the aspirants who will now be attempting this exam on PMBOK 6 from tomorrow on wards.

In case anyone want to have any help, kindly message me and I would be eager to help

Thank you.