PMZilla PMP-Lessons Learned

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PMP Lessons Learned – Compiled by Mrinmoy Das

Passed PMP today in First Try, see Below for Lessons learnt and Resources used and my journey. Submitted by akshayrelan on Tue, 08/30/2011 - 02:50 

PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt. Time taken to Study 2 months, on an average 7 hours each day and minimum 14 hours every-day for last 10 days.

What I Studied PMBOK 2 times RITA 2 times Took notes from Above 2 in the second read and studies only that afterwards PMBOK Glossary (Very Important) (4 times) Both Understood and learnt by heart all ITTO’s (>12 times) brainbok.com , This step helped me a lot.

4 hour Time constraint I finished the exam in around 3 hours, I think I took a lot of time in end questions because I never did well in end questions during mock tests as the brain gets too tired at the close session, But to avoid this I spent around 2-3 minutes for most of last 20 questions. I also took 2 breaks of 5-7mins each in that 3hours.

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Online Forums/Reference Websites http://pmzilla.com/ http://www.brainbok.com/ http://www.deepfriedbrainpmp.com/

Simulation Tests Took 2500+ mock test questions. Attaching a list of online resources (mostly free) at the end.

About Prometric You won’t be allowed anything inside the center (Pen, Pencil, Hanky, Spex case, Mobile, Documents) Although you will be given a locker but don’t bring too much along. Also you won’t be allowed to talk or carry any quick notes to read even at the waiting area, make a note if you are planning to reach few hours early. Pan card is sufficient to bring along with you in addition to DL

How did it go You can expect 1 minute per questions even if it’s a lengthy one, After I finished the exam a white screen came for about 3 minutes and then suddenly a survey came up, Then a screen with Prometric logo came up and after 2 minutes when my BP was on the verge, It showed Congratulations !!! Result: PASS 

Grading the Exam I would say it’s not too difficult as most thinks; you can make out 50% questions very easily within 20 seconds ea.

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PMStudy 1

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PMStudy 2 (25$)

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PMStudy 3 (25$)

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PMStudy 4 (25$)

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techfaq360

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techfaq360 Certification.about.c om

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Head First Labs

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MeasureUp

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My PMP

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Oliver F. Lehmann

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Oliver F. Lehmann

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PMConnection

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PMExam.com

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PMP Question Bank

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PMTI

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PreparePM

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ProXalt

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Test Prep Review

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PM perfect

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EdWel Programs PMzilla's free 25 tough

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Threon OSP International LLC

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PM Prepare

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Go Certify

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(20 0 Q) (20 0 Q) (20 0 Q) (20 0 Q) (20 0 Q) (20 Q) (20 Q) (20 0 Q) (7 Q) (10 0 Q) (17 5 Q) (75 Q) (10 Q) (8 Q) (28 0 Q) (15 Q) (98 Q) (20 Q) (15 Q) (10 Q) (10 Q) (25 Q) (13 Q) (15 Q) (11 Q) (20 Q)

www.pmstudy.com www.pmstudy.com www.pmstudy.com www.pmstudy.com www.techfaq360.com www.techfaq360.com certification.about.com www.headfirstlabs.com www.measureup.com www.mypmp.ie www.oliverlehmann.com www.oliverlehmann.com www.pmconnection.com www.pmexam.com pmpbank.googlepages.com www.4pmti.com www.preparepm.com www.proxalt.com http://www.testprepreview.com/modules/pmp.htm http://www.pmperfect.com/Public/uiExamDemoOverview.aspx

www.edwel.com www.pmzilla.com www.threon.com www.free-pm-exam-questions.com www.pmprepare.com/sbmple/showQuestion.asp?QSeq=28039&donelist=0&iLang= 0&try=1 http://www.gocertify.com/quizzes/projectmanagement/PMP_01.shtml

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PMP Formula OSP International LLC

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Ajith Namboothiri

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CertChamp

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Tutorials Point

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Voight Project Solutions

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PMRoadtrip

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ExamCentral

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Simple Learn

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Kim Heldman Andy Crowes final test

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CertGear trial

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Effective PMC

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PM Champ

(10 1 Q) (90 Q) (20 0 Q) (20 0 Q) (20 0 Q) (50 0 Q) (22 0 Q) (20 0 Q) (20 0 Q)

from www.4shared.com (101 Questions for the PMP Formula Study Guide)

free.pm-exam-simulator.com www.ajithn.com www.certchamp.com www.tutorialspoint.com www.voightps.com

http://www.examcentral.net/pmp/practice-exam

www.simplilearn.com/simplilearn/?a_aid=PMPChamp

www.effectivepmc.com www.pmchamp.com/best-resources-for-pmp-examfree-paid/

PMP Exam Lesson Learned by Kalpana Garyali

Kalpana passed her PMP exam on Apr 14, 2011 and sent me a note with her lessons learned and study notes. I'm sure there's something that every PMP aspirant can learn from this elaborate and well-written piece of information. Here's what she has to say: Hi Harwinder, Kudos to you for the wonderful explanation and details in each and every post of yours. Thank you so much for your time and effort towards running this blog. I

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cleared the PMP exam on 14th Apr, 2011 . I scored Moderately proficient in Professional and Social responsibility and Proficient in all the 5 process groups. I would like to share my lessons learnt. Hi everyone, I was so scared to write this exam and I had the itch to delay the date 48 hrs prior to the exam. That being said, I think the exam is not something to be scared of if you are well prepared. So, preparation is the key. Once you are confident that you are prepared, I think you will overcome any fear you may have. I personally believe the method, timeframe etc varies from individual to individual. Here are my lessons learned on my journey towards a PMP and an approach that worked for me. The materials that I used for studying are: 1. PMP Exam Prep, Sixth Edition: Rita's Course in a Book for Passing the PMP Exam.

2. Audio book, PMP Exam Prep, Sixth Edition: Rita's Course in a Book for Passing the PMP Exam * - This was of a great help to me to keep my concentration intact. The number of minutes remaining in the playlist would help you stay motivated that a particular chapter is going to get over soon :) Rita Mulcahy, in the audiobook is more motivating as opposed to sounding demotivating in her textbook.

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3. [ofcourse] PMBOK.

4. Lessons Learnt and other posts in Harwinder's blog, www.deepfriedbrainpmp.com

In the first pass,I went through PMP Exam Prep and gave it a thorough read and meticulously did the exercises. In the 2nd pass, I read a chapter from PMBOK and the corresponding chapter from PMP Exam Prep and took the tests in PMFastrack for the corresponding KA.I analyzed each and every mistake and prepared a lessons learned. It was during the 2nd pass I realized, only things I have done in the real world stuck with me in my memory and that I forgot many things I learnt newly in the first pass. I placed emphasis on such areas and spent time reading those topics. Along with the lessons learned, I made notes of things I was seeming to forget. I took a test on Oliver Lehmann's 175 questions. The outcome of the test doomed me. When I thought I have read each and every word of Rita's book, I should comfortably score 80-85%. I scored about 73% and I was disappointed. The outcome of Oliver Lehmann's test emphasized the importance of reading through PMBOK instead of skimming it. I also figured there are things such as influence diagrams (a diagramming technique used to identify risks) missed out in PMP Exam Prep. After all this,I decided to pay attention to PMBOK. I had only about 15 days to go for my exam. I had sufficient time for the 3rd pass. In the 3rd pass, I went through PMBOK and the points I jotted down from the 2nd pass. I wrote the SuperPMP exam from PMFastrack and scored about 78%. I analyzed my mistakes and most of the mistakes I made was because of fright. Figured that I had reached saturation and decided to go ahead with the exam.

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Among all the chapters, I loved the way Integration management, Procurement management, Risk management and Quality management chapters are covered in PMP Exam Prep. I have never had a first hand experience in Procurement management. The book covers these areas in simple terms. Thanks to the book, I got most of the questions based on Integrated Change Control right in a few seconds of reading the question and the answer choices. My lessons learned: 1. Project sponsor protects the project from changes and from loss of resources.

2. Deviations from baselines are often due to incomplete risk identification and risk management.

3. Wider the range between optimistic and pessimistic estimates in a 3 point estimate, more the uncertainty the estimator has.

4. GERT chart - a chart showing loops between activities.

5. Resource working on an activity with most float will be considered for transitions.

6. To save time, you want to fasttrack activities on critical path.

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7. Team needs to approve final schedule to ensure activities can be completed as scheduled.

8. Crashing an activity with float will not shorten the project.

9. 2+ Critical paths in a project makes it more risky for the project.

10. Detailed project schedule should be approved by functional managers.

11. More interdependencies on a project increase the need for communication.

12. Discretionary dependency - important when analyzing how to shorten or resequence the project to decrease the project duration(fast-track).

13. Schedule compression occurs before finalizing the schedule.

14. CPI is the most critical EVM metric.

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15. Resource breakdown Structure (RBS) is useful in tracking project costs.

16. Stakeholder list is created at project initiation and reassessed at project execution.

17. WBS allows communication within the organization as well as outside the project.

18. A project manager does not have authority to issue change orders, but must request them from the procurement manager.

19. Project manager cannot accept shipments that do not meet the requirements of the contract; but may meet the project manager's needs.

20. Seller cannot issue a change order, although can request one.

21. Normal response to force majeure is to give extension of time.

22. When a seller goes abruptly out of business, best thing to do is to hire a new seller under a time and material contract.

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23. Main purpose of procurement audit is to identify the successes to transfer to other procurements.

24. Transference of risk is included in the terms and conditions of the contract.

25. A decision to accept a risk must be communicated to stakeholders.

26. Forecasting methods: o

o

o

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Time series methods 

EVM

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Moving average

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Extrapolation

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Linear prediction

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Trend estimation

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Growth curve

Causal/econometric methods 

Regression analysis - Linear, non-linear

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autoregressive moving average

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econometrics

Judgmental methods 

Surveys

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Composite forecasts

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Delphi method

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Scenario building

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o

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Technology forecasting

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Forecast by analogy

Other methods 

Simulation

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Probabilistic forecasting

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Ensemble forecasting

Day of the exam: I started with a good flow and I marked questions that I was skeptical about, although I answered them. So, In the first 2 hours, I had completed my first pass of the 200 questions. I had about 60-80 questions marked for review. Can't recall how many were marked. I went through them carefully for the next 1 hour. I was thinking about submitting the exam. But I listened to my instincts and decided to stay back for the next 1 hour and review 1st 100 questions as quickly as possible. I reviewed almost 70 questions and the time ran out. I filled the survey and heaved a sigh of relief when I saw the word Congratulations on the monitor. All the best to those of you working towards your PMP. Good luck, Best regards, Kalpana

Passed PMP Today - 30-Aug-2011 Sharing Lessons Learned Submitted by ShreeSid on Wed, 08/31/2011 - 01:33 

PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

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Hi All I have been a silent observer for the past 5 weeks. Today I passed the PMP exam and would like to share my lessons learnt which might prove to be useful for someone. Available Study time I had: 5 weeks starting Jul 19 Exam date : 30-Aug I work as a Project Manager and have a 3 year old child. I could not take many leaves hence all my studying was done at work (around 2 hours), and 2 hours after work and 12 hours over weekends. Study guides used: PMBOK 4th edition :Studied all chapters 3 times. 1 st pass was very vague however the second and third passes shed some light. Rita Mulcahy: Did not study fully. While taking practice tests noted areas which were unclear and not mentioned in PMBOK. The unclear areas were clarified with Rita's book. With just 5 weeks to go I had time only for PMBOK. Few Points to note: 1. Signed-up for PM Prepcast 15 questions a day. They gave me the initial confidence boost I needed. 2. Used HeadFisrt free chapter on critical path and float 3. Took close to 100 test questions per day from different sites. I noted down questions/areas which I did not know and studied those areas in depth. This helped me a lot to identify the areas not covered by PMBOK. Ofcourse, if you have the time and your study plan includes Rita or Andy Crowe then the practise tests will be easy. 4. I used Kim Heldman MP3 to listen while commuting. This gave me a good summary of the different chapters and helped me test my understanding. 5. 2 weeks back I noticed that I am not doing a good job of remembering the ITTOs even after 2 passes through PMBOK. I decided I needed help and searched through PMZilla lessons learned. I found a narrative with the idea to use Mnemonics for some of the tools and techniques. That helped me a great deal. Some of the TT I used from PMZilla and some I made up. Also another useful tip from PMZilla is to note down which

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processes do not have EEF & OPA as a (x) and those processes having only OPA as (o) in the process group grid also helped. 6. I practised writing the 43 processes grid and EV formulas on a daily basis along with the Mnemonics coined. Mock Exams taken a week prior to exam: Headfirst PMP : 82.5% Oliver Lehmann 175 questions : 75% 4 days before the exam, my manager shared Rajesh Nair's notes from PMZilla. One look at the notes my heart stopped. I had not prepared to that extent at all and I started having misgivings on my preparation and whether to postpone the exam :( Wonderful notes. I used Rajesh Nair's notes last couple of days as a refresher. I was happy to see that most of the points addressed were familiar and I could bring back details from memory. That was a good sign. I stopped studying on 29-Aug afternoon. I could not take any more. I was scheduled for the afternoon batch on 30-Aug. Day of the exam: Reached Prometric at 12:30 PM for exam at 1:30 PM. Had to wait till 2:30 PM as there was some server issue and all batches were delayed. One important point that helped me was a YouTube video on 'what happens in Prometric'. This video helped me to understand that during the tutorial the brain dump had to be prepared as the test starts as soon as the tutorial ends. The questions were moderately difficult and very tricky. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Close to 5-6 questions on team stages Approx 5-6 questions on conflict 2 network diagram questions 4 emV questions approx 4 to 5 ITTO questions. The Mnemonics helped a lot Lots of questions from Close, Quality and M&C process group Lots of situations questions

I finished the exam in 2 hrs and 30 mins and reviewed all questions for 1 hour and then submitted the test. Was tensed in the last moment but passed :) Result: 4 Proficient 2 Moderately Proficient Special thanks to my husband and Mother-in-law for taking care of my son, my Project Manager for providing me with study materials and my friends for their encouragement and the trust they had on my abilities.

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Mnemonics used by me: Collect Requirements : F FIGO GPQ {remember it as Ford FIGO} Define scope (APEF) {from PMZilla} Define act (DERT) {from PMZilla} Seq Act (lAPSD) Est. Act. Res.(APE BP) {from PMZilla} Est Act Dur (APE TR) {from PMZilla} Develop schedule (SCCRe WLoSS) {from PMZilla} Control Schedule (PVPRe WLoSS) Estimate cost (APE BP TR CV) {from PMZilla} Determine budget (CHEF R) {from PMZilla} Plan quality (CCCB SPADF) {from PMZilla} Perform QA (QP) Perform QC (FISH SCRAP C) {from PMZilla} Develop HR plan (ONO) Acquire project team (PraNAV) Develop project team (TRIG TC) Manage project team (OC PII) Plan communications (C4) Distribute information (CId) Manage stakeholder expectations (CIM) Report performance (VCR F) Identify risks (DICE ADS) {from PMZilla} Perfom qual analysis (R4 PE) Perform quan analysis (DQE) Plan risk responses (CSS E) Monitor and control risks (RRR VeST) Plan Procurements (MEC) Conduct Procurements (APE BP II) Administer Procurements (CRIP PPC) Close Procurements (PNR) All the very best!! Regards, ShreeSid

**PMP** is MINE ! ! ! 14

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Submitted by RP on Wed, 08/31/2011 - 18:15 

PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt. An excerpt from the movie 300 –“ ....they are more beast than man and their arrows will cover the brightness of the Sun......so we shall fight in the shade and put them to the test.” I am proud to announce that I have successfully completed my PMP exam! As part of my payback and responsibility to this forum, I will try to comprehensively provide you with a view of my preparation leading up to the exam, the exam and post-exam. About Me My name is Reshlan Pillai, 26 years old and I am from Johannesburg, South Africa. I have worked on very large projects nationally and internationally, typically filling Project Management and Management Consulting roles throughout. I have worked with key industry players in the fields of Insurance, Mining, Engineering, etc. I have a Bachelors degree in IT ,Management and Marketing and a Post Graduate in Project Management. Nothing ices it better than to add a PMP to the list of credentials  Why PMP The PMP for me signifies and proves deep, invaluable and intrinsic knowledge of your project management industry knowledge and allows you to play your attraction within and out of your league. The PMP is a globally renowned certification that tops the list of ‘most wanted’ and ‘highest paying’ credential at many technology house and PM reviews. So for me, it was merely a case of giving me the edge in the market and at my job, automatically creating a marketable demand. Application and kicking off the process After doing loads of research, I finally decided it was time to put me to the test. I signed up as a member to PMI and thereafter very accurately completed the application. This by itself took me a week of analysing and proving that the time allocated was not merely just an assumption but contained precise facts or as close as possible, where applicable. I had given it to a peer to proof read it and from my side, all I could do was done. I submitted the application and waited eagerly for a response. I wasn’t concerned whether or not my application would get selected for an audit and there was no hurry but just the itch of kicking off the process. All this happened during January 2011. A few days later, I received a response from PMI saying I was granted entry and to schedule my exam. I soon after scheduled the exam for the beginning of August

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2011. I did not envisage studying for the whole period of 8 months however, I built in alot of reserve for unforeseen issues such as business travel, personal commitments, etc. The benefit of signing up with PMI is that you get a complementary version of the PMBOK so I started browsing very casually basically to just get acquainted. I took nothing away from this process but just the side-thought of knowing what’s waiting. I must say to all those aspirants – do loads of research before you take on this challenge. You need to be your own mentor as I have learned. As I am the type of person that likes to have all his ducks in a row, I decided to secure my material early – with no real intention to study anytime soon. This is what I have used as my bible/s; -

PMBOK, PMI PMP Exam Prep, 6th Ed, Rita Mulcahy PM Fastrack, V6, Rita Mulcahy Hot Topics Flashcards, Rita Mulcahy PM Study – 4 Tests

So after months of spending time between busyness, laziness, procrastination, denial and the pub – In June 2011, I started the race – the race to win. I rescheduled once only to the 30 August 2011 due to my earlier debacle. The Exam Preparation I planned in detail exactly how I will approach my studies – as in dates, topics, sources, times, stretch targets, milestones, etc. This will be way too detailed to share on this forum. I suggest all aspirants spend at least a day planning in such depth and also to buy into your planning. And off I go.... -

I spent almost the whole of June 2011 with PMP Exam Prep and managed to go through it twice. I then touched the PMBOK but only cleared a few introductory topics – 1st, 2nd Week of July 2011 Then reverted back to PMP Exam Prep and completed the book for the 3rd time – 3rd, 4th Week of July 2011 I then spent time with the PMBOK, making sure I go through it in detail – First 2 weeks of August 2011

The above is very high level but the following sub-activities worked greatly in my favour; -

Before even looking at the PMP Exam Prep, I answered the chapter end questions. I did this to establish a baseline – I scored 60%

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Initially, after studying each chapter in PMP Exam Prep, I would answer the questions – All in all, I scored an average of 85% The 2nd/3rd time through PMP Exam Prep, I used the PM Fastrack to gauge any progress – All in all, between the 2nd/3rd time I scored an average of 86% Hot Topics Flashcards worked well for me as I sit in traffic for 2 hours a day. It is basic but does prove its worth well. I also used some other free resources listed below. I didn’t take the scoring to seriously here, I just used this because I ran out of PMP Exam Prep/PM Fastrack questions. I scored between 68% - 90% (Oliver Lehmann is probably the worst example of a mock test. Nothing relates to the exam focus, it’s just plain difficult for no reason. Scored 68% here)

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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

http://www.headfirstlabs.com/PMP/pmp_exam/v2/quiz.html http://www.passionatepm.com/free-pmp-exam-practice-test-questions http://pmstudy.com/enroll.asp#PMP http://www.mypmp.ie/ http://www.techfaq360.com/pmpmockexam.jsp http://www.certgear.com/products/info/pmp.htm http://www.tutorialspoint.com/pmp-exams/pmp_mock_exams.htm http://www.preparepm.com/mock1.html http://www.oliverlehmann.com/pmp-self-test/75-free-questions.htm http://www.proxalt.com/sampletest.asp http://www.voightps.com/Default.asp http://www.measureup.com/Site/display_article.aspx?AudienceID=&id=1299 http://www.testprepreview.com/modules/pmp.htm

I have researched PM Study questions alot and was happy to hear that the exam can be gauged according this. By the 20th August 2011, I bought the pack of four tests. I started working on this, diligently. On average, I scored around 75% but I did not get to the final test as I ran out of time. By this point in time, I felt ready but I knew where my gaps where so I focused on my gaps by only using the PMBOK. An important tip to aspirants – Do not redo questions, try your best to constantly expose yourself to new questions even though they may be different to what you used to. There is no easy question nor hard ones, just ones that test you. Always try to stick to reputable sources. In some cases, the answers offered for some questions were so wrong! On the 29 August 2011 at 10:10pm, I put down my books. Refer to the adage at the very top, LOL 

The Day has dawned... Woke up early, brushed up on a few gaps and was ready to go....

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Got to Prometric in Johannesburg and immediately made myself feel comfortable. Dressed quite loosely, tracks and t-shirt – we all know how inadequate dressing affects your decision making. I presented my passport, I went through the procedures, got into the invigilators room, signed in, emptied pockets, filled locker and voila, ready to go! The moment I got to my cubicle, I started jotting down my dump. This included Pg 43 from PMBOK, Communication, PERT, SD, EMV, Earned Value formulae. I got into the habit of continuously referring to the processes to gauge exactly where the question in concern is based. This helped me visualise what was done and what wasn’t. This took 12 minutes. I used the remaining 3 minutes to breathe and go through the tutorial. Started the exam – Some basic tips on PMP questions; -

I felt like I was writing the ‘RMP’. Risk was a big topic. Not difficult, but just a bit tedious. People say that they have received short direct questions – I was so unlucky, I think. I got the most long winded questions ever! Aspirants - expect nothing! Quality also played a big role. Few simple Prof. And Social questions Calculator was slow About 10 questions on Cost, ALL on EVM Some questions were difficult, seemed as if all four choices were correct. Only took breaks when I felt I was losing focus. Don’t plan your breaks, take it when you need it. Memory gone blank now – let me know if you need anything else

Did not answer the survey, it is so badly positioned. Went straight to the ‘Submit’. White screen came up a few minutes later saying CONGRATULATIONS!! It’s such a great feeling, I tell you! Overall, I felt the exam was very much on the par of PM Study questions, slightly more intense because I had long winded questions but the concept remained the same. Lastly, the PMP exam is not difficult – the output depends on the input. It does get challenging but it’s not all that. Feel free to ask me anything, aspirants. I want to first thank God for giving me this opportunity, my fiancé for supporting me through these long hard months and my family for being there ALWAYS. As equally as important, I want to thank the forum as a whole and certain members like Satish_Multi and NBK. Signed by, Reshlan Pillai, PMP

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Cleared PMP on 29th Aug... Submitted by Apache24 on Thu, 09/08/2011 - 02:57 

PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt. Cleared PMP on 29th August on first attempt. Thanks to everyone in this forum, especially to people who contributed their lesson learned as it helped me to develop my preparation strategy and maintain focus throughout my preparation of around 2 months. My score card stands as: Initiating the Project

Proficient

Planning the Project

Proficient

Executing the Project

Proficient

Monitoring and Controlling the Project Closing the Project Professional and Social Responsibility

Moderately Proficient Proficient Moderately Proficient

Here is my lesson learned from the exam:Books referenced Andy Crowe: I started my preparation with this book as it was recommended by the REP from where I earned 35 hrs of training. I feel this book is by far the best book to start the PMP preparation as it’s written in a very simple and systematic manner without jumping topics. More or less it’s a summary of PMBOK. I read the book twice before starting anything else. Rita: Started with Rita but initially was struggling to finish the chapters as there is so much of text per page but started liking it once I got accustomed to motherly way book explains the topics. I feel Rita develops the way PMI wants us to think thus developing thought process to answer the PMP situation based questions. After going through first pass of Rita I stared writing tests but with test results I thought it will be good idea to read Rita again. This time I started doing topics from Rita and PMBOK simultaneously but as just 12 days were left in the exam so did Rita alone along with first two chapters of PMBOK. PMBOK: After reading both Rita and Andy I was not left with much time to read PMBOK but as I learned from the forums that it’s really important to go through PMBOK so was worried a bit. Luckily I wrote 2-3 full length exams which gave the explanation with reference to PMBOK so I

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covered as many gaps as possible. Apart from that I read the PMBOK Glossary and then searched for index for terms which I was not familiar with. I got few terms like Cost-Contacts, FMEA etc. I now feel I could have done better if I had read PMBOK line by line. Tests Attempted: InSite-Velociteach: Used one week free trial subscription which comes with Andy Crow book. Started doing the tests once I finished reading Andy which was around 30 days before the exam. Questions are easier than real exam so I used the tests to just practice and not to gauge my preparation. Use to get around 80% in 50 question tests. Also tried 200 question final paper based exam at the end of Andy Crowe book and scored 83%. ExamCentral (www.examcentral.net): Good source of free questions but again questions are easier than the real exam. I attempted around 300 questions in total. Scored around 78% to 85%. PMStudy Free Test 1 (www.pmstudy.com ): Good exam, nearly similar to the real PMP exam in terms of length of questions. Real exam was a bit tougher. Attempted the test 20 days before the PMP exam and scored 72% PMFastTrack: Gave just one full length 200 question test and secured around 78% but there were known questions also as I attempted the exam after reading Rita 6 th edition and doing exercises at the end of each chapter. I always kept track on the question creep in the mock exams and calibrated the percentage accordingly. Beware that repeated questions can be a reason of continuous improvement in the mock exams if you are using same software again and again to give the exams. Further attempted questions on random basis. HeadFirst(http://www.headfirstlabs.com/PMP/free_exam/) :Good exam but again a bit easier than real exam. Scored 86%. Oliver Lehmann 175 questions (http://www.oliverlehmann.com) : Very high standard exam and it really helped me to find gaps which were due to not reading PMBOK. Attempted the test 7 days before the real exam and scored 77%. I suggest ,taking this exam once you are fully prepared as low marks may dampen your morale. Free Effectivepmc Exam (www.effectivepmc.com) : This is the toughest exam which I took. Scored 62%.Questions were wordy and took be exactly 4 hrs to complete the test. Only good thing was explanation of the answer were referenced to PMBOK so it helped me to further find the gaps in my knowledge.

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PMzilla tough 200 questions (http://pmzilla.com/pmzilla-final-pmp-exam-pmp): Good collection of questions. Key to success in PMP, I feel, is practicing lot of quality questions but not just from single source. Site referenced: http://www.deepfriedbrainpmp.com: Very simplified explanation of EVM, PTA formulas. http://www.monkibo.com/pmp-exam-itto-trainer: Used the tool to memorize IOTT. http://www.mypmpexamprep.com/article/pmp-exam-input-outputs-tools-and-techniques : I used similar PFD to read every day for half an hour before sleeping for last 20 days before the exams in a hope to memorize IOTT but in vain. Memorizing IOTT: I feel PMP exam definitely do not test memorizing skills but do ask the input/output/tool of the processes indirectly in questions. I did not by-heart or rather was not able to by-heart the IOTT but was able to answer the questions with given choices. Exam Day: I was comfortable in the exam even though just slept 3 hrs on the night before the exam. Took a break after 100 questions (1.5hrs) and again after finishing 200 questions (3 hrs) .Marked all the numerical questions to come back to do the re-calculation and few more in which I had doubt. All together marked around 30 questions and reviewed in next 20 minutes (3.5 hrs). Changed 2-3 question options. Now with half an hr left was thinking to review all 200 again but decided to submit the exam as I felt I will not change the options as I had selected the answers confidently. Did the survey in jiffy and then came Congratulations…..2 months dedicated efforts paid off. Special thanks to my wife for supporting me throughout my exam preparation.

Very best of luck for your exam!!!!

Submitted by Gautam Tarafdar on Sun, 09/11/2011 - 11:57

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt. I cleared my exam on August 24. For us practising managers, this exam can involve leaving some of our experience at the door and delving into PMI scripted therory. This may be challenging to many given it requries you to unlearn. I worked for 3 weeks after completing my Prep course. Went through PMBOK once. Did the certschool.com in-class tests, end of class tests (132 questions), Oliver lehman 175 test questions. In all I did approx 10 hours of mock tests. Working with a study buddy helped a lot. Could not memorize the ITTOs however hard I tried. However, I could answer almost all the ITTO related questions in mock tests accurately through associattion and common sense. Most importantly trust your judgement. Looking back, going thru Oliver Lehman's 175 questions best prepared me for the exam. Almost three-fourths of the exam questions were verbose and it is important not to lose your way. Read and reread them carefully. 4 hours is plenty of time to answer 200 questions. Take breaks as you deem appropriate.

PASSED AT FIRST TRY ON THE 30TH AT FIRST LOGIC IKEJA LAGOS NIGERIA. LESSONS LEARNT PLUS TIPS AND TRICKS Submitted by adunniola on Thu, 09/01/2011 - 23:43 

PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt. Materials Used Rita Mulcahy sixth edition ( I read it cover to cover about three times did most of the exercises and tests) PMBOK Guide ( I read it only once. it was way too long and difficult to read)

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Crosswind PMP Exam Success Book (I read it a little later and found that it helped refresh my knowledge did all the tests as well) Practice Test Crosswind Exam Simulation (It's a good Simulation of the exam) average score 78-80% Oliver Lehman's 175 questions ( I did only about 66 ) score 80% Head First 200 questions score 78%

My Take on the Exam The Exam was quite tough in my opinion. You really have to be certain of your answer 'cos the options were quite funny. You really have to get a clear understanding of project management itself. If you do not do this, you will find the exam easy and may not make it. I formed this opinion because for every question i answered, i had to think properly until i had no doubt about the answer. My Exam Experience I did my PMP training in 2009 and initially wanted to write the exam in january 2010 but my Rita book got stolen and it took a while for me to get a new one. I attended a refresher course in july 2010 but i couldn't write the exam. By This year 2011 i was determined to do it. I attended another refresher and joined a study group in Lagos. The study group lasted for one month. I initially booked the exam for the 23rd but i knew that by that time i wasn't ready so i rescheduled for the 30th. I practiced questionson the crosswind exam success simulation. I found out that on every practice test my score was always between 78 and 80%. Truth be told i wasn't sure i was ready even on the day of the exam i went between panicking and encouraging myself. I got the the test Centre at 7.45 a.m. i started my test at 8.15 a.m. (i guess a lot of people had rescheduled for the 30th) During the 30 minute tutorial, i jotted down my cost formulas, the 42 processes, risk formulas, sigma percentages, communications formulas and time formulas. it took me about 30 minutes to do about 60 questions but i marked a lot of them to review 'cos i wanted to be double sure. I finished the exam in one hour 45 mins ( This was because if i wasn't sure of the answers to a question or if i saw that i was taking too long on a question i marked it and moved on) when i finished i went to the loo then came back to review. It

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took about one hour to review and another 15 mins to think through some tough and funny questions. i clicked to end the exam and got a blank screen then a survey but i couldn't finish the survey 'cos my heart was pounding like it was going to come out of my chest. I ended the survey and got another blank screen and then saw congratulations you have passed the PMP exam. Thank God i didn't have breakfast before leaving home 'cos i'm sure i would have thrown up when i saw my results. I Got a result print out of the result , left the centre, called my friend who is also a mentor to me and started screaming I passed!!! I passed!!!!! on the street. I must have looked like such a sight.

Lessons Learnt 1. PLEASE PLEASE attend training with a good REP 2. Attend at least one refresher course and join a study group if you can (you will meet so different people who will give you their own perspectives on the materials, formulas for remembering different aspects of the material and additional material. e.g Contracts are CCOLA , Risk is SEE ATM 3. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Read Rita. You can read any other study material first just to get an understanding of Project management but make sure you read rita at least twice to get that in-depth understanding of Project management and the exam itself. I've heard people say that rita can be a bit wordy which is true but i've realized that its in reading the words that, that understanding of project management comes. 4. Practice different exams (each practice test come with its own degree of complexity and approach to simulating the actual test and this goes a long way to preparing you for the exam. 5. STAY POSITIVE

Passed PMP exam on 08/27/2011 (Pittsburgh PA) Submitted by JOSH80 on Tue, 08/30/2011 - 01:38 

PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

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Hello every one, I cleared PMP test on saturday 08/27/11.

Exam was not easy and not difficult. It really tests your core knowledge. All questions are very straight forward. My preparation time was only 35 days, 4 , 5 hours during week days, 5 to 7 hours during weekends.  

I followed Rita/HF PMP& PMBOK I took 18 tests from Christopher Scordo (PMP Exam Prep Questions, Answers, & Explanations: 1000+ PMP Practice Questions with Detailed Solutions)

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From beginning till end i maintained min 70% scores in all tests (got 80%+ in few tests). Last 2 days i looked at examcentral.net tests based on knowledge area‟s Last day i took HF PMP test, i got 80% (That gave me good confidence)

My recommendation, if you are in rush, don't spend too much time on memorizing ITTO. Concentrate more on basics, if you know basics very well you can clear exam. I came to know about this PMZILLA in my last weeks, this is really good place to find resources. I recommend memory aids & Chowdary‟s notes. Last but not least, don't expect too many wordy questions (hardly 5,6 questions), Rest all very straight fwd (just 1 line questions). I felt first 100 questions easy compare to last 100 (may be i was tired after 100). I marked only 10 questions for review,4 hrs time is sufficient for exam.

Wish you good luck

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Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2009 11:35 am

Post subject: PMP instructor

Hi all Kindly take note that the PMP exam is going to change starting from July 2009. The new exam will be based on the PMBOK 4th edition. This may not impact you in a big way but there will certainly be differences. With each new edition that PMI releases, the content is updated to reflect the latest in project management. If you have been studying based on the 3rd edition, my recommendation is to take the exam within July 2009. The new edition has a different naming of the processes. They have used the verb noun (example: estimate-costs) for all the processes. Considering there are over 40 processes, participants may get confused if they have studies the 3rd edition and take the exam after July. For those studying for the exam and dont have much time to go through everything, here are a few tips: 1. Get your Earned Value concepts right. The exam will have aound 21% of the questions coming from the monitoring & controlling process group. 2. Use process of elimination as much as possible. Read the question, eliminate the obvious wrong answers, choose between the remaining ones. 3. Get your concepts on the different tools used for Schedule Development right (CPM, Critical Chain, Resource leveling etc.,) 4. PMI is big on terminology. When you see a term, try to remember if you have come across the term in the PMBOK. 5. A few of the situational questions can be very lengthy and daunting. However, read through carefully and you may find the answer to be easier that it looks. 6. Get very familiar with Page 70 on the PMBOK guide third edition. My recommendation is that you DONT memorize it. Rather, try to fit each process into respective process group and knowledge area by UNDERSTANDING the process. (Example: Process Activity Definition. What does this process mean?, which knowledge area is it likely to be in?, Which process group is it likely to fall?) The process is about defining a set of activities, hence it is a planning process group. activities are definied so that duration can be estimated, hence time management knowledge area.

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edited to remove obvious solicitation - moderator Cheers, ikompass

Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 9:27 pm

Post subject: PASSED PMP today 6th May 2009

Providing below a break up of my observations and inputs which helped me and I guess will help future aspirants too. This was my first attempt at PMP, was nervous all along with time hitting my nerves all through my rolling wave planned journey for PMP preparation. Time Distribution : Total Time : Approx 3 months ( 2hrs weekdays/ 3- 4 hrs weekends mainly took exams). PMP training course : PMP prepcast cost me USD50 dollars to sign up and take the test after 2 weeks of preparation to get my 35 contact hrs. Thumbs Up from my side, excellent and cheap way to Grasp the PMIism with easy to learn concepts from Cornelius Fischner Read thru PMBOK : 20 days ( 2 readings) - Alternately with 2 readings through of Rita MUlcahy PMP book. Listened to PrepCast on the move, while jogging, travelling to work on those topics I completed readings for the day. Only took tests and studied from Short notes : Last 20 days ( tests at every lesson ending of Rita Mulcahy from Rita , in case of PMBOK did tests from various freely available test materia, Only tests from various materials during last 20 days ) Last 3 days : Only scratching thru all notes , PMBOK glossary , JIMBOK, Rajesh, Sridhar Peddisetty notes, Benoit Aumars study notes, GUNA's ITTO software Study material and usage / purpose : 1. PMBOK : for very basic level understanding and getting along with PMI glossary and understanding the PMI approach. 2. PMP Exam Prepare Prep by Rita Mulcahy : For getting grasp on PMIsm and building application understanding of what is there in PMBOK 3. Head first PMP book : For casual read on selective topic incase I observed any weakness during tests. 4 . PMP book by ANDY Crowe - Velociteach : For casual read on selective topic if I observed some thing was missing

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5. Pradeep Rani material from this website : Getting on with smart capsules in last three days . 6 . Guna's software for processes : By far the best to revise ITTO ...dont miss on it it pulled me thru 30 % 7. Sridhar Peddisetty's notes on Blog spot : Real final reviews of PMI terms along with PMBOK glossary ..mind you juss get it just fantastic to be done on last day for better grasp and formatting of your brain for the final asault. Glad I found him.. 8 JIMBOK notes from PMIHUB : excellent notes for final formatting of your brain one day before taking up the tests 9 Oliver Lehmann : 75 tests and 175 questions in last week to judge your prepared ness. Hmmm....some tough q's make you pull and scratch your hair he he... 10. PMstudy free tests : 4 days before test to judge your preparedness. Good material just get it. 11. 200 questions test from headfirst : 5 days before test to judge preparedness. Glad I went through them 12. 200 QnA's from PMI website reading reference section. simply fantastic a couple of days before your final assault. Damn close in difficulty to real test. Dont miss this.....worked like charm for me. 13. Delegation by Verma from PMI website reading/references..read it in last week ..and glad i did read it to get the extras found nowhere else on this planet. My review on tests and their closeness to overall exam : 1. PM study : Damn close in terms of difficulty level - I scored 85% 2. Oliver lehmann : Gets overboard with difficulty sometimes ..nice for a stress test to remind you of height of pain : I scored 74 % 3. PMP prep by Rita Mulcahy : A inch lower than actual test but yes it builds a good base to learn how to apply what you learned - I scored in my 80 ish here 4. headfirst test : Two Inch below than actual test level - 88% I scored here 5 PMI 200 QnA Damn close to actual test - I scored 90 % here 6 . Andy crowe book : Much easier ..a good only for warm up and feel good feeling for extra confidence and motivation to get going - 90+% is what i scored 7. Kim Hieldman questions : My goodness made me squeak and squirm and go into hiding. Some nice googlies here a twist and tale there ...- hits you on your toe and makes you wonder whether you are still alive. but yess makes you better prepared for details while reading questions and interpreting them : Tough one take it atleast 20 days before your final exam or if done later will hit your confidence . Believe me it was always fun to do read through of books and take tests make sure you mark your percentage everytime and record it some where .for analysing what are your hot sweet spots and weak spots .gives you confidence and tells you which corners are still rusty (bheja fry). MY strategy was .. read books and notes when I can focus.. means no disturbance with

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ears totally plugged, when you know you cannot read for long or someone will disturb you intermittently or simply PMBOK sounds a sleeping pill take tests or listen to ERIC NEILson free lunchtime lessson available on PMHUB ..simply refreshes you and builds your interest in those wordy lessons . You might ask me why I read so much a variety of material and tests ..not everything on test is there in one single book and not every perspective with which you can look at those 44 pieces of puzzle are all avialable in one book . Other than Rita and PMBOK book just browse others to catch up with any new term or word . And the biggest to do or not to do question : Should I mug up ITTO ...or not ...I guess better you do I had 30% on it . 15% on Tool and technique and 15% on input output . But ITTO helps you in applying yourself during answering the questions. Giving below my shortcuts to remember Tools and tech , for Input output better understand logical flow from one process to another .I guess some I got from LLs here on PMhub and Some from PMzilla website. Overall to improve in this field constantly listen to Prepcast, Lunchtime Lessons to leave an imprint of must know concepts on my grey matter. Also get the PM Zilla brain dump material excellent tricks to Memorise the ITTOs the easy and fun way. 1.Scope Planning - E T ( Stevens movie remember that Cycle shadow on the Moon ..that one ) 2.Scope Definition : A P E S ( hmm thats begining of Human definition) 3. Create WBS : T D ( technical definition ...) 4. Activity Definition : PERT-D 5. Activity Sequenccing : SAPAD ( If your are from Chennai you know this ) 6.Activity resource estimate : BEAPP ( it sounds as a horn ) 7 Activity Duration estimate : TAPER 8. Cost Budgeting : CRPF ( Indian federal reserve force ) 9. Quality Planning : ABCD ..juss add one more C too 10. Quality Control : Crow FLies Higher Peacock Runs Scattering Charm ..add Inspection to it 11. HR planning : NOO 12. HR Aquire team : PAVN ( Somthing like PAWN) 13 HR manage team : COPI ( fav Singaporean drink KOPI) 14 risk identification : CADDI ( A caddi identifies risk in GOLF ) 15 risk qualification : CUPID ( hmm ..) 16 Risk Quantification : ID ( yess your ID ) Use GUNA's software extensively here ..and I am sure you will get comfortable with it . About Exam : 1. Stay fresh ..take rest one day before exam ..juss a read thru with JIMBOK and Sridhar peddisettys / ERic neilsons lunch time lessons / PM zilla brain dump tricks material will keep you warm for exam . 2. Take your 2 Ids (PHoto id + singnature Id)..and exam appointment note 3. Once at center get in groove by taking a stroll in their lobby or juss get your body

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relaxed. Drink water or a REDBULL anything that can keep you fresh and full of energy. 4. Into the exam ..take the 15 minutes tutorial..I dumped PMBOK page 70 and EV formulae and Sigma values ..do it , this helps you to stay focus in test as you dont need to fly faar off from your flow during tests. 5. Go ahead take the test BEST OF LUCK ..the real fun starts here . I observed it was bit warm till 50th question got tougher from 50 to 150 then tapered off ..a generic trend I felt ..not necessary everyone will feel it the same way, but there are some tricks to do a forward and backward pass through the questions. 6. not many lengthy ones for me ..lots on Quality and the practice tests told me I was weak there so now i was much prepare and hit them strong ..practice seriously and find your gaps ..it helps it did it for me. 7. The ethics and professional responsibility were chalanging and SADLY i did only study on notes and tests ...I didnt read the actually PMI doc in detail ..this caught up with me in test as some questions were directly on clauses .. 8. Finished answering all in 3 hours 40 minutes wth 5 minutes break at 80 / 170 questions ..then reviewed some questions ..and waited for exam to time out .. 9. The feedback for test center appeared ..it was all fine for me at Prometric center except for the constantly flickering CRT monitor/ non adjustable seat and drumming sound from a nearby test taker (put on the ear plugh). I wish I could have taken my antiglare lenses. 10 . the results came : I cleared with Planning , Exec and COntrol /Monitor as ..Proefficient and rest as Moderately proefficient ..Initiation , close and Ethics . Anything I can do differently in next birth for this test : Nah I really had nothing to quote on Cause and effect Diagram if I had missed it on first attempt ..yeah plz read the ethics claause for sure . That sums up all my journey here .. Good luck Guys enjoy the journey its a Fun and lots of learning too ..I am there to give a peek anytime you need from my experience . BTW join PMHUB website for all the freebies available over there. Thanks _________________ Life is a Journey. If you cannot fly then run, if you cannot run then walk, and if cannot walk then crawl. So, whatever you do keep moving.

Passed PMP exam on 29Aug...Delighted Submitted by javeeda on Fri, 09/02/2011 - 23:11

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt. Hello friends, At last I made it to get through the PMP exam on my first attempt. And it such a gift to the hardwork. Thanks for such a live wonderful community who threw lots of ideas and suggestions and I was greatly inspired and motivated from their lessons learnt. Brief lessons learnt: My journey started around January 2009 where I bought Headfirst, but could not able to understand the PMBOK concepts in a broader way. Then found Rita's guide which was really good and make me understand all the concepts in a nicer way. Read once and scored above 80% on all chapter exams of Rita's book. Read PMBOK also simultaneously and completed once. Then, there was a huge break where I have to concentrate on my official project work and did not find sufficient time for PMP preparation. Two months back came to know the news of PMP exam pattern change which put me in driver seat to go for it. My rigirous preparation started from mid June. Completed Rita and PMBOK once again. Then started attending chapter wise exams from examcentral.net. Just one month back, I found PMzilla which gives me the direction on lots of improvements in my study areas. Again Read PMBOK, understood each and every word compared to my projects which I am doing/not doing. Attended following mock exams before two weeks of my exam, PMStudy 1 - 79% Examcentral - 80% Oliver Lehman 75 questions - 68% Oliver Lehman 175 questions - 60% PMStudy 2 - 69% The real exam was good in quality compared to all the mock exams and it was easy too compared to these exams. Rajesh Nair Notes: This notes was really excellent and the way it helped other PMP aspirants, it helped me too. I recommend people to read this notes atleast twice to understand the concepts. I read this notes before 2 days of my exam to crack my mind to understand the whole

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PMBOK in a nicer elegant way. I would like to thank my wife for giving me such a tremendous support and encouragement. I hope I should be able to spend more time with my wife and daughter hence forth. Best of luck for all who are going to write PMP exam in future. Warm Regards, Javeed

29th August – I passed my exam Submitted by AU on Wed, 08/31/2011 - 07:47

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

Hello All,

First of all, many thanks to this forum. It was great to read everyone‟s experiences and journey towards achieving PMP. It provided a lot of pointers and boosted my moral many times.

Here are some highlights of my journey.

I completed the 35 contact hrs in Dec 2010 and booked 14th Feb as my exam date. In February 2011, I changed my job and the whole PMP thing was on and off my agenda for quite some months after that. I rescheduled the exam a couple of times as I was not able to study AT ALL due to my new job and other responsibilities. Finally, in July I decided I have to appear for the exam in August so booked the date 29 th August.

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Even though I decided to appear for the exam in July, I was not able to start the study until 8 th August. The good thing was I took a break from work in the last week from 22nd till 29th. Went thru PMBOK and Rita once and then PMBOK again. It was already 24th of August by the time I finished my reading. (I was down with viral fever for 2-3 days so couldn‟t study much in that period. )

On 25th I took my first exam from PMStudy (free test) and got 74%. Went through the wrong answers and tried understanding why I wasn‟t able to figure out the right choices.

26th, I had to go to office due to client visit and couldn‟t study much on that day but I glanced thru PDF version of PMBOK while I was at work and continued exploring my weak areas in the evening after work. 27th morning I attempted HeadFirst free exam and got 84%. Immediately took Oliver Lehmans‟ 75 questions and got almost 70%. Next few hours I spent in going thru wrong answers and understanding the knowledge gaps. On 28th morning attempted SimpliLearn exam and got around 70%. 29th was „D‟ day. I don‟t have a prometric centre in my city so had to travel for 4.30/5 hrs to reach there. Left home at 5.00 am. Took PMBOK with me for any last minute reading.

During the exam – Surprisingly I was quite okay before the exam. I was able to write down page 43 and all formulae on the scratch paper before starting the exam. Went thru the exam questions, marked at least 70-75 for review. I was able to complete all 200 questions in 3 hrs. Spent the remaining hour in reviewing all the marked questions, corrected a few. There were a few simple and direct questions, a LOT of situation based (and tricky) questions, at least 10 on ITTOs, one on network diagram and 2-3 EVMs. I needed all 4 hours to complete the exam including reviewing questions. Never took (or needed) any break. To be honest, I wasn‟t sure about my result. Felt EXTREMELY RELIEVED to see the “congratulations” screen as I couldn‟t believe. PHEW…

Result – Passed with 1 proficient and remaining moderately proficient.

Few pointers 1. RITA‟s book is good only if you are able to get past her dry, negative tone. I literally skipped such paragraphs at times.

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2. I never had time to memorize the ITTOs. I tried understanding the flow of the processes and tried remembering it logically instead of memorizing everything. 3. I studied things by process groups (vertically) and not by knowledge areas (horizontally). (4.1, 10.1, 4.2, 5.1, 5.2 etc…) I read PMBOK and RITA in that sequence. This flow made more sense to me. (I think this helped me understand the ITTOs as well.) 4. I was not able to start with the mock tests until 25th. Don‟t do this. Start the mock tests much earlier and finish your study at least two –three days before the exam day. 5. I took only free tests mentioned above. All of them were good. 6. I would suggest going thru PMBOK at least twice along with the other book of your choice.

Total effective study period was not more that 18 days for me. This is certainly not recommended. I had no other choice but would have loved to get more study time, confidence, surety of passing at the end of exam and more proficients. My advice – spend at least a month studying and understanding PMBOK and other resources.

Once again many many thanks to this forum. I got a lot of information, advice, and encouragement by reading everyone‟s experiences. It would have been hard without all this.

Regards, AU

I am PmP (30-Aug-2011) - First Attempt (thanks to Rita) Submitted by Aditya Mishra on Wed, 08/31/2011 - 04:36

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

Well Guys, I passed. Yayyyyyy!!!!

My journey is very very different from most of the others on this board.

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I had applied for certification in Late June 11 and Earlier decided to take the test in July 11. But had to go to some place due to Business trip and came back only in August. I work as a PM and till date have managed only small projects. I started my preparation from 5 Aug, but still never managed to spend more than 1 hr a day until last week due to work commitments. My real preparation started on 21 Aug when I knew that it's high time and I need to make time for studies. I studied from following; 1. Rita Book - I used to read a chap and highlight imp points. Then again read those points 2 more times the same day and the next day. In essence I was memorising things. I could remember whats written on which page. A 'bad' technique that I picked up from my engineering days :( 2. Very few times I would solve PMFasttrack knowledge area qns (i never had time to do full tests here). I was scoring in 85-88% range in these KA tests. 3. Skimmed through PmBok in last 2 days only.

4. Never memorised ITTO except last 2 hrs I had not written any full length test till 27th Aug. On 27th, I just checked this forum to see if there are any tricks and saw everyone talking about PmStudy Tests. So, I bought one test for 25$ and took it without any revision. Got 76% and was slightly nervous and was thing hard to reschedule my test. Thanks to satish_multi, sr.ind.comm and my fiancee who pursuaded me to take the test rather than rescheduling (http://www.pmzilla.com/postponed-until-september-26th). For the last 3 days (28, 29, 30), all I did was; 1. Revised Rita (Quick Revision). Marked Imp points and then revised again. Created few handwritten techniques for answering situational qns for key areas. I can share them if someone needs 2. Skimmed through PmBok once and skimmed through Rajesh Nair's notes (which are actually a lot to cover in 2 days, I wish I had used them earlier)

3. Exam Day - I revised as much as I could and memorised as many ITTOs as I could before the exam. I know around 31 ITTOs now.

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4. Unlike popular belief; I slept 4 hrs last night and did not relax at all. Tried to study as much as possible, because I wanted to pass. I don't suggest this to anyone though. It is a bit stressful. In the exam hall; 1. Was so tired. Could not write a word on the scrap paper. No Brain Dump for me. 2. However, once I completed first 5 qns, I was like, "WOw this is so easy". Took 4 breaks as I had a very bad headache and I did not carry any pills :(. 3. I completed the first pass in 2.5 hrs. and then reviewed marked qns twice. Everything seemed so very easy, that I was like this is all too good to be true. May be I am missing something and I will fail. But this did not happen in the end and I passed.

Few tips for those who plan to take the test; 1. Please do not study like I did, keep studies for the last minute. Not a foolproof way. I did this because I had no choice. 2. In the exam, if you are tired of staring at the screen and sometime question is not making sense to you, then read it and write it on the scrap paper. This will help a lot to focus on the qn.

3. You might be aware, but i will still tell. You need to use mouse for the calculator. You cannot use Keyboard. This will slow you down, but then there is plenty of time. 4. I had around 8 qns on Conflict Resolution Techniques, 3 on Contract types. 9-12 on ITTO, around 15 on Prof Resp and many on tools and techniques (where they tell you a technique description and ask you to identify it - pay attention to TT of Time, Scope, Quality and Risk) 5. Rajesh Nair's notes are very good. If you are starting to prepare, use them. 6. At the end, I would say believe in yourself, sometimes you need to slog. So, slog. You won't die if you dont eat/sleep properly for a day. Again, you should never reach this stage, but if you do, then remember it :-). If I can pass with so much less prep even you can pass.

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Thanks All, Adi

My Lessons learned Submitted by sr.ind.comm on Tue, 08/30/2011 - 18:40

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

Dear Friends, I wish to share my study schedule, lessons learnt etc. in the hope that some aspirants may find useful tips. As, I've posted elsewhere, my grades are as follows 

Initiation - Moderately Proficient

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Planning - Proficient

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Execution - Proficient

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Monitoring and Control - Proficient

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Closure - Proficient

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Ethics and Responsibility - Proficient

BACKGROUND: Its my belief that someones lesson learned makes sense when presented with his/her background. In my case I started off with few advantages. 

My PM experience is around 6-7 years

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Experience includes a large project with big multi-location, multinational staff.

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Experience extends beyond PM, it includes, pre-sales and bid management, vendor management, portfolio element management

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I work with a well known multinational, so have the support of mature project management practices, much aligned with PMBOK

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Had my first PMP contact program for PDU's in 2006 itself, but could not prepare for exam due to workload.

PREPARATION: I had my recent PMP contact program from QAI in last week of May 2011. By mid June 2011 I received my PDU certificate. I registered with PMI. However, I got involved in some office work and was able to

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finally complete my application only by 18/19 July 2011. I got go ahead for exam from PMI only around 25/26 July 2011 and I booked my exam slot on July 2011 for 30th August 2011. First and foremost I took one of the hard copy mock test provided by QAI. My score was 65%. I started off with PMBOK on 29th July with no specific strategy in mind. By August 2nd I got an overview of the PMBOK content/book structure and then I planned a 3 round study schedule. Round 1 was general reading line by line with some note taking. By this time couple of my colleagues cleared PMP. They earnestly advised me to take up Rita Mulcahy's Exam Prep and one PMP (2009 certified) even warned that there is no chance of passing without reading Rita's book. Anyway, did 2nd round of reading PMBOK + Rita's book. Post study, I spent 3-4 days in consolidation and note taking. Begun taking mock exams. Scores were around 75% on average. Did some analysis. 3rd round of reading consisted of KA wise reading from PMBOK + Rita's book, instead of a single pass of one book. Mock exam scores in the 3rd round were all in 80s. THE EXAM: Difficulty level is a subjective issue (I found it moderate to easy), however I say with certainity that the questions were not frivolous as one finds in many mock tests, they require you to read them with attention and analyse with a cool head. MOCK TEST SCORES Oliver Lehmann 75 - 70% Prepare PM Mock 1 - 85% Edwell - 70% Headfirst - 84% BrainBok Test - 78% BrainBok ITTO Test - 80% PmZilla 25 - 72%

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Oliver Lehmann 175 - 73% Prepare PM Mock 1 - 92% Rita Mulchay's Chapter end tests - 81% TechFaq360 - 86% Exam Central - 81% PmStudy 1 - 84% PmStudy 4 - 83% Beside these I had QAI provided 5 sets of online tests with scores 77%, 82%, 88%, 82%, 84% ANALYSIS AND LESSONS LEARNT Discipline - Forget about dining out, movies etc. Planned hours per day has to be honoured. And don't even skip a single day. This is important if all you got is a month for preparation. Look out for good mock tests. Difficult tests with wrong answers do extensive damage to preparation. Stay clear of tests that try to be difficult by use of verbal sophistry in question. Genuine difficult questions are the ones with one liners with all 4 possible correct answers. And test, test and test. I attempted around 4000 mock questions. Buy sets of mock tests from good ones like PMStudy. It is close to exam types and worth every paise spent. Even easy tests are of good use. They expose you to variation in questions types without trying to be smart, being easy they allow quick feedback and that reinforces facts and concepts faster. They also prepare you for a rigour of sitting through a 200 set question on a higher difficulty level. PMBOK is the bible. While referencing any other book look out for areas of disagreements between the two. Stick to PMBOK. Rita's book is overhyped and dangerous for exam. Lots of non-standard terms and inconsistent process flows. I detected this during my 3rd round of study and in process have saved 8-10 questions in the exam. Analyse your mock results. Reveiwing wrongs answers to know the correct answers is not enough.

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Which answers have I got right because I changed the response during last minute during review? Which answers have I got wrong because I changed the response during last minute during review? These will give a set of area (I had quality management a concern area during initial days of study) that you'll cover with minimal attention next time, because your are close to the concept but still harbour some confusion. Accept that entire PMBOK cannot be covered. All of use are strong, moderate and weak in some area or other. Keep in touch with strong areas and attack wherever you are moderate. A simple cost benefit analysis will show that application of scarce time towards moderate areas will provide better results. ITTO's are a bugbear created by non-PM's trying acquire PMP through rote learning. See how PMBOK maps to your own work. Artifacts may be used with a different name in your organization. Once done page 43 of PMBOK will make sense. If process positioning makes sense and you are able to relate a PMBOK artifact with your own, ITTO fear will vanish. Last but not the least, wrap up all studies atleast 4-5 days prior to exam. Good luck everyone appearing for exam. Heartfelt thanks to this forum. No preparation is complete without advice, encouragement and benchmarking of peers in our profession, PMZilla played that role. Regards - Subrato

Mrs and Mr. PMP Submitted by Sudha Sai on Tue, 08/30/2011 - 16:36

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

All, Thank you to the Almighty, our family & Friends and our 3 year old daughter for taking care of my husband and me as we prepared for PMP. Yes we are qualified Mrs. and Mr. PMP :-) We started the preparation around mid July, studying and applying in PMI...My husband got an application Audit and the process got delayed by 1 week. We rescheduled the exams a couple of times as we were held up with official work.

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Preparation: 1. Studied first 4 chapters from PMBOK and Rita in parallel 2. Then read Rita twice 3. Then read the remaining PMBOK book twice. 4. Practiced a lot of tests (around 10 practice tests...4 PM study, 3 exam collection, 1 head first and 3 other paid test) While preparing, the PMZILLA had suggested to memorize ITTO but I ended up reading the TT alone. My hubby was toooooooo busy and hardly had time to study. 29th Aug..My Husband cleared the exam and he said that there were 30 straight forward questions, 15 ITTO, 10 Calcuations, 10 from page 43 and others were tough. Very litlle risk questions and more of procurement. 30th Aug..I stepped into the hall waiting for questions from Page. 43, ITTO and direct questions. Till question 110 there were none like that...took a break came back, hoping the next question would be easy. by that time 200 questions were done...There were hardly 10 or 15 simple questions. Hit the end exam, took the survey and got the Congratulations Message !!! Thanked the almighty and stepped out really proud. Thanks to PMZILLA members helping us to chose the Exam forums and giving us confidence to do the exam....

Cheers, Sudha

My PMP Exam prep notes Submitted by Tampaite on Tue, 08/30/2011 - 15:07

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

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I visit the PmZilla forum occasionally but almost every day in the past two weeks and listening to experiences from others has helped me a lot and I want to thank every one of you!

I recently took my PMP exam successfully and would like to share my experiences.

My 2 cents: 1. Read PMBOK. 2. Make your own notes as you read individual PMBOK chapters. 3. Avoid Rita‟s book (from exam perspective). 4. Rajesh Nair‟s notes cover everything comprehensively.

My 12-week Study plan:

Week 1: Chap 1 & 2 Week 2: Chap 3 & 4 Week 3: Chap 4 & 5 Week 4: Chap 5 & 6 Week 5: Chap 6 & 7 Week 6: Chap 7 & 8 Week 7: Chap 8 & 9 & 10 Week 8: Chap 11 & 12 Week 9: Review thoroughly the Chap related to Scope, Quality and Risk Week 10: Three 200 Qs 4-hour simulation and Rajesh Nair‟s notes. Week 11: Three 200 Qs 4-hour simulation and Rajesh Nair‟s notes

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Week12: Take the PMP exam.

Note: As long as you get 70% or more on any of the simulation exams (Exam Central, PmStudy etc.), you should be good. Areas to pay special attention: Scope, Quality and Risk and of course the EV related formulas. Good Luck!!!

Passed Exam on 29 Aug - 1st Attempt - Feeling Relieved Submitted by Sarthak Malik on Tue, 08/30/2011 - 08:01

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

Dear All PMZillians

I am happy to share with you that I passed the exam on 1st attempt with following grades – Planning, Executing, Monitoring, Closing – P Initiation, Professional Responsibility – MP

A big share of this I would like to dedicate to this community and Mr. Admin, and rest for my wife and beautiful daughter who gave me a decent environment required for study. I am feeling so lucky to have found this forum and as PMBOK says focus of Lessons Learned is all about doing the things right in future I see this applying very well in my case in reference to what other members share here.

How it started – I took my PDUs in Aug’10 and then did not do anything until May’11 when one of my friends told me that pattern is going to change in Sep’11. I woke up with my eyes widened and prepared a plan as I wanted to finish it in Aug only, the data I chose was 29-Aug.

Study Plan – I decided to go ahead with Head First and then PMBOK as per the respective opinions I collected. Then the plan was to solve Mock Tests.

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Study Started – I finished Head First like a comic book (15 days – 2-3 hr@day on avg) and thought it’s not that tough and should be an easy job to do. I went through the PMBOK for the first time (1 month) and did not bother much about the topics I could not understand in I did score 82% in Head First practice questions and felt relieved. Then comes the SHOCK!!! Oliver Lehmann….scored 62%..PMZilla 20 tough questions…scored 60%....Looked at the answers and everything was from PMBOK..Things which I read but did not study..Read Lessons Learned on PMZilla and things changed from here onwards..

Corrective Action – I decided to change the original plan and have RITA and PMStudy mock tests and PMStudy mocks included in it so that I could first understand what PMBOK is trying to say as the language is little dry and you could sleep or the interest does not develop.

Updated Study Started - So RITA comes in, 2 times and fast track questions 1500…felt better....Now only 15-20 days remain…and all I wanted to do was PMBOK…This time everything started falling in place. Sentences appeared big and worthy, message was very clear and confidence was booming up…Did all PMStudy mocks and consistently scored 80-85% in all tests..Time to Go for Exam….

ITTO - And Yes for all the aspirants learning (not the word not cramming) ITTOs and that too in order for all 42 processes was very helpful as I could easily correlate where question is coming from.

Glossary, Appendix, PMI Code Of Conduct – Worth reading

Exam Day – I was little nervous as failure would have broken me well but confidence came from the fact that I was not ready to fail….So next 4 hours…real tense and I could even take my eyes away from the screen until only 20 mins remaining which is where my exam was done and nothing to review was left…I did little time pass and did not try to change my answers. Finally I Ended the Exam, Searched for the “Congratulations” word and then sigh of relief.

Lessons Learned – It’s all about PMBOK. They want to make sure it is read and understood well. You may pass it without it also but the key lies with it only. For mock tests, do not attempt everything that

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you find on Internet as they may eat your time and quality would not be what is required. You can stick with Headfirst, Oliver, PMStudy and RITA(optional).

Thanks once again for founding such a great community. All the best for exam aspirants.

How I study...Please share yours Submitted by d100200 on Tue, 08/30/2011 - 05:19

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

I tried to read through the PMBOOK but feel too dull and too many things so I decided to stop half way. Then I went through the Kim Heldman book. This book let me have a grasp on main process group. Anyway, I still feel there is something missing and not complete. (Well, I went for my 1st PMP exam atempt and failed miserably). So I went for RITA PMP EXAM PREP, it focus on knowledge area. After finish this, now I have overall understanding of all the 5 processes and knowledge areas. Now is time to map the knowledge area into the 5 process group. At this point, understanding ITTO for Initiating and Ethic will be easy and I score high (>90%) on those mock test at 1st attempt. So my focus will be on Planning, Executing, M&C and Closing. CP, EVM and those formula is the easiest once I really understand the concept. I went back to Heldman book and go through it 1 more time and compile a summary with keywords and ITTO. That gave me a grasp of what I had studied and understanding. Some of the challenges I had:With the experience of the exam, my challeges mostly on the Tools and Techniques as I found that Rita and Heldman gave different answer. Especially on the Ethic part.

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Another example is those technique involded Analogue or Parametric tchniques....got a few question on that and some question is easy but some are really tricky. One thing I notice is that M&C and Risk Management question will really go into the details of testing your memory. for exmaple, a question gave a situation and ask is this a Risk Management or Risk Idetification and I know either this is the answer.

PASSED PMP EXAMS, 25TH AUGUST, 2011 Submitted by nyirendak2007@g... on Mon, 08/29/2011 - 12:07

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

PASSED PMP EXAMS, 25TH AUGUST, 2011, SOUTH AFRICA We have passed the PMP exams (Me & my Wife), on the 25th of this Month. For me it was a second time, BUT for my wife,it was her first try.

Lesson learned/Material Used We used Rita Book and PMBOK and also the FASTTRACK from RMC. We wrote all the knowledge areas exams once and do thorough revisions. We did the process group exams in the same FastTrack. We wrote 6 PMP exams, practicing and setting time to 4 hrs and we usually finished 2hrs 30min earlier. We also wrote the Super PMP exams.

Overall Score. Our score was on 75% and above in all the test. We used to discuss alot at home and when we are at work practice writing exams.

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What to Read for the exams: PMBOK, twice is excellent RITA and FAST TRACK. Thanks Guys. Golie

PASSED on 8/27 in 26 days! Read how this busy working mom did it!!! Submitted by tjohnson1 on Sun, 08/28/2011 - 04:58

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

First, I want to say a HUGE thank you to everyone on the forum. I have been a silent "reader" for the last 4 weeks.. I found a lot of inspiration from all your success stories. So thanks! Background I'm currently a PM for BP. Although i have been a PM for the last 4 years, the PMI material was all new to me. I have 2 active toddlers - 4 & 2, which meant I didnt have the time or energy for long study marathons on the weekends. Studying after work was NOT an option, because again my "second" job started once i picked the kids from school. :-) Despite my heavy study time contraints, i was determined to put the nice PMP feather in my hat! I applied for the PMP in Febuary 2011. Sometime in March, i got approved. Thankfully no audits! As mentioned earlier, my after work hours are fully packed with toddler activities, therefore going to a PMP prep course was totally out of the question. I knew I would have to buckle up and study on my own, which turned out to be a great gamble! Study Plan Once i got my PMP approval, i went out and bought PMBOK book. arrrrghhh. Big mistake. i will tell you why soon. I thought "hey, it's only one book, how hard can it be?" i went through 2 years of Msc degree, PMP has nothing on that... WRONG. I spent the month of July flipping through PMBOK book mindlessly. I just didnt get the material. it was dry and so different from how am used to managing projects. I started

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reseaching other PMP prep books and finally decided on the infamous Rita book and Andy Crowe's book. Brillant choices. That's if you can get pass Rita's dry and pessimistic humor! she's tough, i tell ya.. I finally decided to schedule the exam for aug 27 to give me some motivation to start heavy studying. So Aug 1st, i drew up a calendar. I read one chapter of Rita's book, along with exercises, everyday. Once i finished with Rita, i felt a "little" confident about my process. BTW i scored 68 - 78% across Rita's chapter questions. Then i moved to Andy Crowe's book, and read a chapter a day. The light seemed brighter at the end of the tunnel. Andy is GREAAT. He made complex topics like Earned Value Management very learnable. I was able to remember all EV formulas without memorizing them. I simply got a better understanding from Andy. However Rita gave the in-depth details. Once finished with Andy, i felt confident to start doing practice exams. Based on all your recommendations, i settled on PM Study. I bought the set of 4. This was two weeks ago. My first exam i scored 64.5% to my dismay!! I went back to Rita to brush up on my gaps. I studied each chapter for a week or so during my lunch. BTW, all my studying took place at work, during lunch, in a quiet conference room. Then, i did a 2nd exam and got 72%. I felt better.. my 3rd exam, i got a 73% (not much improvement there). But i felt i had a good grasp on the materials. i went back to reading Rajesh nair's notes. These notes were lifesavers. i was able to study them at my desk when i had a few mins or hours to spare. very handy and well written. a must-have! Fast forward to a day before the exam, yesterday, i woke up at 5 to take my 4th exam. I decided on simpliLearn. Unfortunately, it did nothing for my confidence because i got 68%. I started to get a little down but i rationed that passing score was 61% with the real deal, anyway. I went back to reading through all books. I barely touched PMBOK.i studied Rajesh's notes INTENSELY. I did try to do Exam Central, i did the first 50 questions. It seemed too easy. However the exam is quite close to exam central. Exam day Woke up at 3.30. I was a bag of nervous. Couldnt sleep much. Got up and studied Rajesh's notes again. Glanced though Andy's book again. By 7am Staurday, my kids were awake (there goes any last minute study time!). I go to Prometric center by noon. The exam is EASIER than i expected. You will easily answer about 60% of the questions. There were about 5 questions, i abosutely didnt know the answer too. The rest were more tricky questions. you have

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to make sure you read very carefully. slow your thoughts down and dont answer in a hurry. I used up all 4 hours however i took a 10 min break after 100 questions (which took my 2 hrs). Results Once i completed the survey, my heart has never pounded so fast!!! Then i saw "Congratulations...." absolute joy... :-) I scored Proficient in all the knowledge areas except Social and Professional responsibility (Moderately Proficient). BTW Proficient is the highest ranking. Exam tips and Advice 1. Read Rita's book FIRST. The book will break down the concepts and help you understand things easier than PMBOK (read 3x) 2. andy Crowe - read 1 - 2 x. Simple way of delivering the material 3. Then read PMBOK. 4. Do at least 3 exams closer to your exam date so you can retain better. dont beat yourself up if

you are not in the 80 percentile. The idea is to find your gaps and learn from your mistakes 5. take your time reading PMP exam questions. they do get tricky at time. but are straight forward 6. Study RISK inside out. i cant stress that enough. Then procurement, quality and integration. You have to feel very confident in these areas 7. learn your EVM forumulas and float, CP calc. these will come up 8. STUDY HARD AND PLAY HARDER ONCE YOU PASS. :-) Good luck folks. Thanks to my Lord, Jesus Christ for answering my desperate prayers in passing this exam. I put in the labor and He saw me through.

Passed PMP 24th August 2011 @ First Attempt Submitted by pranayjadhav23 on Sat, 08/27/2011 - 20:35

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

Hi,

This is for all you PMP aspirants out there, let me give you a brief about my journey and Lessons Learned to becoming a PMP. Firstly I would like to thank all people who posted their LL’s on PM Zilla. They were quite useful in re-planning/ refining my study process. Since we all are working professionals one of the

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biggest challenges we all are face with is time constraint. Therefore managing time is very critical in order to achieve success. Just to give you a background I am married, have a 2 year old son, am currently doing my part time MBA (classes are 4 times a week including weekends for 3 hours + 1 hour of travelling time) and have a 9 to 5 job. Even after this tight schedule I have been able to clear. I presume that not many people doing PMP have this sort of a packed schedule. So please take your preparation seriously use all time you have available if you want to add a PMP to your name. The Journey 1.

April 22 2011 - Enrolled with PM Study for classroom training.

2.

May 05 2011 - Took Membership with Project Management

Institute (pmi.org) 3.

May 15 2011 - Completed the Class Room Program and got my

PDU‟s. 4.

May 17 2011 – Applied for the Exam

5.

May 22 2011 – Got an email from PMI for making the payment of

the fees for the exam. On payment of the fees you are informed through email if your application has been sent for audit or if you can take the exam. 6.

August 24 2011 – Passed the exam @ first attempt

The Inputs 1.

After enrolling for the Class Room started Reading PMBOK. It took

till min June to complete the first round i.e. 45 days to complete one round. The main reason is that there is log of concepts to digest and it takes time. Warning all material needed is not covered and you must read another book. 2.

After completing PMBOK (first round) I started reading Andy Crowe.

It‟s a very good book to clear your concepts and also includes the matter missed in the PMBOK. Completed in 2 weeks. 3.

Did Time, Cost and Procurement from Rita Mulcay. These topics

are very well covered there.

Tools 1.

Did Questions from

a.

PMFasttrack (All Knowledge Areas) they would

help you in understanding the root cause and how to address the same. b.

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c.

25 tough questions from PMZilla.

Tips 1.

Do not get stressed during or before the exam. Hold your

nerves 2.

Attempt the logical questions first and they go for the

mathematical questions. 3.

Time your simulated practice tests.

4.

There would be very few direct questions from the study

material. Therefore absorb the concepts and don‟t mug. 5.

No need to memorise all the ITTO‟s understand and

remember as many. 6.

Get to the exam early

7.

Take sufficient brakes during exam as generally

concentration levels would drop after 70-100 questions. 8.

Make sure you fuel up (eat and drink water good

quantities of water, do not over eat as it would make you sleepy) before the exam as 4 hours is a long time and would be really taxing on your brain. 9.

While attempting logical questions identify the root cause

and select the answer that address it directly. 10. Get a good night‟s sleep before the exam.

And Best of luck to you all.

Please read those who are going to write the exam before Aug 31 Submitted by in2minds on Fri, 08/26/2011 - 16:01

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

Hello, Thank you for taking some time out for reading this post, i just cleared my PMP exam yesterday. I have been reading all the posts here and they all cram up a lot of stuff to read. Let me simplify it a bit My background:

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I have been handling projects but not the PMI way, it was freelance project. I just completed my 3rd year in Business Technology Management where one of the subjects were IT Project managements. I did my PMP workshop last year.

Preparation Time: I had 3 weeks of preparation time before i wrote my exam.

Study Method: 1) PMBOK 2) PMBOK 3) PMBOK 4) PMStudy.com exams Please dont read Rita if you are going to give the exam before 31st August, because the exam is no where close to what Rita blabbers. The entire Exam is based on the PMBOk, so make sure you read every word from the book and know it as well. Exam: Many test takers will find it a difficult exam, i found it myself, even though i had project management knowledge. Rita's book nor did her simulation test helped. The questions are totally different and difficult. You have to be very very careful reading the question and the 4 choices, make sure you notice the words if they are asking for a "Process" and in which "Knowledge Area". I had a quite a few questions which i had to perform calculations, IRR, TCPI, Pert, Profit/loss. again the test is not easy, the ethical questions are tricky so are the rest. Just follow your instinct and while rewieving dont change your answers :)

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All the best to everyone.

PASSED PMP! - First Try - Its not hard. Submitted by PMP_2011 on Sat, 08/27/2011 - 06:46

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

All, I can say with my head held high, that I passed my PMP exam 25th August 2011 on my first try. I bought three study guides: 1) PMP In depth by Dr Paul Sanghera 2) Pass PMP on first try by Andy Crowe 3) Rita's PMP exam prep I first starting reading Dr Pauls book but I realised its way too detailed for a 3 month time limit (I had 3 months to prepare and wanted to clear the exam change cut-off date), so I put this away. Dr Paul wrote a good book but it is layed out by process group not knowledge area which make it difficult to correspond and refer back to other books when multiple study guides are used and again if you're on a time limit, this book is not for you. The best book is Andy Crowe, it is written is VERY plain easy to understand English but itself is not enough. This book gets to the point, explains the difficult in simple terms and is a must for a time limit based study plan. I used Rita's book to finalise and prepare for the exam, excellent book but don't think it is a book that you can cover and prepare for the exam in 3 days, its detailed enough to acquire 1 month of your dedicated part time study. Like any book, you need to read at least once. The only problem with Rita's book is that she comes across as a pessimist in which she continuously reminds you are you really a true PM? and do you really do this in the real world? Are you sure? Ignore her, I actually covered her photo on each page I saw her in the book and this made a bit difference to my confidence. YOU WILL NOT PASS THE EXAM USING EXAM QUESTIONS OUT OF RITA OR ANDYS BOOKS ALONE, YOU NEED PM STUDY. For final exam prep, I used PM study's four simulation tests, pay the money it's worth it! I did not buy anything else (like fast track etc) as it's a money making theme for these companies and I still passed. As a matter of fact PM Study's questions are harder than the actual exam, so it builds very good mental muscle so when you're in the exam, its seamless (I mean that) Buy all four exams though and you WILL pass considering your scores are at least 80% and above for each exam. If you think PM study's questions are exactly the same as the exam, you will be disappointed, but they are close enough for you to tackle each exam answer. So memorising answers won't get you anywhere. When you study hard using PM study, the exam questions will be easy. Now about the exam: First 15 min Computer Tutorial 4 hour exam when exam is finished, don't think you will get your results straight away, you will need to participate in a 5 min survey. After the survey is complete, you will see CONGRATULATIONS YOU HAVE PASSED THE PMP EXAM! Oh yes here is another tip, do not waste countless hours mastering the formulas, I think I had 5 questions that needed me to calculate an

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answer 1 of which was a 3 point estimate (easy peasy) and two using EMV = Probability x Impact (easy peasy again) and two to derive EV and CPI. I did not even get one question on calculating a procurement contract Final Fee! So don't waste countless hours, understand it and memorise the formulas but don't obsess over it. Most of the questions were scenario based however you would typically get 5-10 very simple questions in a row such as what is an input to define activities. Peter.

Passed PMP exam - 24th August Submitted by working_hard on Sat, 08/27/2011 - 00:56

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

I am happy and proud to inform that I am a PMP I would like to thank the Admin and all the participants of this wonderful community. I will highly recommend this community to all future aspirants. Study plan and material: Preparation: 4 months Studying with a friend helped a lot (killed the boredom) and he pass the exam as well. Boot camp: Edwel Books: PMBOK, Rita, Edwel notes Exams: Lehmann (62%), Simplilearn (70%), Edwel (75 - 80%), PMZilla 25 tough (68%), Exam central (82%), Rita (80% avg), PM Study (4 exams - 80 %)

. Taking the practice exams at the public library

was my strategy to getting used to the Prometric environment. Cheat sheet: ITTOs, formulas,HR theories. Additional material: Rajesh Nair notes ( Web resources

: PMZilla, Deep Fried Brain, PM Prepcast, Youtube (sir ganttalot, Praizion,

CorneliusFichtner) Exam experience:

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Memorizing the ITTO's helped me to recreate the process flow during the exam and writing down the ITTO acronyms in 15 mins before the actual exam gave me a sense of confidence. The exam questions seemed to be easy but were tricky. I had to concentrate very hard at carefully reading and understanding the questions. PM Study exams were the closest to the real exam (I wish they were a little more tougher). I finished answering all questions in 3:15 hrs, used the remaining 45 mins to review 50 questions. Best wishes,

Passed PMP on Aug 20 (my 1st attempt) Submitted by mdeluze32 on Tue, 08/23/2011 - 00:01

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

Aloha from Hawaii, I have cleared my PMP exam on Aug 20th. The exam was not easy but not too difficult. I got to know this website very end of my PMP exam preparation but gave me very good and useful information for my PMP exam. Wish I could find PMZilla earlier. So, I knew better. Main material I used for PMP is Rita's PMP Prep 6th edition. I think Rita's book is good to understand the concept. Especially PMIsm. However, Rita's exam quiz at the end of each chapter seemed too wordy and real exam was not really wordy. Mostly concise. Just like other people said, PM Study was the closest exam simulator to the real one. I took only one free exam from PM Study but I thought it was good enough to know what real 4 hours exam like. I also used brainbok.com to understand ITTO's. It was good for me but PMBOK & Formula test simulator was far away from real exam and found some answers were incorrect. If you want to pass the exam, it is better to stick with something close to real PMP. Thank you PM Zilla admin and all other people for giving me very useful information!

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Submitted by Deepti on Fri, 08/19/2011 - 06:01. Thank Vishal!! Don't feel bad, you have lot of time to prepare. As per my experience, actual test was not very confusing and elimination was easier. But trust me PMBOk is something you should study seriously, and after you have basics it actually becomes pretty interesting. I read Rita in June and opened it only to do the questions towards the end. I did a reading of PMBOk (as you would read a novel)in June and then started reading online material and stuff. But after my first mock test I realized that PMBOK needs a thorough reading, and for last 15 days I referred PMBOK for all the questions that I had doubt on or did wrong in mock tests. In fact in last 3 days I read 5-6 chapters again from the PMBOK, as I missing questions on Procurement, HR and Risk areas. Actually any line from PMBOK can come as question/option. Here is what I did: 1. did 5-6 mock tests (headfirst, exam central, oliver, pm study, road trip etc), and I was scoring 80-85% in those except Oliver in which I scored 76%. 2. Marked and reviewed all the questions I had difficulty in answering irrespective whether I got them right or wrong. 3. Referred to PMBOK and went through the chapters as and when needed. 4.Even I was getting jittery towards the end, but once I started the exam it was a breeze. 5. I didn't memorize ITTO, tried to understand the logic and I think I got it fine, as I scored Proficient in all except initiation and code of ethics. Actually if you attempt questions logically, elimination was easy. In certain questions I wasn't sure of the right option, but I knew 3 that were completely wrong. 6. There were lot many questions from HR and Risk, do read all the tools over there and understand them. I prepared off and on for 2.5 months, but last 15 days I spent 4-5 hours every day.

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Hope it helps, let me know if you have any specific question. Deepti

Cleared PMP - 16th Aug Submitted by zxcvbnm123 on Thu, 08/18/2011 - 12:20 PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

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Hi All First of a hearfelt thanks to all the forum members who have contributed their valuable inputs. I cleared my PMP exam on 16th Aug Material Used

PMBOK Rita's PM Book 6th Edition Primarily I focussed on PMBOK and believe me it is the only key to clear this exam. I would recommend all PMP aspirants just read PMBOK in and out , each and every word very carefully and clearly, understand each and every word of it, Just spend one month and you are ready for this exam. Nothing to worry about, this exam is not so tough as it has been projected. Four Hours duration is more than sufficient, so please do not worry about time constraint Try to practice PM Study simulator exam Do not expect long paragraph questions like we have it in Rita's Fastrack Questions are just one liner, some were even asking for simple definition type... No complex calculations, as some Mock exam present it like this. Simple addition/division questions for which you do not even require any calculator ITTO questions were simple, If one can remember them it would be easier to click next quickly :)

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And last but not the least do Say your Prayers to Almighty before and after clearing your exam because it is only with His permission , one can Pass it in first attempt..

Thanks and Regards A Sharma

Thanks a lot for your good Submitted by zxcvbnm123 on Fri, 08/19/2011 - 12:39.

Thanks a lot for your good words I used Rita Fastrack - But honestly speaking they are too far away from real exam, but clears your concepts and stamina to sit for four hours PMStudy - That is closest to real one Simplilearn - Good for practice Exam Central - Good source of Questions Real exam i would say was a mix of all domains, nothing specific but yes about Risk and HR Contributed a bit mnore than rest of the domains

Cleared my PMP Exam on 15th August Submitted by satish_multi on Sat, 08/20/2011 - 19:47 

PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt. Cleared my PMP exam on 15th August, but since was away on site couldn’t post my lesson learned. Study Period May 2011 to August 15th 2011

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May 2011 After collecting 35 Mandatory contact hours..I went through PMBOK and found it not that intresting to read and switched to reading Headfirst PMP which I found to be very good and intresting book to read. I spent nearly 3 weeks to read the Head first PMP and was trying to understand all the process areas and and their respective knowledge area. Spent 1 more week on summarising what I read on HeadfirstPMP and started to solve exams from Headfirst where I score 80%. I was very happy and felt confident, and sorry forget to mention I had planned to give exam on 1st August 2011. So with the result of Headfirst PMP I was considering that I had the scope to prepone the exam. This was the first Sign of Overconfidence. June 2011 I started to read PMBOk again in June first week and found it intresting, but frankly since I was confident read until the Framework and Integration Knowledge area and felt its cake walk let me read it at end as I have enough time and since I had a borrowed Kim-Heldman’s book started reading it and spent the whole of June in reading the book and solving the end chapters test and I was scoring approx 80-85%. July 2011 Now as per plan I had whole of July for solving mock test and appear for exam on 1 st August. I bought PM-Exam Simulator from Cornelius Fichtner and started to give mock exams. There were 9 mock exams comprising of 200 Que. First exam I scored 68% it was shocking for me, how could I score such low marks. Spent 3.40 mnts on the exam and again spent 4 more hours understanding where I went wrong and learning that areas. After 2 days I gave the 2nd 200 Que mock test and scored 66% this was an eyeopener for me. All the confidence in me drained out. I was blank for 2 days, during these 2 days I spent quality time browsing forums of Pmzilla, PM-Exam Prep Self study group, Deepfriedbrain.com. After taking feedbacks from these forums I concluded that I have never read PMBOK properly and each and every forum it’s been clearly mentioned that PMBOK should be read minimun twice. This was the eye opener for me thanks to PMZilla, Deepfriedbrain and Pm-Exam prep study groups. I started reading PMBOK and spend half of July on understanding PMBOK was happy that now many of my concepts were cleared and it dawned upon me that exam is on 1st August and as per my plan I had to prepare my own notes, Ihad to read many topics for eg HR, Contracts which I had read from Pmzilla and deepfriendbrain forums.

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Moreover I had to give more mock test, so I postponed the exam to 15 th August 2011 which was realistic and achiveable date. After completing reading PMBOK once I gave mock teste from PM-exam simulator and again I scored 69%. So I spent 1 more week and spent time on PMBOK for 2nd time and on August 1st I gave one more mock exam from PM-exam simulator I scored 70%. August 1st to 14th August 2011 This is it…I understood that either I have not prepared well or I had to change the mock test. I read in Pmzilla that Pmstudy exam mock test are near to PMP exam and they are fairly easier.So I bought 4 tests from Pmstudy and gave the first test and I scored 78%. Wow I felt some confidence I am out of the rut of 65-70% score. Last 10 days before the exam I spend time on making notes on all ITTOS and Knowledge area and reading PMBOK as a 3 pass. After giving 5 mock exams I concluded that I am very good in Intiating, Closing, & Professional Responsbility and Average in Planning, Executing & MnC. So I spent my efforts on weak areas and also I would like to mention I came across a youtube link from SirGanttalot for EV Analysis and Network Analysis. I would recommend all PMP aspirants to watch this youtube link for having a stronger understanding of the above topics and also Please read from HEadfirstPMP where Network Analysis is explained very well from the exam point of view. Finally 2 days before the exam I went through the notes I prepared and most importantly never memorised ITTO and just understood them. And finally gave one more mock test from Pmstudy, after reading the notes prepared by me. I scored 75% but my main aim was to check how much helpful was my notes for the exam and what areas I need to add to the notes. I felt that I should concentrated more on HR and prepared short notes.

Final day 15th August 2011 Exam was at 10.00 Am, woke up early and studied only my notes for about 2 hrs. The exam was very simple and questions were very tricky. 60 % of questions, I could easily elimnate the wrong answers for this I think PMBOK helped me as these question were straight from pMBOK there might be slight negligible variation. 40 % Questions were 2 line or max 4 lines (approx 10 Ques) but the answers were very tricky. It was getting difficult to pluck the right answer. Network Analysis Question and EV Questions were quite simple ( I think I was lucky to get simple Questions on Claculations).

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I came across lot of questions on HR and Risk and I recommend all our friends to read understand all HR concepts. I could finish the exam in 3.25 mnts and spent 10 mnts on marked areas and I just changed 3 of them and frankly I didn’t have enough mental strength to go through remaining questions other than marked. I hit the end exam and was happy to find Screen with “Congratulations” I scored with Proficent in Planning and rest Moderate Proficent. This shows that whatever I achieved in the mock test was almost same as I achieved in the final Exam. So friends we don’t have to panic if we don’t score 80-85% in Mock test, If we are confident that we have studied enough and if we are consitently scoring 70-75% in the mock test say approx 5 full 200 Ques Mock test we are ready for the exam. Best Luck to all our friends……….. Cheers Satish By the way I would like to recommend to read Exam Tips – Project Human Resource Management- Jimmy Owens. http://www.pmhub.net/wp/wpcontent/files/Jim_Owens_PMP_Exam_Tips_on_Human_Resources_4ed_V1.pdf This helped me a lot during the exam as I read it before going to the exam and luckily most of the questions that came in the exam i could answer because of these notes.

Passed on 16th Aug at first attempt Submitted by royal on Wed, 08/24/2011 - 18:45 PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

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Hi All, Let me share the journey with you... It was a treachorous journey to say the least...I am saying this because I had to stop preparation midway TWICE for some personal emergency. I had startedpreparation

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around Dec last year and decided to take the exam within March this year. I went through the PMBOK once and marked what seemed importatnt to me...this I did so that I did not have to read each and every line the next time. However it all seemed very dry...I could not make out much relation with the several process areas/knowledge groups and they seemed disjointed. Next I started with Rita's book and slowly things started falling in place (it was somewhat more interesting to study). I studied Rita once and was scoring around 50-60% in the chapter exams so i knew I still had a long way to go. Once I became somewhat comfortable, I started practising with Rita's simulation software. The questions seemed pretty tough to me but I hang on, trying to grasp the explanations for the questions I answered incorrectly. It was mid of Jan this year and soon I was forced to discontinue studying for some mergencies. I started again during first week of March...everything seemed new so i had to repeat all the steps as mentioned above. I practised day in and out and suddenly Rita questions did not seem so tough any more !! I WAS MAKING A BIG MISTAKE (I will clarify later)...at this point of time, again I was forced to stop preparation...it was March end. Two months went like this...by this time I was failrly frustrated and was wondering whether to quit or not. However I decided to give it one last try before the Aug deadline. Since I had practised Rita's test exhaustively, I started looking elsewhere for 'free' sample questions. I found few (the common ones...Oliver Lehman, Head First etc). To my utter surprise, I found I was scoring not more than 60% in any of them. Now this gave me a rude awakening and it was obvious I was missing something in my training. I discovered that I had overestimated Rita's software and expected only similar questions in the exam, which was not the case !! To overcome this, I started practising as many exams as I could and more importatntly, understanding the knowledge gaps. Here I made another mistake...I got influenced by the 'PMP dumps' and was thinking this is one sure shot way of passing the exam. Believe me, it is NOT...I came to understand this once I took PMStudy free exam..Yes I was doing better than before but not what I would like to do in the real exam. I was searching for alternative study guides/sample questions that would help me. FInally I zeroed in the following options : PMZilla and PMStudy. I decided for the former and could score around 60%. I immediately concentrated on the questions I could not answer and this did help me a lot. I had so far rescheduled the exam for 4 times (due to lack of confidence) but I was now ready for the exam. For few days before the exam, I went through PMBOK and

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Rita as well as ALL of the notes I had prepared. On the D-Day, my exam was from 3 p.m. I packed the usual snacks, drinking water, Photo IDs etc and reached exam centre by 2:30. and waited patiently for the exam to start. When the tutorial started, I started to write the necessary things quickly on the rough sheet provided...but then I was horrified to find that I was not able to remember anything at all to write!!! I was tense for some time and laid down my head on the desk, trying to breath deeply. Slowly I remembered all that I needed to jot down and did that (Lesson : Please DO NOT panic if things are not going as you intended, try to be calm and focussed) Regarding the exam, I would like to mention few points: 1> I could finish around 100 questions within first hour (without hurrying too much)...I could manage around 70-75 at home while taking practise tests. 2> I finished the rest within next 1:15 hours...I had not skipped any questions but had marked many questions for review. I decided to take a quick break and have some food (not because I was hungry but I thought I might be later). I utilised around 10 mins and came back to exam room refreshed with 1:30 hours to spare. 3> I started reviewing the marked questions quickly but found I wasn't able to progress very quickly. I actually planned on reviewing all questions so I needed to hurry. I changed around 40-50% answers for the marked questions. 4> Regarding maths problems, I expected around 15-20 but got only 5-6. They were pretty simple except one (not sure if I answered it correctly) 5> Coming back to review, when I finished reviewing the marked questions, only 30 mins were left. I started reviewing the remaining questions but by this time, I was feeling a bit tizzy and after 15 mins or so, I decided to submit my answers. I was feeling that I would fail to make the pass marks (I am not usually a pessimist but thats what I felt at that point) and was a bit frustrated. 6> On submitting, the screen went blank for some time. I was too afraid to look and when I looked again, there was a screen for taking a survey. I decided to skip it and the screen went blank again. Then to my utter surprise, I saw 'Congratulations' on the screen. I had made it !!! :) Material used: 1> PMBOK (4th Ed)

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2> Rita's Book (6th Ed) 3> Rita's Simulation software 4> Rita's Flash Card 5> BrainBok ITTO (useful tool...highly recommended) 6> PMP Maths by Vidya Subramanium (this has certainly helped me build my confidence, though I received very few math problems) 7> PMZilla Question set (I found this useful to fill the gaps in my knowledge...use this only if you are serious and can use in later part of your preparation) Mistakes made: 1> Relying too much on Rita's questions. In fact I attempted the same questions multiple times and could remember answers by seeing the questions. DO NOT do this with any question set, instead try as many different questions as possible. 2> Putting too much faith on 'dumps'...you can try them for variety but thats it. 3> BIGGEST MISTAKE...keeping ITTO to 'memorize' for later part of my preparation. There were many formulas floating around for memorizing them but I did not find them of any use in the way that remembering witout understanding did not work for me. Please pay attention to this from the beginning of your preparation. Thats all from me...please let me know if you have any specific queries.

Wowwww, PMP Certified - August 17, 2011 Submitted by yashbindlish on Fri, 08/19/2011 - 11:53 

PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt. Finally the day has arrived to which I was eyeing from last 1 year. I cleared PMP examination on August 17 2011. It was a great immense experience during preparation of PMP. Please find my Lesson Learned below. I started my preparation last year July 2010, where I first attended and certify the criteria of 35PDU‟s. Actual journey started from there. I was highly impressed with the

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PMP content from PMI and start thinking and applying PMI practices more and more into my projects. Towards my preparation I started my preparation with PMBOX 4 which I studied at least 5-6 times in an year. During initial days I used to study on an off criterion where I study 15days then break for another 1-2week and then again I jump back onto my preparations. I used to prepare my own notes after every Knowledge area, so that I can recall everything which I learnt during my preparations and also put down an examples from my day to day projects. I always start writing down my notes with Knowledge Area heading, and then in which process group and then what all process are part of this group. Post adding 1 or two appearances for each process area. By doing this, I was simple able to grab and absorb Input Outputs with their tools and technics more effortlessly. I used to study PMBOX once then switch it to Rita Mulcahy, which means studied Rita Mulcahy 5-6 times. I must appreciate Rita Mulcahy here. Excellent book with real life project examples. Hats off to this book, the way its content is written and explained it‟s purely breathtaking. It helped me to a great extent to understand each and every process in much more detail and helped me to relate the same with my examples due to which I was able to grab learning‟s more quickly. I keep on practicing the ITTO during my preparations and used to write them in excel sheet and next time whenever I used to repeat the same process I ensures myself that this time I will not skip the facts which I missed last time. By doing this, I am able to understand and relate my strong and scrawny areas. Again I put all my weak areas in separate excel sheet and keep them marked as RED with date. Post i only focused on my scrawniest areas and start exploring the learning‟s from surfing couple of blogs like the GREATEST of all „PMZILLA‟ excellent, immense discussion forum. Now once I am through with the missing facts I have started reading book from Kim Heldman (outstanding case studies after every chapter which actually focused me as in I am truly doing some large projects with 1000 of project team members around and applying all PMI best practices) During my initial days with PMZILLA I found chapter notes from Rajesh Nair (damn good, helped me so much throughout my last days of preparation that I actually didn‟t ever get a chance to touch any book). I was so confident every time I read these notes. My confidence level start rolling up day by day I start reading these notes.

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Once I am through with all my learning‟s I started practicing online sample papers from various sources like PMZILLA (excellent set of 25 questions), PMSTUDY (amazing set of questions), Simplelearn (I found them really tough, which actually got me scared coz I never scored more then 70) I practiced Simulator from RITA where I benchmarked the score of minimum 90%, which actually start rolling up before a week of my exam schedule. Before that it was always between 80 – 85. Same goes with 200 practice questions with PMBOX, I highly recommend to practice sample questions of PMBOX 2-3 times before writing up your exam. Below are few source sites from where I got lot of questions to practice and helped me to Benchmark my score everytime I practice. Best way to Benchmark is write down your score against each source mentioned below with date of attempt and compare your score using PIE charts or Bar Charts. I collected this source of sites from PMZILLA itself, very useful content this site holds.

Source PMStudy 1 techfaq360 techfaq360 CertGear Certification.about.com Certification.about.com Head First Labs MeasureUp My PMP Oliver F. Lehmann PMP Question Bank PMTI PM perfect EdWel Programs PassionatePM OSP International LLC (Excellent Source)

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Link www.pmstudy.com www.techfaq360.com www.techfaq360.com www.certgear.com certification.about.com certification.about.com www.headfirstlabs.com www.measureup.com www.mypmp.ie www.oliverlehmann.com pmpbank.googlepages.com www.4pmti.com http://www.pmperfect.com www.edwel.com http://www.passionatepm.com/free-pmp-exam-practice-testquestions www.free-pm-exam-questions.com

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Ajith Namboothiri Voight Project Solutions

www.ajithn.com http://www.voightps.de/Free_PMP_Exam.asp

Exam Experience: Finally day has arrived August 17, 2011. I read each and every question at least 23times and try to understand the question first and use to relate the question with which knowledge area it is refereeing too. Most of the questions where 1-2lines and few where there of 4-5 lines also. i used to mark the question for latter reference whenever I feel I am not confident. In the last I took 3 hrs to finish all 200 questions and then I counted how many questions I kept for later reference for which count was 67, then slowly and gradually I start referring marked question one by one. Lastly it was 7 mins left I clicked „END EXAM‟. Oofffffff 3-5 seconds pause with a white screen and my hearts beats are attacking in all corners. I got a screen to submit a feedback, quick I finished the feedback and again 3-5seconds pause and then screen came saying „CONGRATULATIONS‟wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww cant explain what a killer vibes you get that time. In end my recommendation please please please please read exam questions more carefully before reading out the options. Do not panic, exam is not touch but I must say it not easy too. Much appreciate PMZILLA Admin and team members who helped me a lot in answering to my concerns i posted on PMZILLA discussion forum section in last couple of weeks. Hats off to every one!!

Study partner / tips Submitted by wgoley06 on Thu, 08/18/2011 - 00:22 

PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt. Hi all. I'm in the home stretch of preparing for my exam. Its scheduled for 8/26/11. I feel confident in taking the exam, but at the same time I know and understand that I'm not the greatest test taker. Here's what I've used to prepar thus far: Read PMBOK 3 times, Read Achieve PMP Success twice, Rita Exam prep 1 time (overview)

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Headfirst 1 time (overview) Watched PrepCast videos Studied PrepCast Formulas I know all ITTO's and process by heart The reason I decided to read over all of these books is because I've found in many post that the exam covers topics outside of the PMBOK and I just want to be prepared for it. With all that said would anyone that has recently passed the exam be willing to communicat with me some support/tips? If so message me and I can get my phone or email over to you. Tkx in advance,

Vandana, I cleared my PMP Submitted by Puneet21 on Tue, 07/07/2009 - 23:19.

Vandana, I cleared my PMP on June 30, 2009. I read your lessons learnt in detail. You can also read my lessons learnt which I posted today few minutes back. Here are my suggestions, for passing the exam for you. 1.Books you can read Headfirst, to clarify concepts, PMBOK Glossary, Tools and Techniques, remember by heart, every 44 process, you should know by heart, in which process group is it, read Rita malcahy also. 2. Along with reading, dont ever stop practicing questions, every day make it a point to at least practice 40-50 questions daily without fail, be it from rita fast track cd or anywhere else (I used fast track cd rita). Specially one month before the exam, you should do it continuously, and your score should be more than 90 percent. 3. Become member of PMHUB.NET and read every piece, in detail, initially spend one or two days exploring that site, it has loads and volumes of information stored in itself. 4. Always read tools and techniques daily, paste it on your desk and glance through daily without fail, specially one month before D day.

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5. Numerical questions, you were not sure, thats what you said. Let me tell you these are the only questions which you are very sure that you have done right in the whole exam.Practice hard on these so that you can do them without much time getting wasted in real exam, there is only practice that can make you perfect. 6. You said you scored more than 75 percent in each exam, including PMSTUDY, let me ask you, did you give all the four exams for PMSTUDY, if not, then buy all the four exams from pmstudy and specially, make a note of all the wrong answers and anayze those, only then you will be able to know your weak points. If yes, you gave all the four exams, then after fourth exam, you should have score more than eighty percent, and did you analyse the wrong answers and wrote in your note pad after analysing for revising later. 7. Most important, whatever questions you wrong, please start writing in your notebook, so that you can revise later. As just before 2 3 days before, you need to revise all those,..... I think this is the mantra I could give you. Hopefully it will help you. Please let me know in case you need any other information. Puneet Submitted by coolpmp on Fri, 07/03/2009 - 17:50.

Dear Vandana I am sorry to hear that news. Even I am also failed in first attempt though my preparation was very short time (20days max). I would like to suggest you to follow the following, I am following this, may be useful for you. Start with Andy Crowe (Books is published for 4th edition) X 2 round. This book is a replacement of PMBoK and you will get good idea of the processes. Very easy writing and help to understand PMBoK. Then you can refer PMBoK 4th Edition x 3 round with Glossary (MUST) Then Rita, as you and also me already gone through Rita so you dont have put much effort on it. X 2 round You can refer Headfirst book also (Book published and available) Next you can refer Kim Heldman book (Not published in India). I have not gone through the book but the questions seems very good and found in most LL that it is a good book to understand flow of process. It is based on Process groupwise.

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Q & A:Most of the sites are not updated yet. So you can go for Rita Fastrack V6.0 and PMPSimulation.com. Rita has done a gr8 job in wordy questions. As your name reflect that you are mostly a Indian, if yes then you can buy books online from http://www.cb-india.com. They normally deliver within 3 days. I dont know they can deliver outside India or not. Else you can refer Amazon.com Best of luck Regards

Passed PMP on 29th Aug 2011 in frist attempt - Venkat Nedunuri Submitted by vnedunuri on Tue, 09/13/2011 - 08:45

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General Discussion

Hi, Now its my turn to Thank you all for your support in my PMP journey. I have successfully completed PMP certification & It is really an awesome feeling to be a PMP. The most useful point which I learnt is that PMP is a mind set not an exam. You need a right attitude to pass the exam. Books referred: •PMBOK •Rita Online exams referred: -

•Head First - 200 qs - got 73.5 % •Oliver Lehmann - 75qs - got 60 % (Failed) •Oliver Lehmann- 175qs - got 67.5 % •PMStudy - ( All 4 Simulation tests)

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Test1 - 74% Test2 - 80.5% Test3 - 82.5% Test4 - 78.5%

•Techfaq360 - Got 82% •Rita Fast Track - I did Chapter End Questions got 70% on an average. Other Sites referred http://brainbok.com

- Very good for ITTO's

http://deepfriedbrainpmp.com - Very useful for concepts. http://pmzilla.com - Very useful for knowing LL's from all. Based on this we can plan how to attack the PMP exam. Brief about my study plan: 1.PMBOK - Although not easy to grasp in first go. Read PMBOK atleast 3 times along with glossory. To pass PMP you must read PMBOK multiple times and understand the concepts. Understand the ITTO's like why these inputs for this process? why these outputs out of this process? Why not this input? Try to Visualize and try to understand the inputs, toos&Techniques and outputs. This is very important for the exam. Once you understand this then no need to memorize the ITTO's. Don't try to memorize ITTO's. 2.Rita - Studied in detail. Did all the chapter end tests. 3.Combine study of both PMBOK & Rita. Chapter wise. First I read from Rita and skimmed the same chapter from PMBOK. 5.Started doing the prectice tests. Stopped reading before 15days of scheduled exam and started doing mock tests. Started with Rita Super PMP but i could not finish all 200Q in 4 hours. Questions were very lengthy and i got only 60%. I was little disappointed and started looking any other mock tests in the

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internet to build up some confidence. I attempted techfaq360 and got 80%. Then Headfirst 200Q, oliver 75 and 175 etc.,

6.Attempted 3 full length simulation tests to make myself comfortable for that 4hr marathon. Attempted pmstudy test2,test3,test4 before the exam scheduled on 29th Aug. Started with pmpstudy test1 on 19th Aug. then I did Oliver 175 on 23rd. on 25th pmstudy test2, on 26th pmstudy test3, on 27th pmstudy test4. on 28th i referred PMBOK and Chowdary's excel summary doc ( very nicely prepared by Mr.chowdary). It really helped me to glance every thing that read in 2months in one day. Next morning 29th Aug is the exam. 7.In all the practice tests full lengths as well as chapter end tests I was scoring between 78 to 82 %. Pmstudy 4 simulation tests are really worth. Pay 60 dollors and get these tests. These are very close to real exam and i cannot tell you how impartant these tests are. Before the exam day: •Revised my notes, ITTOs, PMBOK Page # 43 table , chowdary's excel summary notes & then had a good sleep. On the exam day: •I reached the exam center somewhere abt 1Hr before. During the 15 min tutorial I wrote down the Page# 43 table of PMBOK & some useful formulas. I just used 10 mins of tutorial & clicked on the exam start button. Initially the Exam was looking too easy & giving me feeling that I can easily crack it. I completed 130Q in first 90minutes and took a break for 5minutes. I thought i could finish exam by 3 hours. Then started real problem for me. It took me to finish last 70 questions in 2hours. I just reviewed the marked questions for 20 minutes. Remember if you understand the concepts, then the exam is easy otherewise not. My suggestions: 1.Start preparing for PMP by PMBOK & restrict yourself for PMBOK & one other reference book( either Rita or HeadFirst). Not much books. 2.Try as many practice tests ( take 4 full length simulation tests) as you can before taking actual exam. Atleast last 1 week you should spend only for mock tests. This very key for the success. 3.In terms of ITTOs I should say that try to remember & understand them. Whatever is applicable to individual. ITTOs should be very much clear in terms like which one will be useful in what situation & in which Process. In my case I can say that there were so many questions on ITTO directly or indirectly. So remembering them with thoruogh application of these helped me a lot.

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5.Religiously follow the Blog Deep Fried Brain. Thanks to Harwinder for providing so much useful information at no cost. I want to pass on a BIG THANKS to Harwinder as he is truely giving back to the entire PM Community. And PMZILLA helped me a lot. A Big Thanks to PMZILLA. Last but not least KEEP FAITH in onself & go ahead. My best wishes to all the PMP aspirants.

Best Regards, Venkat Nedunuri, PMP Kuwait. Posted by Harwinder on Wednesday, April 06, 2011 - 1 comments

Soumyajit Mukherjee passed the PMP exam on Mar 29, 2011. He sent me a "thank you" note along with his lessons learned. Here's what he has to say to all PMP aspirants:

Taking the plunge As the year 2011 dawned, one of my resolutions was to become PMP certified. This was finally a strong resolve having broken this a couple of times earlier. Started off with trying to gather what would be good choices to begin preparations with. Having read various reviews on the internet, it goes without saying that PMP Exam Prep by Rita Mulcahy was the natural choice to begin with. Got the 6th edition and started reading through it. The book is fabulous except for the scary attitude it portrays saying that you need to be an expert on every other page. This may be quite bugging, but once you get used to it you should be good to go. The exercises are invaluable if done in the right earnest. Personally, I have to mention that you are much ahead already if your work involves managing project/s. Prep material (the order in which they were read) 1) PMP Exam Prep by Rita Mulcahy 2) PMBOK 4th edition 3) While doing points 1 and 2, I also attempted every question I could gather. This site has been a great source of information in this regard. 4) PMP Exam Quicklet by Paul Sanghera (used in the last 10 days to gauge preparations) During the course of study I started prep work in January but the heat isn‟t on until you register and pay the exam fee. That‟s what got me going. While preparing for the exam, one does go through a lots of crests and troughs. One day you may be very high on confidence, the second day may not be the same. It is very important to keep up the spirit. Most of us taking the exam have regular office work and family to take care of. So balancing all needs is equally important. Finding quality time to study can often be a challenge but if there is a will, you will make your way out.

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Type of questions As everyone says/said about the exam, picking the best choice out of 2-3-4 correct answers isn‟t easy. One question I often wondered was how tough the questions on the actual exam would be. It is very easy to find tons of free sample questions on the internet…some easy, some difficult and some sub-standard. Nevertheless, I did attempt every question I could get. In the last week, I did do PMP Exam Quicklet by Paul Sanghera. I will say that the standard of questions on the actual exam are similar to that on the book. Don‟t ever forget Brainbok.com. That site is invaluable tool. The questions for ITTO‟s, glossary are extremely helpful to check your concepts and understanding. I used to do short burst of 25 questions at random scoring between 20-25 in the ITTO‟s and processes before I gave the exam. Important points to note 1) ITTO‟s - Having read various reviews on whether to memorize or not, here‟s what I have to say. You need to know them. It‟s up to you if you memorize or not, but there are questions on ITTO‟s. I didn‟t have to memorize, But ITTO‟s are sure shot questions which should be correctly answered to increase your chances of success. You must refer to the PMBOK in this regard. 2) The Bible called PMBOK – Read the PMBOK making notes of what you learn new. There are terms in PMBOK not covered by PMP Exam Prep. Read the glossary and index to see if you know all the terms. That is how I went about it. 3) Professional and Social Responsibility – Amidst all the studying, do not forget to read the code of conduct before you take the exam. 4) I felt that my exam had lots of questions from risk management and procurement management in particular. Exam time 4 hours is a long time to sit at one place. So taking a couple of practice exams trying to mock the actual exam has helped. I completed the 200 questions in 2:15 minutes. Then took a 5 minute break and reviewed each and every question once again. During the first 50 questions of the exam, one is bound to be nervous that can result in some mistakes. At the time of review, you will be far more relaxed and may uncover mistakes or change answers as I did. Before clicking on the final „submit‟ I was very confident of at least 148 out of 200 questions. Overall It is easy to keep on reading/studying, but it is very important to give the exam when you are at the peak. My job involves project management and I was able to relate quite easily with the PMP exam content. So that been extremely helpful in my preparation. I spent a good 2 months of effort to prepare for the exam. Prepare well, understand concepts and use common sense, and you should sail through. But if your work does not involve project management at all, this can be a tricky exam to pass unless you undergo good quality classroom training. Lastly, the feeling of achievement as you see „Congratulations‟ displayed on screen is definitely worth all the effort, since this is a widely known and accepted credential. I‟ve spent countless hours on this website reading through lessons learnt that people have shared. It‟s my time to give back. Hope this helps! Wishing you all the best! Regards Soumyajit

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Posted by Harwinder on Tuesday, November 02, 2010 - 1 comments

Onkar passed his PMP exam a fews ago and sent me his lessons learned along with a thank you note and some really encouraging words. Here's what he had to say: ================================================ I passed my PMP exam today. Following is my story (LL) to help future PMP aspirants: 1. I had given myself roughly 5 months for preparation. Wanted to enjoy the studying experience and not stress out by setting a tight timeline. 2. I took 2.5 months to read the PMBOK guide once. Wouldn't recommend that long but I took my own sweet time, mainly progressing on the weekends. During this phase, I also read Rita's book based on the old PMBOK version (V3) - had managed to get it from a library. 3. After this, I purchased the Andy Crowe book (based on V4 of PMBOK), and also gave one diagnostic test (SimpliLearn). I got just 58% in this one, but it was a very good reality check! 4. I then read Andy's book for next 3 weeks - I liked the format very much, simple and easy to grasp! During this time, I came across two good sites - one was this google group and another was this blog - http://www.deepfriedbrainpmp.com. This blog is really good to understand key concepts quickly and it kept me interested in the study. Kudos to Harwinder for the great work! 5. I then took 1 week off from work - this was my main prep stage. I wrote three different tests: a) Pmstudy - 76% b) Edwel - 70% c) Andy Crowe - 86.5% [this was my last test before the exam and a real confidence booster! - although few questions were quite easy, so I was not very carried away by the 86% :-) 6. In my last week, I read the PMBOK guide once more (including glossary and appendices) - this iteration was much quicker (~ 5 days). Also, took few video lessons from Andy Crowe's test site (you get a one week free subscription with the book, I activated it in the last 1 week before the exam), and read few articles from Harwinder's blog. I had planned to revise on some ITTOs since during the practice test I realized that if I knew them well, it was easy to get few more questions right. However, I didn't find time for this and it was too much overload at the end :-( 7. On the exam day, I reached an hour before time, was ushered in the testing room 15 mins before time. I tried to do a brain dump of formulae and processes in the first 15 mins for the tutorial. I was a bit tentative answering the first few questions and I encountered few wordy and confusing questions at the start. I took relatively longer time (than any of the practice tests) for the first 70 questions, then caught up as questions started getting better. I took my first break (10 mins) after 1.5 hrs with 120 questions completed, then completed remaining questions and started reviewing the marked ones. I completed until ques 60 and took another 5 min break. After this, I was quite impatient to know the result so didn't linger too long on the remaining marked questions. For certain questions, I could have sat thinking and debating for 10-15 mins between two contentious choices, but I was running out of patience, hence took my best call and moved on.

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I submitted the test with 1 hr 5 mins to spare, completed the survey quickly and then waited for the result - Although I was confident, during the test, it is very difficult to guess how you are doing so you never know until the final moment. Finally, was delighted to see "Congratulations"! and it was a dream come true for me. My best wishes to all the aspirants! Sekhar passed his PMP exam on the 4th attempt, and 2 years after taking the contact hours training. His is the most incredible (lessons learned) story I've heard. He shares his experience on his roller coaster ride toward PMP Certification: =============================================== Hi All, I just created an account and this is the first time I am posting into this group. I have been a silent reader of all the posts and inspiring lessons learned. It has been a wealth of information to me as I have cleared my PMP with all your help. I feel I should share my experience with PMP exam and the whole process. I started this initiative in 2008 hearing about PMP certification from my PMO. To get 35 contact hrs I joined a training facility in New york spent $ 2400 - ridiclous and pathetic training. Never spoke about pratice exams. Conseqence I failed. Haa PMP is not an easy exam. Success is counted sweetest to me. Blindly following just the training never paid to the attention of 3 attempts in one year. When I planned to retake the exam in 2009, PMP board did not allow me as per to their guide lines of wait time for 1 year. My unfinished initative kept on bothering me, I once again applied in 2010 and need to follow the whole application process once again. I was looking for material from PMP 4 edition, I came across PM Prepcast by Cornelius Fichtner for $99. Amazing Product, the way he simplified ITTO with reasoning was too good, One such example is Develop schedule ITTO I can never forget. I purchased his PM Study Coach but I never followed thrown away my money there. BooksPMBOK the bible. PMBOK made sense to me after watching Cornelius videos. Rita Mulcahy I read the whole book twice and also bought Fastrack. I also read Andy Crowe. After reading Andy Crowe's book I liked his style more than Rita's. I memorized most of the ITTO and also I suggest to.

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ExamsPMSTUDY1 (free) – 73% PMSTUDY1 (free) – 72% Oliverlehamann – 58 % PMroadtrip – 71 % Headfirst – 78 % SuperPMP (fastrack) – 74% Andy Crowe – 80% PMStudy, Headfirst are similar to actual exam Forums- How they supported me. Study group is very essential when you are preparing for the PMP. Due to my hectic schedule I never found any patner, the only substitue was the forums PMZilla too good. DeepFriedBrainPMP - The best. For example his explanation on TCPI. Awesome Harwinder, Keep up the good stuff. project-management-prepcast by Cornelius Fitchner. Final Exam Report on 08/28 Initiation – Moderately proficient. Planning – Moderately proficient. Execution – Moderately proficient. Monitor and controlling – Below proficient. Closing – Moderately proficient. Professional and social responsibility – Below proficient. And I Passed. I have no complains. I did it and I am happy for my efforts. I dedicate my success to my 19 month old daughter and to my wife who supported me. Thank you to PMZilla, Cornelius(PM-prepcast) and Harwinder - (DeepFriedBrainPMP) Regards, Sekhar, PMP Chukkala Ramakrishna passed his PMP exam last week. He shared his study approach with us. Here's what he has to say: ====================================================

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Hi, I am one of the many who benefitted from this site. I passed by PMP exam on 23/08/2010. I am one of the very few who has not studied Rita's PMP materials. I started my preparation from 3rd week of June'2010, every day 2 to 3 hours. I took one week leave just before exam i.e on 23/08/2010. On holiday, I used to study about 10 to 12 hours. My study materials follow as, besides tips from this web site: 1) Head First by Jennifer Greene and Andre Stell man- Only once but it is very good for starters. 2) PMBoK-Once. I took couple of tests-results were not encouraging -about 50%. 3) Then ordered two more books from eBay a) PMP exam pass on first time by Andy Crowe and b) PMP exam review by Kim Heldman. Both are very good for simplicity and number of questions wise. 4) Then again I read PMBok one more time by which I could get clear concept of PMP exam. 5) Lately I ordered PMP exam book by Joseph Philips, I could not read fully, but I practiced questions in CD that come along with book which are also very nearer to exam. 6) Valuable lessons learned from various successful PMP exam passed people. I thank this website with valuable inputs, otherwise passing PMP in first time would not have been possible. Thanks to all. Chukkala Ramakrishna PMP ==================================================== Ramakrishna - Thanks for sharing your lessons learned. I'm glad to be of help and happy to see you succeed. Kira has just joined the Certified PMP club. She passed her PMP exam just a few hours ago (today Aug 24, 2010). Interestingly, she neither read the PMBOK Guide, nor Rita Mulcahy's PMP Exam Prep. So, what's her formula for success? Hear it from her (this is as fresh as it gets !): =============================================== Hi all, Today, 24 Aug 2010 I passed my exam on my first attempt. The first thing I did to prepare for the exam was to attend a course. 5 meetings, 1 day a week for 5 weeks. 9AM-4PM, with 45 minutes for lunch. The course was great, my lector was amazing in passing the material. After each class, at home during the week I read what we learned again, and they provided us with some sample questions for each section, so I did those. Each week I had more and more material to go over through, as we learned more chapters. After the course I committed to a date as many people here recommended. I took the exam 2 weeks and one day (15 days) after the last meeting of my course, to still have a fresh memory of what was learned there.

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

I never read the PMBOK guide, as in the course they gave us a book of slides which pretty much summarized the PMBOK as well as expanded some of the material. Also, my PMBOK is in my native language, and as the exam is in English I wanted to study the terms and get used to the English version. The language aid to my language wasn‟t very successful, as it had a lot of non coherent sentences, like someone used Babylon like crazy!!! I didn't buy Rita or anything else. I just read the slides they gave us (you can read the PMBOK) and did A LOT of practice questions (I think it came close to 2000, but maybe I'm wrong, I lost count a long time ago). I took most of the questions from this site. Oliver is harder than the real exam, but good practice. I really liked Simplilearn and pmstudy, those are good exams, close to the real thing.

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On the exam day itself I came relaxed as much as possible, with a bottle of water and a sandwich to eat later (it's a LONG exam). I took 3 breaks. 2 to have something to drink and use the bathroom, and the 3rd (on question 147) to have a sandwich, drink and refresh. Total time of the breaks was about 20 minutes. I still managed to finish 15 minutes before time, even after reviewing marked questions. GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!!! - Kira

Hello everyone, I passed my PMP exam on August 13, 2010. I have been on and off this forum learning a lot from others questions and lessons learned and have been waiting for this day, when I can pen mine. I started preparing on the month of May and have been consistent in preparing for 2hrs per day. The materials I used were the PMBOK 4th edition, Head First PMP, PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide by Kim Heldman, and Rita Mulcahy's PMP Exam Preparation 6th edition. I started off with the PMBOK, 4th edition. I read through it the first time just to get an idea of what to expect, that itself took a week to finish! Then I joined this site and began reading how others prepared for the exam. This brought me to the Rita Mulcahy’s PMP book. This was really helpful in getting the basics right. Then I followed a pattern of reading a chapter from PMBOK, then the same chapter from Rita’s PMP, Head first PMP, and then Kim Heldman’s PMP guide. This helped me getting the foundation strong, I analyzed situations and found the gaps I had in my PM knowledge. I took notes of important points from these books. I found Kim Heldman’s PMP guide organized differently, which made it hard to sort according to the KA, so used to just skim through it and answer the chapter end questions. On the whole I found Head First PMP book had simple explanation and that Rita’s PMP followed a more comprehensive approach. I used Rita Mulcahy’s Fastrack SW too. After this I started taking online tests from different sites like www.preparepm.com

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www.pm-abc.com www.passionatepm.com www.simplilearn.com www.headfirstlabs.com/PMP/pmp_exam/v1/quiz.html http://www.voightps.de/Free_PMP_Exam.asp www.oliverlehmann.com/ I used to take notes on all the incorrect answers I got and used to analyze why I got it wrong. I used to put in extra hours during weekends. So by July I finished all this and began reading PMBOK once more, this time I prepared an ITTO dump, using mnemonics. I tried this site and found it to be quite good. Thanks Harwinder! www.monkibo.com/pmp-exam-itto-trainer/index.html. Along with this I used to go through all the notes I prepared and follow this forum and www.deepfriedbrainpmp.com A week to my scheduled exam I did the pmp exam from www.pmstudy.com and also went through the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct by PMI. I found the pmstudy’s exam closer to the actual exam. My scores were between 75% and 82%. The whole preparation got me an idea that the exam was going to be tough. The day before the exam, I just went through the ITTO dump and slept early and tight. I didn’t prepare the PMBOK page 43 and formulas dump as after all this preparation they were crystal clear to me. Exam Day I got the afternoon slot, so just went through my study notes and reached the center 30 min ahead. There was a security check (not even in airports have I seen something of this extent!), asked to remove my watch, and keep my belongings in a locker. The locker key and primary ID were allowed inside. I was given 2 sheets of paper and 2 pencils. I was given a brief of the exam and that it was video and audio recorded. When the 15 min tutorial started I wrote the dump within 10 min and went through the tutorial and started the exam. I was relieved to see that the exam was not tough as it was projected to be, not much of paragraph questions, only simple problems to solve. More questions were from quality, risk, change requests, and ITTO’s. After 50 questions I was sure to make it. I finished the exam within 3 hrs, with 4 questions marked for review. The rest of the time I spent reviewing all questions, changed a couple of answers and hit the end button. I was asked to finish a survey and then voila!!! The words I was dreaming all the way..Congratulations !!!.. There were some more sentences too, which I

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don't remember now..Well at that point, nothing else mattered! I thanked God. The freaky Friday is nothing but a myth When I came out I was given a score report. I scored proficient in 3 and moderately proficient in others. A few people I would like to thank….Harwinder and chandraR for their wonderful explanations. Great work guys!! My family, friends, and most importantly God!!! Thank you all from the bottom of my heart…..!

Passed PMP on 7/29/10 Submitted by jason_nutt on Sun, 08/01/2010 - 06:03

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

I wanted to share my lessons learned with this group since I had visited this site more frequently than most. I hope that the following information may help others in their pursuit for obtaining the PMP. I achieved the PMP certification on 7/29/10 after many delays and several nights of studying. Duration = 4 months of studying with the last month about every night 1-2 hours and weekend 4-6 hours. Materials Used: 1.

PMBOK Guide Fourth Edition – I read this once.

2.

PMP Exam Prep, Sixth Edition by Rita Mulcahy – I read this book once and referred back to it several times for clarification of concepts.

3.

Hot Topics PMP Exam Flashcards Sixth Edition – I would listen to these CD‟s to and from work since I have a 45 minute commute. I also put them on my iPhone to listen to them when I was away from the car or house.

4.

The PMP Exam: How to Pass on Your First Try by Andy Crowe – I read this book twice and watched all the free online lessons for each knowledge area. This book was the most helpful in understanding all the processes and knowledge areas.

5.

HeadFirst PMP free downloads – I read the Excerpt of the Critical Path Drill two times. http://www.headfirstlabs.com/books/hfpmp/

6.

PMZilla for lessons learned and formula chart – This was great to have all the formulas in a single location.

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7.

Deep Fried Brain was an excellent source for helping me to understand concepts that I could not understand from the other material. Harwinder does a great job with these topics in the form of blog items that are both fun and well written. http://www.deepfriedbrainpmp.com/

8.

PMPHub was a good source for more lessons learned. If I had to do this all over again, I would have read Andy‟s book first (once). Next the PMBOK, followed by Rita‟s book and then one more round of Andy‟s book again. Practice Exams:

1.

I did all the practice chapter questions and the end of each chapter in both Andy and Rita‟s. I was scoring around 70% - 85%.

2.

200 question final exam in Andy‟s book and scored 86%.

3.

HeadFirst 200 question exam that you can get for free from the link above. I scored 80%. I wish that I would have had more time to study and to take more practice exams, but I needed to get this test completed by the end of July.

Exam: I am a very nervous test taker, so you can only imagine how I felt the night before. Try not to think about the test and spend the night doing something you like or that is at least relaxing. I arrived at the test center 30 minutes prior to my exam time. I checked in the front desk and provided the Prometric staff with my driver‟s license and an ATM card as my two forms of ID that are required for verification. I was then instructed to put all my belongings into a locker. The locker had a pad lock on it, so I felt comfortable leaving my wallet, keys, cell phone, etc in it. Before entering the room before the actual exam rooms, I was asked to show that my pockets were empty by pulling out the front ones. I was then taken into the area before the actual exam rooms. I had to sign-in with someone there. I was given two pencils and around 3-5 sheets of pink paper (stapled together) to take with me into the exam room. I was escorted to a small test booth that had cubical walls on both sides of me with a computer in it. I was asked to verify that my name was correct on the monitor screen and was told that I would have 15 minutes to complete the tutorial before the exam would begin. I went through the tutorial in about 5 minutes and then spent the rest of the time performing my “brain dump.” This consisted of Page 43 of the PMBOK (Process Chart) and formulas (EVM, PERT, EMV, Communications Channels, Standard Deviation, and Float). I referred to these for about 10-20 questions on the exam so I feel it was of benefit. If anything it was my security blanket.

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The exam started. The first 50 questions went well. Around the 50th question, I started to have some questions that were not familiar to me. It helped me to continue to take deep breaths and try to stay focused. It is good not to let a question stay in your mind during the exam. If you are not familiar with the topic, I would suggest making a best guest, mark it and move on. You can always come back around the second pass to think about the question more if you have time left. Around the 75th question, several other people came into the test room for their test. This was a bit distracting and I would advise you to stay focused as you cannot expect the test center to be very quite. They did have headsets that could help with the noise factor. I was starting to fall behind on my time around the 150 th question. By then I had marked around 10-15 question for review. I finished the question with around 15 minutes left. I reviewed as many questions as I could from the ones that I marked. Around 30 seconds left and I decided to just finish the exam. The screen went white and I was then prompted to fill out a survey. If I had not read others lessons learned to inform me to this, I would have thought the system had crashed. After filling out the survey, the screen went white again for about 5-10 seconds. I closed my eyes and prayed to God that I would have succeeded. The screen came up and said CONGRATULATIONS on passing the PMP. I was so excited that I started to get all teary. I had put so much into this test and it was one of the most challenging exams that I had taken, both mentally and physically. I look forward to building on what I have learned from this experience and becoming a greater Project Manager. Lynn Massimo got a new three letter suffix - PMP - to her name yesterday. She sent me this message today. Going by the post, she must have drafted it before she passed the exam because nobody can write such a well crafted, elaborate, informative and useful message, within a day. Here's what Lynn had to say: Hello, Thank you so much for this site. I am happy to report I passed the PMP exam yesterday after 6 weeks of full-time study. I am thrilled to share my Lessons Learned and hope you'll post them. Lessons Learned - PMP in 6 weeks First let me say I was not working full-time while studying. What I covered in this time was done so by studying about 4-6 hours per day, everyday (yes, weekends too) for 5 weeks. Then 4 days of exam prep boot camp totaling about 12 hours per day (10 hours in class, plus reading 30 minutes each way on the train, plus 1 hour homework). If you‟re working full-time, 6 weeks to PMP may not be realistic. At a high level my approach was: 1. Self-study for 5 weeks pretty much full-time including weekends. 2. Boot camp class for 4 days at the end of self study. 3. Took exam 3 days immediately following boot camp prep class.

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Key lessons learned 

Read each knowledge area first in an exam prep book(s) then read the same material in the PMBOK. The best source for understanding Earned Value Management was Rita‟s book. The best source for understanding how to calculate float, Critical Path, forward/backward pass was Sir Ganttalot on YouTube. Rita‟s process chart is overrated. I never studied it. I repeat… it‟s overrated! Rita‟s Fastrack software is expensive but worth it because you can take exams comprised of only the knowledge area you are focused on at the time so you can practice questions that match/exceed the difficulty of the exam but cover only the area you have studied.

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Details During my 5 weeks of self-study before the prep class I covered the following: all 9 knowledge areas, plus framework and professional responsibility. Do not blow off frame work and professional responsibility (the latter is not in the PMBOK but you can get it as a member of PMI, also both Crowe‟s and Mulcahy‟s books cover it). The materials I used were: Books:    

Andy Crowe‟s The PMP Exam: How to Pass on Your First Try Rita Mulcahy‟s PMP® Exam Prep – Sixth Edition PM Road Trip (available free online) PMBOK 4th edition

Other media:       

Andy Crowe‟s flashcards Rita‟s PM FASTrack® PMP® Exam Simulation Software – V 6. $300, but really, really, really worth it. YouTube video by Sir Ganttalot’s on Float and Critical Path Sir Ganttalot’s video on forward and backward pass. This video uses the technique of the first day starting at day zero. There is another technique which starts at day 1. Both are valid. Just pick a method and stick with it. 1 week free subscription to this site came with Andy Crowe‟s book. I used it to do practice exam questions arranged by knowledge area. PMStudy.com simulated exams (boot camp class included 4 online simulated PMP exams, although you can buy the 4 simulated exams as a standalone package for about $130) istudy PMP app for iPod. It was ok. I found an error in one of the questions so I wouldn‟t give it too much credence, but it‟s great for when you‟re sitting on train and want to do a few questions.

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My study habits, step by step: 1. Start each day by writing the process chart (PMBOK page 43) and the formulas. I did not attempt to memorize and/or write the formulas (Earned Value, etc) until I understood what they were for. 2. Read the knowledge area in Crowe‟s book then do the chapter end questions. They are not as difficult as exam questions, so don‟t think the exam will be that easy! They are focused on reinforcing the material you just read. 3. Read the same knowledge area online in PM Road Trip and do the chapter end questions. 4. Read same knowledge area in Rita‟s book. 5. Lastly, read the same knowledge area in the PMBOK. By this point, I understood the knowledge area so the dry, hard to understand PMBOK actually made sense! 6. As I read the knowledge area in each book, or immediately after reading, I took notes. The key here is that my notes were NOT a duplication of ITTOs. 7. Then after having read the knowledge areas in each of the books and taking notes I would do practice questions with Rita‟s Fastrack application. The key here is that I would select the option to take questions filtered for the knowledge area I had just studied. The Fastrack questions are exam-like in their difficulty. In fact, I‟d say they were harder. For the most part I was scoring in the mid to high 70s on her questions.

After 5 weeks of doing this I took a 4 day exam prep boot camp. Because I had self-studied every knowledge area, the boot camp class served as a review for me. It was good because it forced me to engage in the material 12 hours per day (vs. on my own self-study I averaged anywhere from 4-8 hours). So this was a great way to do the last big push, the last big review before the exam. The class ended on a Thursday and here‟s what I did over the next 3 days to prepare for exam: 

Friday – full day of study o Went back to the notes I had taken while reading the knowledge areas (about 1-2 pages of bulleted notes per area). For each knowledge area I now added in additional things I gleaned from the prep class. I now had an awesome, small, tidy self-study packet of ALL the material condensed down to about 15 pages of bullets. o I printed out the 9 PMBOK pages of ITTOs. Near the start of each knowledge area chapter the PMBOK has clean, easy to read, one page list of all the processes of the knowledge area along with their ITTOs. o For the first time in 6 weeks I cracked open Andy Crowe‟s flashcards. There‟s a card for each process but he doesn‟t list every ITTO, just the ones he thinks are primary. So, as a study tool I went through all his process flashcards and highlighted those important ITTOs on the printouts from PMBOK. o Also went through the rest of the flashcards (all 250) and pulled out the ones I didn‟t feel confident about, which was a short list of about 15. Being unsure of only 15 out of 250 had me feeling pretty confident.

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Saturday – half day of study o Write the process chart and the formulas. (15 minutes) o Reviewed my self-study packet of bulleted notes. (1 hour)

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o o o

Reviewed the short list of 15 flashcards and got it down to only about 10. (30 minutes) Read the PMBOK glossary. This was just a confidence builder, as reading it I realized I knew all the terms. Took a full length 200 question simulated test on PMStudy.com. Scored 84%. (3 hours)

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Sunday, day before exam – only about 2 hours of study o Write the process chart and the formulas. o Reviewed my self-study packet of bulleted notes. o Reviewed the 10 flashcards again and again. Recall significantly improving for these sticklers. o Then I cooked dinner, watched a movie and went to bed on time.

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Day of exam o It was warm in the exam room even with AC on. Wear layers but know that you must exit the room to take off / put on a layer. o There is a 15 minute tutorial which is designed to teach you how to use the computer to fill out the questions (duh). Click to start the tutorial and just let it run its count down while you do a brain dump and write the process chart and formulas on scrap paper. o I did the first 100 questions, skipping anything with a calculation or anything that made my brain hurt. At question 200 I took a break to stretch and go to restroom. o At this point I had 1:45 left. Came back and first did all the skipped ones, then reviewed the ones I had marked for review. o With about 50 minutes left all questions were answered and I simply began reviewing from question 1 again and got as far as 100 before time ran out. Glad I did because I did find one or two that were wrong.

- Lynn Massimo, PMP Ms. Roshni Rajagopal passed her PMP exam on July 14, 2010. She sent me an email with her lessons learned and lots of useful tips. Roshni means 'light'. So many thanks to Roshni for enlightening us! =========================================== Hi, Finally finished off with my PMP exam, and was happy to see congratulations flash on the screen! For those who are going to attempt it soon, here's my lessons learned and hope it helps. My prep:1. Read PMBOK once 2. Read PMBOK again 3. Attended mandatory 35 PDU course at Bangalore PMI Chapter. Having a live teacher to explain concepts helped. Here I learned Rita Mulchay is also a good book to read. 4. Read Rita Mulcahy and PMBOK side by side. One chapter Rita, then PMBOK and then Rita's chapter practice tests. 5. Attempted tests but was getting around 73% in the tough tests like Oliver Lehmann.

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6. Went over Rita M & PMBOK last time only to skim over and make notes. I made notes on Formulae, 9 by 5 table and ITTO and Rita's process chart for planning which she said is good to remember. When I made notes on ITTO I left out the OPA, EEF and things like OPA updates in the the inputs and outputs and concentrated on the unique things for each process. 7. I did not cram the ITTO, its too much to remember but by the end after going through it so many times and making notes, I had a good idea about them. 8. My entire study consisted of about an hour to two hours on weekdays for about 6 months. 9. When I was finally giving exams I was getting about 77% in the tough one (oliver lehmnann) and 80-90% (headfirst, rita) on the easy ones. 10. PMBOK was very ..dry with all the ITTO tables. Rita was much more interesting and I felt like Im really learning. Instead of directly giving ITTO tables she suggests we think and come up with answers. So definitely worth a read. And there are several topics like how to select a project and HR theories which are not given in PMBOK. However I did not read any other book because I think that would have been an overkill and would have led to confusion, Instead concentrated on knowing these 2 well. 11. In real life I had more experience in executing and less in the other areas. Especially initiating and closing. So it was necessary for me to put in the time to go over the material properly. One has to know the PMI terms and way of doing things. Even on the parts I was well versed in, there were several things I came to know - like one should use meetings for risks rather than status. And we used to have these long boring go around the room status meetings at work- and these are a waste of time as per Rita! I wish my then Project manager had taken PMP! :) 12. I couldnt attempt as many tests as I had planned. There is so much free stuff available on the net that one can never feel like one has done enough! I rescheduled my exam once. But then one can never be perfectly ready. So I let go , and went ahead with the test. Ensured I got a good nights sleep before the exam.

On the day of the exam 1. Wished I had carried a jacket - it was cold with the AC. 2. Wrote down 9 by 5 table, formulae and Ritas planning chart on the scratch paper provided by Prometric. 3. 200 questions is tiring!!! I took breaks like this to ensure I remain fresh @50 questions - streched at my desk @100 - came out of the test center and nibbled at biscuits, drank water etc @150 questions - streched at my desk @200 - came out of the test center and nibbled at biscuits, drank water etc 4. Finished 200 questions in 2 hrs along with the breaks and spent the next hour revisiting each question. Was out by 3 hrs. 5. I seemed to get more questions on risk management (ITTO) , contracts, conflict management and quality control ( control charts etc). There were several questions on ITTO. And one question from Rita's process chart for planning . And the earned value questions were very direct and simple. I preferred these over the social responsibiltiy questions...those are so vague I started thinking I must not be very ethical! :)

I got a result like this : PASS and proficient (above avg) in planning, executing, monitoring & closing and moderately proficient (avg) in initiating, closing & professional & social responsiblity Well I was hoping to get above avg in every area- but too bad! Now just happy to have it out of the way and be able to put PMP next to my name :)

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All the best to all you people preparing ! Good luck! - Roshni

Alok Sharma passed his PMP exam on April 12, 2010 with good grades. He has compiled a very useful list of study notes for PMP certification, and has been kind enough to share it with us. I hope you find it useful. Alok Sharma, PMP Study Notes 1. Communication is more complex in Matrix Org., since it involves people from across the organisation 2. Project Manager (PM) should always be pro-active and not reactive 3. Identify the tense of the question 4. Risk assessments means risk identification through Qualitative Risk Analysis 5. Project is not complete when customer accepts the deliverables. It completes when all other project mgmt deliverables like lessons learnt etc are complete 6. Historical information is key to improve estimates 7. Quality Assurance: a. is when you are looking at way the process affects the quality. b. When you perform root cause analysis on process problem 8. Even if confronting sounds negative…still do it 9. Whenever 7 tools used for inspection, its Quality Control 10. If you come across a person who is not a PMP, but still claims, then immediately contact PMI 11. Key to a good bonus system: a. Must be achievable b. Should not reward only one or a group c. Goal should not be too aggressive 12. In n(n-1)/2 type of problems, don‟t forget to add 1 ie the PM 13. PM is responsible for creating & executing Proj Mgt Plan, even though the entire team does it 14. Controlling unnecessary changes is one of the important part of PM‟s role 15. Main role of Functional Manager is to control resources 16. Work authorization systems helps in minimizing Gold Plating 17. There is nothing called as Time Management Plan 18. Completing product requirements addresses customer satisfaction 19. AON does not use dummies in network diagram 20. Sunk costs should not be considered while deciding whether to continue the project or not 21. Earned Value deals with: a. EV – Scope b. PV – Time c. AC – Cost 22. Portfolios are organized around business goals. 23. Take stern action against discrimination. 24. Seller audit reviews products being created and Procurement Audit is used to examine successes & failures and gather lessons learnt 25. Written communication is best for complex problems 26. Major results of communication blockers is Conflict 27. Understand in the question that whether Risk has actually “occurred” or its just “identified” 28. If seller completes the work in SOW, then the contract is complete…..however this does not mean

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that contract is closed 29. One of the objectives of negotiation is to protect the relationships 30. Negotiation is done after the seller is selected 31. Cost of team training is Direct Cost 32. EV Analysis is a great reporting tool 33. If PM wants to decrease costs, he should look at Direct & Variable costs 34. Ground rules apply to Stakeholders also apart from Project team members 35. Constructive changes are contract changes which are construed from actions taken by either party, not from a change document. Also they are frequent cause of disputes and claims 36. Categories of cultures that Managers should master: a. National Culture b. Organizational Culture c. Functional Culture 37. Project Management Team is responsible to obtain stakeholder‟s formal acceptance 38. SOW prepared by customer. Scope Statement by Proj Mgt Team 39. Quality policy to be created when there are multiple organisations working 40. Outliers in Control charts are the singular movements outside the bandwidth between the upper and lower control limit 41. Close project or phase should take place at end of each phase 42. Project charter is effectively a contract or agreement about a project between a Project Manager & Sponsor/PMO/Portfolio Steering committee 43. Contract is in place if there is an offer & acceptance…..it need not be signed 44. Unit price contract is used when Quality & type of work can be defined, but not the quantity 45. Weakness of Monte Carlo Simulation is it considers those schedule risks for tasks which are in schedule network 46. EMV Analysis assumes Risk Neutrality 47. Purpose of Resource Smoothing is to flatten the peaks and valleys of resource allocation. Its less rigorous than resource leveling 48. Weak Matrix is also called Project Co-ordinator Structure 49. NPV in a long term project measures the excess or shortfall of the cash flows through the project and to some time horizon during the life of the project result, after accounting for cost of financing 50. IRR is a capital budgeting method – the annualized effective compounded return which can be earned on the invested capital 51. Discount rate is generally the appropriate cost of capital expressed as a percentage rate. It incorporates a judgement of uncertainty (riskiness) of the future cash flows 52. Percent complete can be determined by finding the achieved milestones within the work packages Formula is EV/BAC 53. Resource leveling is a Schedule Network Analysis Tool and NOT Schedule Compression Tool 54. Project scope completion is measured against Proj Mgt Plan 55. Product Scope completion is measured against Product Requirements 56. Influence Diagrams: a. Graphical representation b. Shows causal influences c. Time ordering of events d. Other relation among variables and outcomes 57. No. of communication channels increases exponentially with each increase of stakeholders 58. NPV = (PV of all cash inflows) – (PV of all cash outflows) 59. PV is Future value of payment discounted at a discount rate for delay in payment 60. QFD is used to determine critical characteristics for new product development 61. Laissez Faire – Manager does not interfere with subordinates. They are largely un-supervised. Leads to anarchy 62. Duration is length of critical path and NOT sum of duration of all tasks 63. Benefit Measurements & Constraint Opt methods are Decision Models and NOT Selection tools

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64. Elapsed time includes non-working days 65. Individual levels of authority should match with their individual responsibilities and NOT competency to get best performance 66. Configuration mgt system is also used to apply technical & administrative directions and surveillance to support the audit of products or components to verify conformance to requirements 67. It is WBS and NOT Scope statement that represents the project & product work including project management work 68. Spending more on conformance costs will reduce the expenditure on non-conformance costs 69. Project Notebook – device which houses the project plan 70. Project Objectives – includes measurable success criteria of the project 71. Project Requirements – Translated form of stakeholders needs, wants & expectations 72. Approved change requests leads to Scope baseline updates 73. PM also acts as an interface between customer and functional managers 74. Templates can be used to identify typical schedule milestones and it also has standard activity list 75. Standard deviation is used to determine the probability of getting results 76. Original duration of an activity is the activity duration that was assigned and not updated as the progress of the activity is reported 77. Risk urgency combined with risk ranking determined from Prob Impact Matrix to give a final risk severity rating 78. Uniform, Normal, Lognormal distribution of risk analysis: a. X axis shows possible values of time & cost b. Y axis shows relative likelihood 79. Procurement Audit covers from Plan Procurements to Administer Procurements to identify success & failures 80. Project Management team should have a working knowledge of statistical quality control, especially sampling and probability to evaluate output of quality control 81. Verify scope includes reviewing deliverables with customer or sponsor 82. Initial communication about team member performance should preferably be informal oral 83. Frequent changes to project scope may not impact the project charter 84. Process configuration is a graphical description of processes with identified interfaces to facilitate analysis 85. Mgt by objectives aligns: a. Project goals with org goals b. Project goals with individual goals c. Project goals with goals of other sub units of Org 86. Salience Model describes classes of stakeholders based on: a. Power b. Urgency c. Legtimacy 87. Additional funding is always provided by Sponsor and NOT customer 88. PM need not be a subject matter expert 89. Estimate Activity Resources is closely coordinated with Estimate Costs process 90. Facilitated workshops: a. Builds trust b. Fosters relationships c. Reconcile stakeholders differences d. Improve communications in participants 91. Schedule data contains: a. Resource Histograms b. Cash flow projections c. Order & delivery schedules 92. David Mc Cleland theory called Achievement Motivation theory says that managers are motivated by: a. Need for Achievement

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b. Need for Power c. Need for Affiliation

Note: I have made an attempt to be as accurate as possible. However, if there are mistakes, please rectify the same.

Alok Sharma, PMP Lessons Learned Here's what Alok said after passing the exam: Hi all, Phew !! I have cleared the PMP exams on 12th April with Proficient in 4 and Moderately Proficient in 2 areas. Thanks to all members who have been contributing their knowledge for everyone‟s benefit. Many people have shared their LLs, hence would not go into much detail, but attaching a list (above) of some finer points which I had collated during my preparations. These are the ones where I made mistakes and hence noted down. Apart from there, here are some points: 1. Books referred: a. PMBok – Read 5 times b. Rita – Just once c. Head First – Tried, but was not comfortable reading it d. Glossary – 3 times 2. During the end of the preparation, while going through Glossary, I used to try and describe the word instead of reading it. I noticed that I was able to describe most of them and also the time taken was considerably less, which added to my confidence. 3. I did not have a study group, hence studied all by myself 4. Harwinder‟s blogs are excellent resource for clearing concepts Harwinder, thanks a lot 5. Normally 4 hrs are enough, but however I was going through the marked questions till last minute Probably was bad time management by me as I took more time in the initial 100 questions 6. Took 1 break, had some food 7. PMP tests for analytical skills and depth of knowledge on the core concepts Thanks to everyone once again.

Prasannaa S. passed his PMP exam on Apr 15, 2010. He is sharing his success story with us here. In Prasannaa's words: ==================================================== Hi Harwinder, I passed the PMP exam on april 15, 2010. Here is my story

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Hi Everyone I passed the exam on last thursday (april 15, 2010). I am extremely happy and excited to add those 3 letters to my name. I have studied hard and achieved this. Thanks to all my friends who supported me and cornelius, without the prepcast it would not have been possible. I decided to go for the certification on November 2009 and did lot of search online and checked with friends. I finalized on using Prepcast, Andy Crowe's book along with PMBoK. I tried to start with PMBoK first, during December 2009, but it was not progressing well. I purchased prepcast in the first week of Jan 2010 and devised a plan. I heared the prepcast and would read the related topic in Andy's book and then in PMBoK. I completed the first cycle by Feb end. And from march started taking practice tests. I purchased exam simulators and took all the free simulated tests. based on the scores i would study the weak areas once again in andy & Prepcast & PMBoK. From jan 2010, till april 14, i listened to prepcast daily. I visited the www.deepfriedbrain.com this helped me in understanding some of the areas, especially the article on PTA. It explained it clearly, i was confident of taking any questions on PTA formulas after that. I was scoring in the range of 85-90 in all the sample tests, and full mock exams i took. I took atleast 6 full mock exams. It gave me lot of confidence. I also joined pmhub, the discussions there were pretty useful. From there i came to know about JIMBoK. Its a great set of articles by Jim Owens and its an excellent material for final day review. On the day prior to the exam, i went through all the ITTOs, Formulas, Theories and JIMBOk. It took the whole day. Actually i bough Flashcards for final review, but never find the time to use it. To be more precise i have forgotten that i had purchased flashcards On the day of the exam, 1. Everything i brought, including my hand towel, keys, pens, etc, i was asked to keep in locker. 2. I was not allowed to open the locker during exam time and i was asked to place the food items on a table outside the testing area. 3. The center told me that there is a limit of 5 breaks that i can take, in my exam time. 4. Every time you take a break, you need to do the entire check-in procedure again. it took time. 5. You need to click the start within one min, to start the tutorial, otherwise the exam will end. 6. Once started you have 15 mins time to go through the tutorial. during which i have written down all the formulas, in the yellow sheets given to me. But actually i never referred to that sheet during exam. 7. I took 2 breaks one after first 100 questions and one after next 100 question. Then i reviewed marked questions, then i reviewed all the 200 questions. 8. I was not able to find out which are the 25 non-scoring questions, except for a 2/3 questions all looked relevant to me 9. I had very few formula based questions, even that too were too simple that you do not need a calculator 10. They gave a physical calculator, as the online one was having some issue. 11. i clicked the END EXAM exactly after 3 hours from the starting time. And the screen went white immediately. I got terrified. I called the center person immediately. But before she come, some progress bar appeared on screen and then came a 9 question survey. 12. I was afraid to skip the survey and thought they might not give me good score ( ) if i did not give them good rating, so i choose Very satisfied for all the questions, quickly, then again the screen went blank and same progress bar appeared. 13. Then the "congratulations" came on screen, i was soooooooooo relieved.

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As i said i am extremely happy to do this. I hope my experience will be useful to someone who reads it. All the best to all aspirants, dont worry, the exam is not as tough as people make you believe it to be. Regards Prasannaa.S

Deepak passed his PMP exam on couple days ago. He has some really useful tips to share. Here are his lessons learned: ========================================== I finally cleared my PMP on 23 Mar 2010. I would like to share a few lessons learnt, Hope the below points will help all aspiring PMP‟s to clear in 1st shot. Books referred: 1. Head First PMP: Amazing book that can clear your basic concepts, there mode of explaining is just unbelievable, it is like reading a story book, 2. PMBOK: 4th edition: Once we get the momentum, we can slowly start reading the PMBOK and get acquainted with all the fundamentals and logic Remember …no matter how many books u read, if you do not read & understand PMBOK (the mother of all bibles), your chances of passing the exam are very less.

Exams referred on the net: Head first 200 questions PMSTUDY 1, 2, 3, 4: 200 questions each. Web Sites referred for information: http://www.deepfriedbrainpmp.com/ : Many Thanks to Harwinder for sharing valuable info to aspiring PMP members. Frankly speaking I cleared my understanding on certain topics like WPI /WPM, TCPI etc from the articles posted at this site. Before the exam: Your brain is like a 2 compartment water filter, you fill water on the top and you have to wait for sometime till the water gets filtered and collected in lower compartment. If you pour more water in upper compartment even after it is full, it will spill out and be wasted. Hence do not load your brain too much, let it get absorbed and sort of get indexed in your brain for easy retrieval. A day before the exam, close all your PMP books and preparation material & do not read anything and sleep well for 8 hours, this will relax your brain and you feel your body has become very light. Watch a movie, go out for ice cream, call your girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/fiancée and talk about your glory old good

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days, does do anything but do not study. Just relax your mind & body. Next morning after a good night sleep, give a quick run thru the KA and process groups and formulas and ITTOS. Preferably plan your exam in the 2nd half of the day, so that you have enough time to eat your breakfast well, avoid morning rush and reach your examination center 1 hour ahead. Do carry something to eat as your body will need energy during the 4 hour exam. Carry an apple, some sandwiches, groundnuts, dark chocolate, energy drinks, and h2O bottle :) These foods are quick to eat and give you energy. Drink lots of water as the AC inside feel may make you feel dehydrated. During the exam, take a break every hour for 5 – 8 min, go out of the examination room, eat something, charge your energy and be back. Exam Preparation: It took me exactly 2 months devoting 2 hrs everyday (1 hour in morning and 1 hour in evening) and spending close to 14 hrs on Saturday and Sunday. Morning time is the best to study as your brain is active and comprehends the logic and material what you read. Start with Head FIRST PMP book and then once the momentum builds up and your confidence grows, increase your study time. Tools used: Nothing like excel document to help you store all the notes you make. You can have a worksheet for KA, formulas, ITTOS, Notes for each process etc... It is Very easy to refer and all the material at one place. During the exam: Skip & Keep marking all lengthy questions, calculation questions on CPI, SPI, TCPI etc, you can revisit them after you have answered all the easy and one liner questions. Some of the lengthy questions are just to confuse you, just see the last line and the answers you will get a hint what the question is all about. Don‟t get scared by some 25 odd questions that you encounter & have never seen or heard in your life… these are just for survey purpose, just give an educated guess and select the answer and mark it & keep moving on. You can revisit all the marked questions in the end if you have time and using reasoning and practical approach …answer all of them. Always Think positive … think good …good will happen. :) Cheers and wish you all the best. Thanks for taking out your valuable time and reading thru my lesson learnt post. Ramesh Kumar passed his PMP exam earlier this week. He has shared his lessons learned and some very useful tips to help his fellow project managers achieve their PMP certification. Here's what Ramesh has to say: ===================================== Hello All,

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I passed PMP Exam on Mar 17, 2010. Below, I am sharing my experience. Exam questions quality: I felt the questions I got are simpler than most of the questions that I had practiced. I did not find any lengthy situational questions that will let you swirl around in the question for a long time. Another interesting thing that I noticed is that, I don‟t remember having seen any questions with the tag EXCEPT or NOT. I got a few containing the BEST though. Got a few questions on EVM (simple ones though)and many questions on ITTOs (So, don't neglect them). Study format: Even before I attended my classroom training (as my motivation levels are at the peak), I did try to go through the PMBOK, but I always dozed off without going any further. Then, I went through the Head First PMP, which helped me in aligning my real time experiences with the bookish terms. That has really helped me in going through the classroom sessions without much difficulty. I completed my classroom course in August and the initial estimate to clear the exam was by the end of October. But my priorities kept changing and I kept on postponing the exam date accordingly. Finally I decided to not delay it any further and set a deadline of Mar 10th (Though I slipped it again by a week). As I regrouped my self again in the first week of Feb, I went through the following books in that order.    

Head First PMP (I went through it again, to recall what I had read four months earlier) Rita‟s PMP Exam prep – I felt the book is a little less boring than PMBOK, but not the one that I recommend first up. I liked the first chapter containing the PMI-ism‟s though. KIM Heldman‟s PMP Study Guide – A completely different approach from Head First and Rita. Went through the PMBOK in the last week after my initial failure to go through even a single chapter. This time, the book made a lot more sense.

Mock tests appeared:     

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Head First PMP Free Test – By far the easiest (Take this test first, which will keep your confidence at a very high) Self assessment from Oliver Lehmann (pdf with 175 questions and online test containing 75 questions) – Quality of the questions is a little higher than the real exam I faced) PM Study – As good as the real exam. Free test from www.edwel.com - You need to register yourself first. Though there are a few questions repeated, there are some very good questions, that will let your brain do some work. Question bank from the Kim‟s CD that comes along with the book. Though it does not contain the full 200 question test, the quality of the questions is excellent. Most of the questions are long enough along with their answers. If you manage to get even close to 65% in those questions, you would be doing a good job in the final exam. All the questions in the Rita‟s book. All of them are excellent questions again. Last but not the least, I went through the complete question bank given to me by my trainer (SABCONS, Bangalore). The quality of the questions there are as good as one can expect.

Forums:

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Is a regular visitor on the Harwinder‟s blog www.deepfriedbrainpmp.com and Josh‟s www.PMStudent.com. Though I rarely replied to any of the posts, these two sites have helped me immensely in my personal development. The exam date was never a problem in Bangalore (You may not find a date for the coming month, but you will definitely find one in the coming week). So, fix a date and go according to the plan. I wish all the aspirants all the best. Ramesh Kumar, PMP

Here's another set of very useful PMP Certification exam lessons learned, shared by Vasu. The key takeaways for me are: 1. If you prepare well, the exam is not that difficult, though I won't recommend reading 5 books :) 2. Keep a contingency for PMI audit in your preparation schedule. ============================= Hi Everyone, What a Marathon, I enjoyed the journey thoroughly. I completed it on 12/28/2009. This was my goal for 2009 and achieved it just in time and with in the cost budgeted. It took 2 weeks for me to digest this success. Here now I am posting my LLs. Started the journey in July 2009 and wanted to complete by Oct. But got deviated for 2 reasons by 2 months. 1. Trying to read too many books/resources than what I initially planned. 2. Audit process and of course my work schedule So the first lesson here is, stick to your plan. Define what you want to cover and put a plan in place and track to it. Second lesson is, being prepared and expect for audit. I expected audit but not prepared for it completely. I applied for the exam at a very late in the game plan and got selected for audit which I did not included in my schedule. Because of the audit my preparation got halted for 3 weeks (just mental deviation). So the lesson here is, apply for the exam well in advance. So that even if you are picked up for audit, your rhythm is not disturbed. Audit is not a difficult or bad thing if you are prepared. I surely agree that it can disturb the rhythm and take you off track as in my case. Books I prepared: 1. Headfirst – 1 time 2. Rita - 3 times 3. PMBOK - 3 times 4. Kim Heldmen - (Just summary, quick glance and some impt topics) 5. Andy crow (Quick glance) Exams: 1. Pmstudy 1, 2, 3, 4 2. Oliver 175 questions

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3. Headfirst 4. PMFasttrack Word of caution: Many other online exam resources are not reliable. Their questions are not PMI standard and not aligned with PMBOK. In my observation, only the above 4 are good exam resources. Forums: 1. This forum 2. Harwinder Blogs. About my exam experience:         

Not tough Resembles pmstudy questions mostly. Completed in 3 hours and marked 40 for review. Many direct questions but they are little tricky in options. If you are focused, you will see only one option Remember there are 25 trial questions (not counted). I am sure these 25 questions would have definitely fall in those 40 questions I marked. Even in you get though questions, don‟t loose confidence. There is a high chance that these fall in those 24 new questions. There are around 10 formula questions. Many questions on ITTOs. So I suggest practice them. Take deep breaths in the exam .This helps in focus on the exam.

I passed with the following proficiencies:      

Initiation – Proficient Planning – Proficient Execution – Proficient M&C – Proficient Closing – Moderately Proficient Professional and social resp – Proficient

Exam was very easy for me, may be because I got over prepared. So I do not want to set any expectations. To close out, it was a very good experience and journey. Definitely not a frustrating as many comment, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks everyone for making this happen to me. I wish you a very happy new year and all the best for your marathon. Regards, -Vasu.

Sunitha passed her PMP exam on Jan 22, 2010. She was kind enough to take the time to share her lessons learned with us. Here's her message to all PMP aspirants: ==========================

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Hi All, I completed my PMP Exam on Jan 22, 2010. It was a journey of six months including a deviation of a month in the middle.Resources used are following. Preparing and Reading: 

PM Prepcast: I started preparing for PMP by listening to Project Management Prepcast by Cornelius Fichtner.These are like virtual classrooms and are very helpful to understand all the basic concepts clearly. Rita Mulcahy accelerated learning: This book gives us tricks of trade and tips on which topic we need to emphasize and where we can just give a glance. Kim Heldman: Can give a reading to get a depth of Knowledge. PMBOK : Need to read every line of PMPBOK and and also understand the ITTO's

  

As I had time to read all the above books I gave a try. It is worth to read the above books but It is not a hard and fast rule that everyone who aspire to pass must read all these.You can select your choice. Practising the sample questions: I recommend the following link in Harwinder's blog as one stop for sample questions and Practise exams. http://www.deepfriedbrainpmp.com/2009/03/pmp-certification-exam-sample-questions.html Initially while writing 4 hour practise exams I was very much concerned about the exam time and in that hurry I made several mistakes though I know the concepts.So I suggest to give one four hour practise exam to check your ability to manage the given time effectively. The day before the exam I just used my time in practising Rita's process chart ,9*5 chart in Pg 43 of PMBOK and all formulas.This helped me very much in exam. Writing the exam: Forget all the practise exam scores taken before and take this as another new practise exam.(Don't tense yourself by thinking this as something very different from before.) As suggested by experts earlier, use the method of identifying the answer from choices when you are not clear of identifying the answer from questions.Meaning,define the four choices in your own way and one will match the question. All the best for all the Aspirants ! Thanks, Sunitha

I studied from Rita 6th Edition. Not from 7th edition, because it appears there is not much change (courtesy - Amazon book review). Also 7th edition is not from Rita Mulcahy.

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I read from PMBOK (once) Rita 6th Ed (once) headfirst (few chapters) & Andy Crowe (once) Started with Headfirst then PMBOK then Rita finally Andy crowe.Took all (almost all) the exercises, if I am reading a particular chapter. This seems to be very important. Full Exam : Rita Fasttrack, PMStudy, OL (75 Questions) P.S: My final PMP exam aligned more with PMStudy exam than Rita. Lessons learnt : Could have spent more time in self-evaluating PG/KA wise in Fasttrack. This appears to be a good tool to specifially address one PG/KA, if you know where your strength & weaknesses are.

The real PMP questions were more like PMStudy questions. But I found Rita's questions very useful as well, since it gave me better understanding and prepares for the tougher questions. wrt preparation, took all the questions from each chapters from PMBOK, Rita, Andy. To me this helps more than the Full Mock exams. Mock exams should be used to practice time management of 4 hours, implementing Test strategy (from Andy Crowe), to capture if there is any gap in your knowledge and how to understand/respond to questions that are juggled in KA/PG (this you will not experience it while taking end of the chapter questions) Most importantly, I did not find significant difference wrt the new format. May be Others will. All the Best Hi Guys, I am a regular follower of Pmzilla and I have cleared my RMP recently. I found below information might be useful for the RMP aspirants. Additional free questions for RMP can be found from below websites. 1) PM FASTrack PMI-RMP from Rita website.http://www.rmcproject.com 2) http://www.ucertify.com/ for some free questions Hope it helps. Some options for practice questions 1. Practice risk management, communication managemnet, time / cost management questions from PMP books like Rita Mulchahy.

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2. Free 20 question set here http://thepm-instructors.com/rmp-exam-prep.html 3. Another set of 10 -12 questions in PDF here http://www.examsexpert.com/PMI-RMP.html

Passed PMP today..10/10 new edition Submitted by abc_854 on Tue, 10/11/2011 - 02:28



PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

I took the exam today 10/10/11 and when I finished the screen flashed congratulation you passed. That culminates about 6 long months of preparation for me. Initially I was supposed to take the exam on 8/29 and it seemed nature did not want me to take the test that day, Huricane Irene played spoil sport. I was given the option to take the exam a few days later in the old format in a PBT but I was disappointed by the let down and opted to take the CBT in the new format and re-scheduled for today instead. For my first pmp test date I read PMBOK about 2 times and Rita's 6th edition once. For my next round I read PMBOK twice again and read Andy Crowe 4th edition. This time I came across Rajesh Nair's Notes which really helped me a lot I have converted the excel to a doc/PDF format which is easier to read and might post it some day.I studied Vidya Subramanian's book for the Math part there were some sample exams in the end. As for as mock exams goes. I preped using all the excercises from Rita's book as well as Andy Crowes. I used the full practice test from Andy Crowe's book which i was able to score more than 80% I tried PMStudy free exam 1 where scored in the 70's. I used examcentral free test twice and scored above 85% both the times. Attempted Head First exam twice. scored in the 80's. After each test I made sure to review all the incorrect as well as the correct answers just to make sure I understood the concept. For the exam today There were about 40% one liners to 60% multi-line questions.For the first 20 questions I got a series of multi-lined questions in the begining which i was not sure and i just marked them for review later and did not want to get hung up on them. After that i felt calmed down and i was enjoying it. In the end there were about 25 mins left (I am not a very fast reader) for me to review and I tried to review as much as I

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could. I realized that learning the ITTO's well helped me a lots the questions mostly used the different ways to ask the same questions. I enjoyed all the math questions and breezed through them. My scores are as follows Initiation - Mod. proficient, Planning - Proficient, Execution-Proficient, M&C- Mod prof, Closing - ModProf. I thank all the people who have posted their Lessons learnt here before me as well as Wish all the PMP aspirants good luck.

I took the exam on October Submitted by Vnakkar on Fri, 10/07/2011 - 19:44.

I took the exam on October 1st and recieved my score today:

Initiating the Project - Moderately Proficient Planning the Project - Proficient Executing the Project - Proficient Monitoring and Controlling the Project - Proficient Closing the Project - Moderately Proficient Result: Pass

Studied for 3 weeks. Resources: Rita's book twice (sixth edition, non-updated one) PMBOK twice

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Raga's 355 points http://pmzilla.com/raga039s-355-points PmStudy 200 question tests 1 (68%) & 2 (79%)

Passed PMP on 01/11/2011 Submitted by lohithosur on Wed, 11/02/2011 - 05:55



PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

Hi all, I cleared my PMP on 01/11/2011. I was silent reader of pmzilla forum. Sitting through 4 hours made me drain physically and mentally. I took 3.5 hours to complete the exam and in next half an hour I reviewed all marked questions. The questions on the exam were mixed. Some were very easy and some were tricky. When the exam ended, the screen was blank for a moment and then it lead to survey. I skipped that eager to get the result. It was realyy a tense moment for me. But finally was releived to see that I passed! Scores: Planning, Executing - P Initiating, M&C, Closing - MP Anyways here are my lessons learned: - Preparation Time: 4 months (I think just 2 or 3 months would suffice, but I took break in between due to work) - PMBOK (2 times) - a must! - Rita (2 times) - Version 6 is sufficient - Few chapters from Headfirst, but solved all question at the end of each chapters - Deepfriedbrainpmp (Harwinder) -> This blog made me the concepts clear (like WPI vs WPM vs PR, product scope, project scope etc). This was very helpful. - For mock exams I took first three tests from PMStudy scoring around 72% to 80%. Btw, I got a printout from the prometric centre with my result. I'm not sure when will I get a mail from PMI regarding my result(?).

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And also I checked the PMI website. And it does not reflect my current certification status. Not sure how many days would it take(?).

Submitted by ultima on Sat, 10/29/2011 - 12:13



PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

Hi all, I have passed PMP exam successfully on Oct 27th. Since there were so many who felt it was hard, i wanted to share my experience as I thought the exam was easy. It was certainly easier than Rita's, Lehmann's or Farndale's.... I took only 2 1.2 hrs to complete the entire exam completely and then started to review all. But could not concentrate properly since i got very hungry. Most important to have some quick bites during the exam. The exam was definitely worth scoring all P's. There were no major RDS based questions came across. It is possible to pass PMP exam provided having good understaning on all processes. Good luck to all taking exam Regards Ramesh My books: 1) Rita - how i love to hate you. Rita is the reason i got such good understanding and confidence 2) PMBOK - had to read it, after i found that there were some mock questions that i was not able to answer. I was thorough with page 42 of PMBOK. Did not memorize ITTO, but i could relate mostly. Tried may be near 3000 or more questions. But its waste, its not necessary. Its the quality of questions matter not the quantity. But the exams test your patience more than knowledge. The following i consider good quality stuff:

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Rita's questions (almost i thought i saw couple of similar ones there) Lehmann's (its tough and some are out of context of PMBOK) Farndales guide for CAPM/PMP aspirants - good one (procept.com) a definite read and also has 260 odd questions which are lengthier than original exam. Most important: Take some quick snack with you. i made this mistake of having with me, and could not concentrate after 3 hrs. I wanted to finish and go sooner because of this. I did not do review properly. In general, the exam seemed easier than that of Rita's. I did not use scratch paper or the initial 15 mins for familiarizing. I was anxious to get to the exam. Hope this answers your question. I just want to encourage people that its possible to pass and you can do it. Its not that tough. Regards Ramesh

I Passed PMP exam! Sharing my experience. Submitted by rajeloke2 on Wed, 11/02/2011 - 04:51



PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

I Passed PMP exam! Sharing my experience. I passed my PMP exam! It was a great feeling to see the word “CONRATULATIONS”, not to forget the 20-30 seconds delay in waiting for the result, looking at the blank screen. It was the result of four months hard word.

Following were my study materials 1. Simplilearn Online course 2. Attended almost all their online trainings 3. Read Rita‟s 6th edition once 4. Read Rita‟s 7th edition twice 5. PMBOK had a glance 6. Attempted as many as 3000 test questions, fastrack, Simplilearn, PMZilla, oliverlehmann, and many more. Simplilearn new questions are very close to exam ( I have tried both old and new)

My Observations

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1. Inputs from various PMZilla froum members were of great help 2. Worth spending time over here @ PMZilla 3. August 31 change, should not impact the study materials what one has 4. I used to complete 200 questions simulation tests at an average of 2hrs, but in exam I took 3.5 hrs 5. Taking up multiple mock tests helped especially the wordy ones 6. Practicing to sit for 4 hrs and concentrate , helped in the exam 7. Having a glance at PMBOK summary and glossary a day before the exam, was handy 8. Understanding and remembering the process chart is of great value

Given another chance, this what I would do 1. Better focus on studying Risk Management 2. Focus more on ITTOS 3. Not spend too much time on problems and formulas 4. Stick to one study material along with PMBOK 5. Not change the study material because of the change, as PMBOK is same If any PMP aspirants have a query, I would be glad to share my lessons learned!

Passed PMP today in First Try, see Below for Lessons learnt and Resources used and my journey. Submitted by akshayrelan on Mon, 08/29/2011 - 18:50



PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

Time taken to Study

2 months, on an average 7 hours each day and minimum 14 hours every-day for last 10 days.

What I Studied PMBOK 2 times RITA 2 times Took notes from Above 2 in the second read and studies only that afterwards

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PMBOK Glossary (Very Important) (4 times) Both Understood and learnt by heart all ITTO’s (>12 times) brainbok.com , This step helped me a lot.

4 hour Time constraint I finished the exam in around 3 hours, I think I took a lot of time in end questions because I never did well in end questions during mock tests as the brain gets too tired at the close session, But to avoid this I spent around 2-3 minutes for most of last 20 questions. I also took 2 breaks of 5-7mins each in that 3hours.

Online Forums/Reference Websites http://pmzilla.com/ http://www.brainbok.com/ http://www.deepfriedbrainpmp.com/

Simulation Tests Took 2500+ mock test questions. Attaching a list of online resources (mostly free) at the end.

About Prometric You won’t be allowed anything inside the center (Pen, Pencil, Hanky, Spex case, Mobile, Documents) Although you will be given a locker but don’t bring too much along. Also you won’t be allowed to talk or carry any quick notes to read even at the waiting area, make a note if you are planning to reach few hours early. Pan card is sufficient to bring along with you in addition to DL

How did it go You can expect 1 minute per questions even if it’s a lengthy one, After I finished the exam a white screen came for about 3 minutes and then suddenly a survey came up, Then a screen with Prometric logo came up and after 2 minutes when my BP was on the verge, It showed Congratulations !!! Result: PASS 

Grading the Exam

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I would say it’s not too difficult as most thinks; you can make out 50% questions very easily within 20 seconds ea.

www.pmstudy.com

PMStudy 1

(20 0 Q)

www.pmstudy.com

PMStudy 2 (25$)

(20 0 Q)

www.pmstudy.com

PMStudy 3 (25$)

(20 0 Q)

www.pmstudy.com

PMStudy 4 (25$)

(20 0 Q)

www.techfaq360.com

5

techfaq360

(20 0 Q)

techfaq360

(20 Q)

www.techfaq360.com

6

Certification.about.c om

(20 Q)

certification.about.com

8

www.headfirstlabs.com

9

Head First Labs

(20 0 Q)

MeasureUp

(7 Q)

www.measureup.com

10

www.mypmp.ie

My PMP

(10 0 Q)

www.oliverlehmann.com

Oliver F. Lehmann

(17 5 Q)

1

2

3

4

11

12

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Oliver F. Lehmann

(75 Q)

www.oliverlehmann.com

13

PMConnection

(10 Q)

www.pmconnection.com

14

PMExam.com

(8 Q)

www.pmexam.com

15

pmpbank.googlepages.com

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PMP Question Bank

(28 0 Q)

PMTI

(15 Q)

www.4pmti.com

17

PreparePM

(98 Q)

www.preparepm.com

18

ProXalt

(20 Q)

www.proxalt.com

19

Test Prep Review

(15 Q)

http://www.testprepreview.com/modules/pmp.htm

20

21

PM perfect

(10 Q)

EdWel Programs

(10 Q)

www.edwel.com

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PMzilla's free 25 tough

(25 Q)

www.pmzilla.com

23

Threon

(13 Q)

www.threon.com

24

OSP International LLC

(15 Q)

www.free-pm-exam-questions.com

25

(11 Q)

www.pmprepare.com/sbmple/showQuestion.asp?QSeq=28039&donelist=0&iLang= 0&try=1

(20

http://www.gocertify.com/quizzes/projectmanagement/PMP_01.shtml

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PM Prepare

27

Go Certify

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Q)

28

PMP Formula

(10 1 Q)

OSP International LLC

(90 Q)

free.pm-exam-simulator.com

29

www.ajithn.com

Ajith Namboothiri

(20 0 Q)

CertChamp

(20 0 Q)

www.certchamp.com

32

Tutorials Point

(20 0 Q)

www.tutorialspoint.com

33

Voight Project Solutions

(50 0 Q)

www.voightps.com

PMRoadtrip

(22 0 Q)

ExamCentral

(20 0 Q)

http://www.examcentral.net/pmp/practice-exam

36

Simple Learn

(20 0 Q)

www.simplilearn.com/simplilearn/?a_aid=PMPChamp

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Kim Heldman

38

Andy Crowes final test

39

CertGear trial

40

Effective PMC

30

31

34

35

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from www.4shared.com (101 Questions for the PMP Formula Study Guide)

www.effectivepmc.com

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41

PM Champ

www.pmchamp.com/best-resources-for-pmp-exam-freepaid/

the braindump is for you put Submitted by bhpepper on Fri, 07/29/2011 - 15:35.

the braindump is for you put what ever you want in it that you would like to have a quick reference to Many do not even refer to them during the exam, i did refer to my braindump a few times and it was nice to have. my braindump was everything below with a thumbs up. I included a few other things that some people like that i did not use. once you get the item you want on the sheet and the layout ( i used one whole side for table 3-1 and the other for the rest of the info), then you have to practice writing it. You should do this at least 2x a day. You will have 15 min to execute the dump before the exam starts. I had it down to 10 min.

• Table 3-1 (pg 43) of the PMBOK® Guide 4th Edition • Formulas, such as earned value, PERT, communication channels, procurement, probability, project selection and depreciation, PTA, Present /Future Value, EMV • Values, such as 1, 2 and 3 sigma and estimate ranges - contract types - positive/neg risk matrix -Forward/ backward pass model - orders of magnitude • • • •

Acronyms, such as BAC or TCPI Powers of a project manager Conflict resolution (best to worst) Sources of conflict (order of priority)

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• Herzberg's motivators • Project closing check list

took the pmp exam with the new format

Submitted by emmanuel_sanders on Fri, 10/07/2011 - 07:11



General Discussion

Hi all, so last Wednesday was my day The actual exam is such a stressful experience but if you have studied hard and got a good eight hour‟s sleep the night before the exam, you should be able to attain your hard-earned PMP certification. I am keeping my fingers crossed after the exam… waiting for the results. About the exam: The exam questions are tricky, though some of the questions were pretty straight forward. While I would not recommend memorizing the ITTOs, it is VERY IMPORTANT to take and understand each process, and how it integrates with the knowledge area and process group. I find situational questions the most difficult...so take ITTOs seriously especially the differences between the various charts/diagrams and how they‟re used. Some questions were misleading. They may give you details regarding one process group but the question is specific to another. I found this to be quite hard. The professional and social responsibility questions were tricky, and sometimes I thought they are asking me about the Cost Control or Ethics… Many of the questions aren‟t black and white so definitely take this section as seriously as any other. I didn't know what to study for this too… I completed all the questions in a little over three hours and then used about forty minutes to review my marked questions. I took a break after about 2 hours, allowing my brain to breathe for some good seconds..I really cannot imagine doing the whole test without a pause. Preparations and Recommendations:

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Don‟t rely solely on PMBOK. true it's one of many books you need to conquer PMP - but not the only. Shortly before exam I could say that I am sufficiently prepared for the exam, to summarize my preparation, here are the resources that were vital in my exam preparation process: Definitely, definitely try out mock exams online Suggestions: PMStudy's free simulated test - http://www.pmstudy.com/PMP-Exam-Resources/...mulatedTest.asp PMChamp's free questions on Quality Management - http://www.pmchamp.com OliverLehmann's self assessment test - http://www.oliverlehmann.com/pmp-self-test...e-questions.htm Pmzilla - http://pmzilla.com/pmzilla-final-pmp-exam-pmp 1. O’ Reilly’s Head First PMP - http://oreilly.com/ - For people like me who find PMBOK boring, Head First PMP is the way to learn- I like its conversational style. Head First is helpful particularly for those with limited experience in managing projects from start to completion..But the exams are a bit on the easy side compared to other books. Therefore, in order to be comfortable when you take the exam, make sure you get around 80 to 85% of the questions right. (Highly recommended just watch out for misspellings) 2. PMChamp.com - (6 wks online training) http://www.pmchamp.com - I signed up for an intensive online pmp exam training, the coaching esp the daily exercises had prepared me for the actual tone of the exam,...what I like about PMChamp training is that there's an interaction between me and the trainer so I always get to clarify matters as soon as I encounter them..my training with PMChamp helped me stay focused...the sessions, cheat sheets and practice tests were invaluable...close to the updated exam (I can strongly recommend this online training) 3. PMP Exam Prep, Rita Mulcahy - I bought my book at amazon - Read PMP Exam Prep first before PMBOK; it is too complicated for the initial study phase. Test yourself, test yourself, test yourself...I think Rita's sample exam questions at the end of each chapter are a very good representation of those on the actual test - maybe even a little harder. (strongly recommended) 4. PMBOK - http://www.pmi.org - This book is a pretty heavy guide, you will not learn Project Management from this book. For the experienced PM, it is a good framework for organizing your knowledge. If you are looking for examples or

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indepth explanation this is not your book. It is a 'guide' only for each process, and each knowledge area… you'll have to do some research beyond what they give you to fill in the blanks. Still, it is a must to determine the current PMI guidelines. (optional - in my opinion) Highly recommended communities 1. Pmzilla.com 2. Oreilly.com

Remember, PMP exam is based on situational questions – I strongly recommend you test yourself. There are hundreds of questions about PMP on internet – unfortunately most are of bad quality. If you are able to detect the bad quality exams, you are prepared for exam Goodluck everyone, have faith

Hi Sally,I just recently Submitted by 1st_Try_Guy on Fri, 06/11/2010 - 21:20.

Hi Sally, I just recently passed the pmp exam on my first try. It was a long process and a lot of studying, but I was able to do it. I was extremely nervous about being audited and, of course, I was. I searched and searched the internet for some help and guidance and came across this wonderful website. Its called SimplyPMP. Hopefully it will help you too. Good luck with you decision, Here is that great site: http://simplypmp.com/

Passed PMP on my first Try Submitted by harishgulati on Fri, 10/14/2011 - 16:53



General Discussion

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I must say I have surprised myself

. A big thank you to my family and specially my wife for

accomodating time with kids so I can prepare for my exam. I WAS DYING TO SEE MY RESULTS and MOREOVER WANT TO SHARE MY LESSONS LEARNED ON PMZILLA like others do. I gave my exam on 5th October and got my results yesterday. I scored MP in all areas. A BIG THANK YOU TO PMIZILLA AS WELL. LL - Lessons Learned : Study Material reference : Andy's Crowe's Book: Excellent and to the point - no extras Rita's Book - Good Rita's Fast Track question bank/tests : Excellent PMP Prepcast - very good for the first time review and to gain conceptual knowledge. I heard all audio/vidoe on my blackberry. PMPperfect.com - Question Bank/test prepration. Last but not least - PMZILLA.com and RAJESH NAIR'S NOTES FOR REPEAT and QUICK REFERNCE. FREE TEST from OLIVER and PMSTUDY . I felt confident when I started scoring between 70-80% on PMPERFECT.COM tests. The language of final test was more like pmperfect and pmstudy, but Rita's fast track questions will make you think and answer smarter ( specially explanation of answers). I didn't memorize any ITTO's but did a lot of repetition on looking at them and understanding them as inputs and outputs. Pmzillas memorizeation technique is also ok. Fina day, reviewed Rajes's notes and prayed to god. I am little slow in reading as I was almost taking 60 minutes for each 50 questions. Only took one small break for 2 minutes with my heads down and that's it. I took full 4 hours to complete the exam. Rest is history now Now I need start worrying about PDUs Wish you guys all the best for your exam or earning your PDUs !

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Regards,

Conquered PMP on 10/27 Submitted by sonu_thekool on Thu, 10/27/2011 - 22:56



PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

I finally have my turn to share the results. It has been great reading about otherss experiences and preparation. I just wanted to give some encouragement to those who havent been doing great on practice exams - if you read my preparation and test scores, you should feel confident about taking the exam. I do not have extensive proj management experience either..I passed with 4 Ps and 1 MP, which was surprising even to me !!! Took all 4 hours allotted with one quick 5-minute break. Initiation - Proficient Planning - Proficient Execution - Proficient M & C - MP Closing - Proficient My preparation (3.5 weeks) Started preparing on Oct 1st - took an exam date of Oct 27th which happened to be my final day before my PMI examination eligibility was to expire. I procrastinated preparation for a year !! Yeah, thats how lazy I am. Used only Andy Crowe's 4th Ed book - unlike many others on this forum, I never read PMBOK Guide end to end but read Andy's book cover to cover about 6 times in 3 weeks, noting down important points in each area and preparing notes. Never read anyone's notes either as I believed my notes were sufficient. Started taking tests from Oct 20th - bought 4 tests from PMStudy - spent two hours after every test to know what I was doing wrong. They are close in format to the real exam Oct 20th - PMStudy Test 1 - 70.85% Oct 22nd - PM Study Test 2 - 73.14%

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Oct 23rd - PMStudy Test 3 - 73.14% Oct 24th - PM Study Test 4 - 74.28% Oct 25th - Oliver Lahman's 175 - 65% (really hated this one) Anyways, this exam is unique in the sense that it wil never let you feel confident that you are in control by introducing that element of doubt in your mind all the time but I ultimately did well... My sincere advise to those who are preparing well but are not feeling confident yet, just practice as many exams from reputed sites and make sure you note down the wording of the questions. After reading different types of questions, your mind will be ready to take on anything. Just build the mental stamina to stay concentrated for 4 hours in whatever situation is thrown at you. Keep telling your brain that PMP is easy !!!!!! PMP is easy. If there is anything I can help you with, please post your questions. Good luck to you all with your prep. If I can do it, anyone can. Sonu.

PMP Certified, PMI, USA Submitted by patel.lajja on Thu, 10/27/2011 - 18:03



PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

Hey Friends, Glad to share with you all the happy news that I managed to earn the credential PMP from PMI, USA!!! Feels good, Project Management Professional, awwww. Now, having had all the learning from PMBOK, who could forget to jot down the lessons learned for reference for all the aspiring PMP’s. Once to believe, this is an excellent forum for any info required to be a successful PMP. It has a plethora of knowledge & experience to offer as well as a big pool of practice questions to try & test the knowledge. Thanks to the PMZilla team for the excellent forum. Exam pattern: 

Hardly, 10 on 200 questions were direct ones as observed in any of the mock tests.



As said on this forum before, the new exam pattern has no separate questions on the ‘Social Responsibilty’ section. It is merged as an integral part of the project management activities.

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

The exam has a pre test & a post test tutorial. Pre test tutorial to be done quickly to steal time to jot down your mugged formulae & page 43 charts whereas post test tutorial to test your patience on the anxiety for the test scores & cross fingers.



The test timing is descending 04:00 Hrs. to 00:00 Hrs. hence, do not get worried in case the exam centre takes time to check you & leave you couple of minutes late into the exam cubicle.



I targeted the exam for 3 hrs & managed to finish in 03:15 hrs. Rest 15-20 min to complete the 14 qs. That I had marked for review. I utilized the last 25-30 min to revise the marked answers & could barely go through 100 on the total of 200 qs. Once again just for surety.



5-7 numerical questions, 3 CPM questions, 4-5 TCM questions.

Study material: 

st

I attended the training in Aug’11 & before that had no least plans on any certification. 31 Aug is when I th

th

scheduled the exam & the exam date being 19 Oct, Hyderabad. On 17 was when I rescheduled it to 21

st

Oct, Andheri. Thank you Divya for all your help on this!! 2 months of thorough preparation is a must. 

PMBOK being the encyclopedia on this, you just cannot think of taking it casually. 2 revisions bare minimum on PMBOK.



Rita’s book & HeadFirst are the two best books available to make your concepts clear. Whilst Rita’s book offers a serious tone with a detailed & deep study on each topic; HeadFirst is a lighter book for those who enjoy pictures, puzzles & riddles whilst studying. I took the Rita way & had 2 thorough revisions on it.



One important thing I would want to tell all the aspirants – the more the questions you practice, the more confidence you gain. Try to solve as many mock tests as possible but ensure quality on the questions, not just any XYZ questions available on net as the most important thing is to have your concepts clear & not to mix explanations given from solved problems on various websites.

Exam centre: Hyderabad- Banjara ville. But I was lucky enough to know enough on Telangana issues & hence cancel my tickets & reschedule the exam for Andheri, Saki Naka. Definitely, the security is too tight with each & every corner of the exam room under CCTV monitoring & continuous supervision. Thorough checks before entering the exam hall & forget having with you your Titan or kerchief, tissues, pencil, water bottle or any other thing. Eventually, I was just amazed to read “Congratulations” you PASS....YIPPEEE – 21st Oct’11 A very nice experience!! Glad I got the opportunity & banged on it :-) ALL THE BEST!!! Lajja Patel, PMP

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Nailed it - PMP Submitted by Kaam_wali_Bai on Tue, 10/18/2011 - 19:49

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

Cleared PMP on 17th Oct with 3 Ps and 2 MPs. Couple of things I would like to suggest: My lesson learnt: > Do not try each and every test you find on site. I remember many of them providing false answer just to make you score less and try their paid tests. Trust only Rita's Fastrack, PMStudy and HeadFirst and PMZilla test. If you score 80 % in Rita's, you are good to go. Real exam is way easier than them if you know the concepts. > I liked HeadFirst's simple language and PMBOK Guide. PLEASE READ PMBOK. DO NOT SKIP IT. > Do not be a fool to try to memorize ITTOs. I could do it but didn;t do it. It doesn't make any sense. Exam doesn;t ask you question in that way. > "Deepfriedbrain" - Hats of to this guy. What is site to clear your concepts. Just check their explanation of PTA and work performance information/measurement and report performance. > I tried to visualize the flow in mind, something like this: Deliverables > Project Scope statement > Direct and manage project work > Perform Quality control (VD)> Verify Scope (AD) > Project Closure WPI > WPM > Report performance > Finally, take the final day light, I learnt it hard way when I tried to study around 12 hrs. You probably shouldn;t spend more than 4-5 hrs on study day before. > Sleep Well before exam day. I started from Pune to Mumbai at 04:30 and reached Mumbai at 12:00 completely exhausted. I was scheduled for 13:00. Didn;t eat anything just wash my face and started. After 100 Qs, I had to speak up questions in order for me to understand and grasp them.

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Submitted by skolnib on Wed, 11/09/2011 - 05:08

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

After preparing for about 3 months, I passed the PMP exam a couple of days ago. After reading through these forums I thought the test would be very tricky but instead I was pleasantly surprised and found the test extremely easy. I completed the test in just over 3 hrs and ended up scoring Proficient in every category. I work full time and studied on average 3-4 hrs/weekend the first 2 months and then an additional 10 hrs/week over the last month or so. Aside from listening to the PM Prepcast (which I took for the 35 contact hours), I read the PMBOK (and Code of Ethics) 4x and took several practice tests/scored as follows: PM Study - Free 200 question test - 77% Exam Central - 200 question test - 94%, too easy in my opinion Oliver Lehmann 75 questions - 88% Oliver Lehmann 175 questions - 81% PM Perfect - Purchased and took around 20 of the 50-question tests - My average score on those started around 78% and by the time I finished I was averaging around 96% over the last 6 or 7 tests. Of all the tests I took, I think the PMPerfect tests were probably the most realistic (although some of the later tests were more difficult than the real exam). Overall I felt that absorbing the PMBOK (in repetition) and taking numerous practice tests to really get a feel for the types of questions led to my success but as I said earlier, I did not expect it to be as easy as it turned out to be.

Passed PMP on 19th Jan 2012,first attempt Submitted by tejaswiniv on Fri, 01/20/2012 - 20:53

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

I was a silent lurker on PMzilla during my preparation for PMP.I did read forums,lessons learnt and exam experiences from time to time and benefitted from them.So,today is my turn to share my experience and

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lessons learnt.I took my exam on 19th Jan 2012 and passed it in my first attempt.Following were my proficiency levels: 

Initiation-Proficient

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Planning-Proficient

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Executing-Proficient

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Monitoring & Control - Proficient

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Closing-Moderately Proficient

My study plan was as follows: 1)Head First PMP,one reading: 3-4 hrs a day on an average for about 20 days to complete it. I initially started with PMBOK 4th edition and like everybody says it is more of a guide/book of knowledge on PM practices than a book that you could otherwise start with and digest completely.So,I switched to Head First.Though not extensive,it is a good book to start with to get a fair idea of all the processes and motivate you to go further. I read the book end-to-end,all exercises were solved except the final mock 200 Qs at the end of the book.I made notes in such a way that,I have only one page of notes per knowledge area(i.e per chapter) having a table of process,process description,process group,inputs,outputs and tools and techniques.Also,noted what each input,output contains (like a project charter contains objectives,assigned PM and authority,high level risks,summary milestone schedule,etc) in the same table and also notes for tools & techniques wherever I found necessary. The point of this whole exercise is to have with me all processes from all KAs,ITTOs,what each of them are in a concise,precise manner that could be used as a quick reference later on.This was later refined as per Rita & PMBOK that I read afterwards where each of them talk of other things a input/output or tool may contain. This was very useful as it prevented me from memorising the ITTOs when I started PMBOK or Rita Mulcahy further as I had the flow in my mind and automatically remembered it instead of working hard to remember. 2)Rita Mulcahy 6th edition and PMBOK 4th edition,one reading each: 3-4 hrs a day on an average for about 30 days to complete them. >Read each chapter first from Rita Mulcahy,made notes from it,read the same chapter from PMBOK,identified differences and made notes of all that is extra in PMBOK and not in Rita Mulcahy or

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ITTO notes previously made.So,I had notes from Rita Mulcahy,PMBOK,ITTO for each KA seperately at the end of it. >After every chapter,I solved the exercises in Rita Mulcahy,checked for the answers and made a note of why every answer was answered wrongly and even read through all the solutions for the right one.I had one spreadsheet at the end highlighting points on what was wrongly answered and lessons learnt as bullet points which I just went through before going for the exam.This helps in not only identifying knowledge gaps,but PMI-sms as required for the exam and the attitude that Rita Mulcahy tries to build as required for the exam. >I scored about 70-80% on the exercises at the end of each chapter.I had notes from Rita Mulcahy,PMBOK,ITTO for each KA and a common spread sheet of lessons learnt bullet points at the end of this. 3)Rita Mulcahy Fast track V6- about 1 week >After I m done with the intial study as above,I took SuperPMP, from Rita Mulcahy Fasttrack and I scored only 60% which was extremely demotivating.Dont under estimate sitting through for 4 hours for the exam and answering 200 Qs with full concentration from different knowledge areas at one go.It is not very easy.Nevertheless,I went through all the solutions again,and added why I went wrong with each question and what was important in answering some Qs right( there were Qs which I felt I answered right but for wrong reasons,have to carefully identify these as well) to the lessons learnt as bullet points. >I went through the notes I made from ITTO,Rita Mulcahy,PMBOK,Lessons learnt again and then sat to give another SuperPMP, this time only 100 Qs instead of all 200.This time I scored 90%. >I also happened to take PMP,25 Qs, from Rita Mulcahy Fast track, 50 or 100 at a time and I consistently scored above 90% each time. >I also tried answering Qs by some process groups(initiation,closing,planning ) and from professional & social responsibility from Rita Mulcahy's fasttrack, took test on about 100 each and scored above 80% all the time. Apparently,once you have done one or two super PMPS on Fasttrack and exercises at the end of each chapter,you realize that Fast track starts giving you repetitive questions.Thats the time you should realise you have to stop and move on with other stuff. 4)Mock Exam,Head First PMP 200 Qs-86%

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Found this exam fairly simple,finished in 2 1/2 hours.Target for 80% on this.The actual PMP exam is a little tougher than this one and has lengthier questions too.Once again,went through all wrongly answered Qs and added as bullet points to Lessons learnt. 5)PM Study,free test,200 Qs - 76% Found this exam a lot similar to the toughness level of actual PMP,took 3 1/2 hours to complete it,questions are similar in length to those on the actual exam.It includes a lot of Qs on terms only found in PMBOK guide and not Rita Mulcahy or others.Careful analysis of wrongly answered Qs and updating bullet points in Lessons learnt is very helpful and helps in identifying those areas that you must stress on,in the PMBOK guide. 6)Oliver Lehman 175 free Qs-70% Found this exam tougher than the actual PMP,took about 3 hours 40 min to finish it.There were a lot of terms which I was completely unfamiliar with and on analysis of wrongly answered Qs,found that they were actually from PMBOK guide as it specifies references to it.Came as a complete shocker and made me doubt my preparations as I gave this test only 2 days before the actual exam.Dont panic and identify gray areas and learn from them.The actual exam was not this tough. I did all the mock exams the week before the actual exam and revised lessons learnt,ITTO notes,Rita Mulcahy notes and PMBOK notes,too. Some points to note: >There were a lot of questions on ITTOs.Make sure you actually understand the process,what is inside each input,output,tools& techniques,project documents,who all are involved in the process,who is primarily responsible for the process,whose approval is needed for specific documents,etc.These are questions which you should never miss. >Rita Mulcahy encourages a certain way of thinking and answering the questions.Not many questions on the actual exam require you to think so much but it is always good to be prepared at a higher level. >Stress on points,terms,diagrams,graphs,etc which are in PMBOK guide but not covered in Rita Mulcahy and Head First.When you write PMStudy and Oliver Lehmann mock tests,you will actually know what I am talking about. These kinds are sure to be on the exam and will also motivate you to go and read PMBOK guide once again to see what you missed out on. >Make sure you have exhausted Fast Track and have given the 3 major mock tests by sitting for 4 hours each.Carefully document why you have answered Qs wrong and revise that list finally.It really helps.

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>I dont suggest taking too many mock tests.I have taken only the free and standard ones.While it is important to understand what kind of questions come and how to answer them,taking too many tests from too many sources will only add to the confusion.Just try the standard ones,not any and every sample test you find.Some of them are not reliable enough and even give you the wrong answers misleading you. >There were a good number of mathematical Qs on the exam,simple ones,concepts already covered in Head F first and Rita Mulcahy.Not to worry much if you are confident with those in the books.You should get these right on the exam. >Understand who is the buyer,seller,customer,client,sponsor,subcontractor,vendor,etc Relate to procurement.You should understand whose PM are you,what are the duties you internally do with your organisation,which ones involve the other organisation,which changes are approved by yours,those by other organisation,etc.These kind of ideas took me a little longer to think before answering. >Finally,on the exam,I did not make any memory dump of ITTOs or formulas as I thought it was not required for me.Took the 15 minutes before the exam to just relax and wrote a breakdown of how many questions I should complete in how much time.Roughly planned for 1 minute a question. >The first 100 Qs on the exam were lengthy(4-5 lines on an average),had to think before answering and took more than a minute to answer.By the time I was done with 100 Qs,I realised that I took 2 hours 20 minutes to complete them,much longer than I planned for.I was tired and desperately needed a break.Took a break for 5 minutes and returned to finish the next 100Qs in 1 hour 15 minutes leaving me 20 minutes to look at the marked Qs.The next 100 Qs were short in length,simple to answer and even my mind was fresh after the break. >When I initially marked questions for review,I marked them with my best answer and also on the rough sheet what could be the next best answer for those questions,if not this.So,when I did a final review of marked questions,it was easier to relate to the next best answer for the Q,instead of reading the entire Q and all the choices and eliminating them once again.Changed some of the marked answers,left some of them unreviewed before my time was out. The screen blanked for a good amount of time,making me worry if everything was ok,before the survey started.I quickly finished the survey and the testing system processed the results for a while before giving the much awaited,'Congratulations!' screen.I breathed a sigh of relief,for all the hard work finally paid off.

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The exam preparation and the exam answering time may vary for others as I have done my preparation during the second & third trimesters of my pregnancy and gave the exam in my third trimester,which did slow down my preparation a bit and affected my concentration from the usual. On a final note,with good and systematic preparation,it is not very tough to clear the exam.Also,it is important to be alert and not panic on the final exam day even if the first set of questions take longer.Keep your cool,stay focussed and do your best.All the best for the people preparing for the PMP,hope you come out with flying colors!

Passed PMP Today - Lessons Learned Submitted by Nicoboli on Fri, 12/02/2011 - 08:05

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

Hi all, I have been a lurker for a while, soaking in all the knowledge you guys have been sharing on this forum, for which I am ever greatful. I took and passed my PMP today on the 2nd try.. needless to say am crazy behind measures... just wanted to share my exam prep with you and hopefully help someone else I failed the first exam in October, took about a week and half to gather myself together and see if i wanted to shell out another $375 to retake the exam. I did, everyone at my office had passed BUT me!!!! You can imagine how i felt.. so i decided to pay the exam fee and start my exam prep AGAIN... Preparation I needed to something different to help me grasp the concept of PMP, the PMBOK was NOT doing it for me. So i did some research on line and bought Rita Mulcahy's PMP Exam Prep 7th Edition. I read the whole book once.. It was totally interesting and very helpful, it explains everything in layman's terms and pretty much does not need memorizin (like i did with the PMBOK). After reading Rita's I was excited to take the test on teh CD, only to find out it was just the Demo version, only about 20 questions. That was a bummer, i felt pretty good after taking the exams at the end of each chapter.. I was scoring in the 60s and 70s (Rita's exams are pretty hard mind you) Simulation Exams I have to tell you, you need to take these exams!! They are very helpful!!!!! No Bull.. below are some of the exams I took and my scores

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PM Study - I scored a 66% on the exam (200 questions) Exam Central - I scored a 69% (200 questions) Heads First - I scored a 76% (200 questions) Simplilearn - I dipped and scored a 64% (200 questions, pretty hard) Techfaq360.com - I scored a 76% (200 questions).. I believe this is the best site for simulation exams, pretty much the questions i saw there we almost like the real exam it self. I finished this in less than 2 hours. Leahman 175 - i got a 61%, and it was my final exam before the real exam.. I was not disappointed, i felt it was just information over load, i knew i was ready Exam Day I got to the center, went through the check in routine, and blah blah.. sat down in front of the computer and started the exam. Honestly in 30 mins i had answered 70 questions, with only a couple marked for review, after 2 hours i had answered 170 questions. At the 1:30 mark left i was reviewing my questions. This shows that when you are ready, you just are ready!!!! My questions were pretty much all situational. About 90% was situational, the 10% remaining was between a few ITTO, and some maths questions. I was very happy with this, the first exam had too many ITTOs. It was amazing to see the CONGRATULATIONS on the screen. I pumped my fist and held my hands over my mouth so my screams could not be heard!!! Two Cents Understand the concepts of Project management.. understand WHAT a project manager does. You need to know this to pass the exam. Most of the questions are based on the project Manager's everyday experience, and you have to pretty much KNOW this in order to pass. Know the Risk management process, you quality process, your intiating process adn closing process. Good luck to all, and thanks to all who have shared their knowledge and experience.. I owe it to you..

Wooohhoooo... Passed PMP Exam on 1/24/12, 1st time Submitted by kammac on Thu, 01/26/2012 - 06:38

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

Guys... like most of the visitors... I too was a silent lurker on PMzilla. I wouldn't have posted this LL, if I hadn't gained much needed support, guidance throughout my preparation, with exam experiences and LL's. I definitely have to admit that I DID got benefited by reading them during my preparation; and, today I feel responsible to contribute my experience to this Lessons Learnt forum – hopefully someone will get inspired/ get some inspirational tips. I passed the PMP exam yesterday (1/24) and here are my proficiency levels:

Initiation - Proficient Planning - Proficient Executing - Proficient Monitoring & Control - Proficient Closing - Moderately Proficient

1.

I started out with Rita's 6th version first and barely could read it through (it took 20 days for me);

then, started out PMBOK (it took around 16 days for me to get this through), same with this one too; So, first pass, was not really that productive; other than, getting to know the terms, knowledge areas and process groups etc., 2.

2nd pass on Rita, gave pretty good understanding. It took 12 days for me, cover to cover.

3.

Took Oliver Lehmann’s 175 questions – blessing in disguise – scored just 61% - I was expecting

around 70+ - I understood, it is time to knuckle down and straighten things out… 4.

3rd and 4th passes of Rita, with PMBOK’s 2nd pass in between - gave me pretty good understanding

of the concepts. But again - every pass looked like a fresh one to me, maybe I wasn't good at remembering stuff. Only thing that kept getting better was, the amount time that I was consuming to complete a pass. 5.

But again, I never remembered anything – finally when I took Certchamp’s test – scored around

85%; to be confident, took Techfaq360 – 84%, PMStudy – 73.7% and finally, Headfirst – 86% - after all these tests, I never remembered anything – but, was able to answer the questions… comfortably..

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6.

Final three days – Weekend followed by Monday, I finished PMBOK and Rita’s final full cover-to-

cover passes… Monday, late evening I saw a post from “tejaswiniv” about her experience – she scored pretty similar to mine in the practice exams, boosted my confidence a bit. Thanks “tejaswiniv”… !! Also, thanks to Rajesh Nair’s notes and Chowdhury’ s notes… they worked as quick references to me, just name the topic – good probability that you might find in the compressed “PMBOK & Rita”… big applause to you guys – great job & great effort… 7.

Day of exam – just crammed some of ITTO into my brain and took the test.

8.

I didn’t feel that Exam was that tough – but, definitely wordy though – you miss to read a single

sentence, you might the answer wrong; but for most of the questions, I was able to eliminate 2 choices, right off the bat.. just had to figure out which one of the two remaining choices is the right one for that scenario..  9.

Also, I never felt I ever got some Professional & Social Responsibility questions – may be, I didn’t

pay attention.. 10. Also, if possible – I would suggest going through YouTube videos from PMChamp and Praizan (I might have spelled his name wrong) – they were helpful to me at least.. why take a chance, you might want to spend just half hour with these – may be, they might give some tips to you too.. 11. There were at least 5-8 critical path questions – tough ones, with multiple branch in and outs… they killed my time in every hour 12. Kept my momentum 50 questions/ hr for first 100 and next 100, finished them in 92 minutes – leaving 28 minutes for review, I had almost 60 questions marked for review – could got through only 2025 of them, corrected only 3.. otherwise they were good enough as per my belief.. 13. I was working on a critical path question, timed out – I just panicked because I had at least 30 more of them to review.. but, I couldn’t help… 14. Quickly finished the “optional” survey, clicked “END” button, as everyone said – screen flashed a bit, displayed “CONGRATULATIONS”… thank god.. and to my family… chakkoo and chinncheets… 

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Submitted by shailesh250379 on Mon, 03/12/2012 - 18:19 

PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

Hi Friends, At last I did it. I have cleared my PMP exam in my first attempt. Wow!!! It‟s a great feeling. After all that hard work I put into it...it feels great that at at last i acheived it. Kindly find below my L&L for all of you who aspire to become PMP's. 1. Read Rita Mulchay at least 2- 3 times. It‟s a great & trusted resource for PMP. 2. Go through PMBOK at least 2 times. Although it‟s boring but PMBOK gives you a better understanding and perspective of the cohesiveness of all the PM processes. You can actually logically relate all the Inputs & Outputs after going through PMBOK. 3. I would suggest don‟t just read Rita & PMBOK but go ahead and also create your own notes for last minute revisions. I tried to accommodate all my notes in 4 A4 size papers back & forth so that I can carry it everywhere along with me for revision. 4. Make sure you practice all the problem solving topics Critical Path, Earned value, EMV analysis, Decision Tree etc every 2-3 days till your final exam. I practiced all the problems from Rita Mulchay. 5. Simulation exams are a must before you appear for your final PMP exam. Make sure you practice at least 3-4 Simulation exams (200 Questions) before you appear for final exam. I practiced the below exams PMStudy.Simplileran, HeadFIrst, TechFaq360. 6. Rajesh Nair notes are an ideal resource for last minute revision, I would suggest go ahead and take a print out of this notes. Go through these notes daily. 8. On day prior to your final exam, make sure you relax yourselves and don‟t over study. At least I did so. Try to bring your mind in a correct frame of mind so that you are confident about yourselves. 9 .On the last day try to reach the exam centre at least 1 hour earlier. My exam centre was in Andheri (Mumbai). I revised for half an hour earlier to the exam and then went for the exam... 10. During the exam, I felt that the difficulty level of actual exam questions was comparatively moderate as compared to the Simulation exam questions. 11. The choices that I had for my questions were relatively easy to predict, I could easily eliminate 3 choices out of four to shortlist my final answer... I don‟t know if I was lucky or it was my practice which was helping me. 12. I marked total 4 questions for review, out of which I changed the answers for 2 in my final review. 13. I completed my exam half an hour earlier and spent my last half hour reviewing my questions. I was actually able to review only first 50 questions in my last half hour and that's when I realized that I will pass my exam.

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14. Finally I clicked “End Exam” button, completed the survey and Lo behold!!! the screen said CONGRATULATIONS. 15. Last but not the least, I would agree to with all my colleagues who mentioned that preparing for PMP exam was like a journey. It took me 4 months to complete this journey (I have a small baby to take care of because of which my preparation took so long); otherwise it normally would take 2 to 2.5 months to prepare and practice exams. 16 Finally I would wish BEST OF LUCK to all my friends and colleagues on PMZilla who are preparing for PMP.

Passed First Try 3/14/2012 Submitted by tckitty on Thu, 03/15/2012 - 00:53 PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

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I'm just so thrilled and wanted to share the good news and of course, to thank you for this awesome website. I used this forum on topics and questions where I wasn't clear and needed clarifications. My test result is 3P and 2MP and I used the following material during my three months of studying.  

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        

Company online training - Horrible but it gave me the PDUs Headfirst - Great as an high-level overview to make you understand the relationship between the 5 process groups and 9 knowledge areas, but definitely not enough details. Andy Crowe's - More detail and a bit more in depth and easy to understand too. PMBOK - Used as reference, the glossary is very important to study b/c you really need to know the PMI definitions. I learned that when I was doing mock exams on various websites. Also, if I had to do this again, I will try to read it back-to-back. I did try at the beginning but it can't hold my attention. My suggestion is to read this after reading the above two books, then it should be much easier. Lesson learned for me! PM Study - Used free + purchased Test #3 Oliver Lehmann - Used both online and PDF test Simplilearn - Used free only InSite - free 1-week access from Andy Crowe's book TechFaq360 - Used free only PM Exam Simulator - Used free only PMPerfect - Used free only iwebprep.com - Used free only Voight (http://www.voightps.de) - Used free only

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    

Preparepm.com - Used free only Greenexcelinc- Used free only PM Zilla - For reference & research DeepFriedBrainProject - For reference & research I might have use a few other websites but I lost track.

I am an extremely nevous test taker and I have a tendency to stare at questions. So to prepare myself, I attempted a lot of mock exams. The mock exam were great to find my knowledge gap but more importantly to get me used to the 200 questions/4-hour format test. And I'm sooo glad I did all that practice, it really helped me to get ready psychologically. My practice scores started at high 60 and increased to high 70 towards the end. I think I even scored a couple low 80s on the easier tests. I'm an afternoon person so I scheduled a noon appointment. Know your schedule, is crucial to plan your exam day! I ate a light lunch because I don't want to be walking in hungry, but just enough to last me 4 hours. The test center is near a day care and it made me really nervous and I could hear the kids playing outside. I ended up using the headphones provided by the test center and it was much better, it really did help me concentrate during the test. I did use the tutorial time to do my brain dump but just like what most people experience, I didn't really use it that much because by that time, I can visualize the 42 processes. I used it to double check my thinking and it also helped to calm my nerve at the beginning. I didn't take any break, I just stood up and stretch when I needed to. I had about 20 mins left when I'm done with the exam and I used it to review my marked questions. I didn't get through all my marked questions but I did correct a couple of them that I knew for sure was wrong, otherwise I didn't correct the other answers, I didn't want to take any chances unless I was 100% certain. I think the test was hard but at the end of the exam, I had the feeling that I will pass but with low ratings. So when I saw the ratings, I was genuinely surprised and very happy. I did get a very weird question and I'm pretty sure is one of the test questions, it was so odd and out of place. And for some reason, I don't recall any specific code of ethics questions, I guess they did a good job blending them into the other questions or maybe I was too nervous to recognize them. I agreed with what many people have posted, do as many practice exams as possible to get familiar with the situational questions, because the real exam will be different than what you'll see in the mock exams. It's far more critical to understand, dissect and pick out key words/phrases in the questions. Another thing I learned is to use the answers

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to help me understand the question, because afterall one of the answers has to be correct/best for the situation so you can use that as clue to figure out what the question is really asking about. I skimmed through the PMI document about the differences in the Aug 2011 updated exam. I can't discuss the content of the exam but I would say that the changes PMI mentioned in the document was reflected in my exam experience. But don't get me wrong, you will definitely have some calculations to do, so please be prepared for that. I hope this is helpful and it's been a great journey for me. Please don't hestiate to leave a post if you have any questions, I'll try my best to answer them as long as it doesn't violate the PMI code! :)

PMP cleared in 12 days Submitted by nova on Tue, 03/06/2012 - 12:08 

PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt. I visited this site to read some forum posts in the last few days. That helped me in getting into the exam mode, so I decided to give something back ... I didn't have much time to do a long preparation. I studied for 12 days flat and sat for the exam keeping my fingers crossed! - All I studied was PMBOK. I completed it twice and then once more thru my 2-page notes on each chapter. - Those 2 page notes depicted the schematic of ITTOs which were really helpful. But I would like to stress here that it is your internalization of the schematic - why this input, what could the output be and where can that be used next, same for T&T - which is very important. At any time if it is asked what is the ITTO for a particular process, one should be able to answer that along with a reason as to why it is so. - Sample tests are a real help and must be taken in exam like conditions to ensure you can meticulously find where you are getting your answers wrong, and is the reason a knowledge gap (then revisit the topic) or other factors (those are specific to your personality so keep those in mind for the exam)

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- The tests I took were (all free) - Headfirst, PMstudy, Simplilearn & I was scoring between 65-80% in these. I took the first test just 3 days into my preparation to find areas which are important from the exam perspective. This óverlap' kind of study strategy helped me in keeping me on my toes for covering the syllabus while also keeping me in the exam mode. - In the exam, I finished 55 questions in the first hour. I touched the Q200 in 3 hours 10 min. Then I jumped on to the questions marked for review. I was all done in 3 hours 35 min. I got 3Ps and 2 MPs in the end. - Some topics/ areas that one should understand carefully - OPAs/EEF, WPI/WPM, Quality- what exactly happens in QA Vs QC, CR (Request, approval and execution) in different Process groups, sequence of activities for closing a proj, QA deliverables vs Verify scope deliverables, Level of details of requirements in Charter Vs Scope, Control chart vs run chart applications, level of risk in different contracts and why, BAC/EAC and methods of calculating EAC (Bottoms up ETC add, at current CPI/SPI, at budgeted rate), Comparison of conlict mgmt techniques etc.. - Finally, I would like to say that the exam is not tough, though it requires a certain level of focus. All the best to the aspirants, any questions are welcome. Thanks.

PASSED PMP - 20FEB 2012 Submitted by veerappan17 on Thu, 02/23/2012 - 20:00 

PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt. Wow ! After being scared to death by the experiences of so many people at PMZILLA who failed at their first attempt : i went and wrote the exam on 20-Feb-2012. But after i saw the first 50 questions (which i completed in 35 minutes) - i was growing in confidence that i will pass very easily. I completed the exam in 2 hrs and 20 minutes and didn't even feel like reviewing the exam questions once again. I was wanting to end the exam , the moment i answered the 200th question. The congratulations screen appeared, following a proficient score in Execution , Planning and M&C ; Initiaion and closing i was Moderately proficient.

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I had gone through the Rita book once (a few chapters twice) - and had grazed through PMBOK. (not all the chapters - i didn't touch the Integraiton management, Quality management, time management) Then 1 week before the exam i started taking MOCK exams and was scoring like 1. Headfirst : 84% 2. Exam central : 78% 3. Oliver Lehman : 72% 4. RITA (25 questiosn) : average of 64-70 percent. 5. PM STUDY : 70% Then tired of reading the reviews and the scare it created inside me : i decided to attack the problem. I was confident that the exam will not ask questions like what Rita asks in her book. (example : in this situation will you chose a green apple, green shaded apple , greener apple, greened apple etc...where all choices appeared very close). On the exam i realized the options were very straightforward and the 'distance' between two options were significant - that you can easily eliminate the 'incorrect' answer. So better luck everyone - dont read on the reviews and get drowned. if you feel confident of the process - GO FOR THE EXAM straight away.

Passed the exam on 13 Feb 2012 Submitted by adippmzilla on Wed, 02/29/2012 - 17:03 

PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt. I would like to share that I have passed the PMP exam on my first attempt. For those preparing to take the PMP examination, Here are my TIPS

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1) Study Rita book and try solve problems in each chapter 2) Study PMBOK and cross reference chapters in Rita to understand better 3) Repeat step 1 and 2 (if you want to be more comfortable) 4) Start taking mock tests and refer back to the corresponding topics PMBOK and Rita. 5) Repeat step 4 with as many mock tests as you can take. You will understand the pattern of the exam and how you need to apply concepts learned when there are more than 1 correct answer given. Points to remember: 1) Don't read too many books just focus PMBOK and Rita. 2) Fix up the appointment with exam center and visit the center 1 week before you take up the exam 3) Do as many mock tests as possible. 4) Do quality study 5) You have to read PMBOK at least once( no shortcuts) 6) Just question yourself on why a specific I/O or T&T exits for a process and why some of the outputs are again input to some other process. Don' t need to spend too much time in remembering these rather try to understand them.

Free Mock test resources online: 1) Leahman 2) http://www.pmstudy.com/practicetestsindex.asp 3) http://www.edwel.com/edwel-blog/pmp-free-practice-questions.html 4) https://iwebprep.com/Authenticate/Login.aspx 5) http://www.examcentral.net/pmp/practice-exam 6) http://www.headfirstlabs.com/PMP/pmp_exam/v2/quiz.html 7) http://www.simplilearn.com/slportal/test/result/view.do?testId=60 8) Techfaq360.com

Hope my experience would be helpful in some way for all of you preparing for the PMP Exam...ALL THE BEST!!!! :) Finally I would like to thank my wife and my kid for their support.

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Submitted by Devanga on Tue, 02/28/2012 - 03:23 PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

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Hi All, This forum and couple of others has wealth of information and I think I did not use it to full extent, but defenitely got information. would like to give back something :-). Hence my lessons learnt.. I have been managing projects from quite some time and was planning to take PMP exam from couple of years. I decided to take the exam with December last year. But finally ended up taking the exam in Feb 23 this year. I started to read the PMBOK guide version 3 during my journey in train for 15 to 20 minutes and some time during weekends. It was miserable :-) and nothing worked out. The integration management seemed to be every thing needed to execute the project. !! Then I postponed preperation for several months .. After fresh start, I started with Head First PMP and for me it was an wonderful book. Concepts were so clearly explained with examples ..I enjoyed reading the book especially cross words.at the end of each chapater. Read all most all knowledge ares and solved the sample exam questions. I never memorized any formulas or ITTO's. By my nature, I know that if I dont understand well , I can never recall. I happen to read to forums where several discussions about memorizing IITO or not. I all most decided that I better put more effort and remember ITTO's ( yes, againist my wish and my own lessons learnt over several years :-( only discover later that its not required) Having read most of Head First PMP book for second time in December break, I thought was ready to give exam. I thought would check my knowledge against Rita's PMP book..I could not answer as well as I thought..I postponed the exam to Feb 23rd and decided to read Rita Book thoroughly and do exercises sincerely. After having read Head First PMP, I could easily grasp Rita contents and surely Rita is very methodical approcah to Pass PMP. I would highly recommend reading both Head First PMP and Rita PMP book thoroughly in the same order. I also happen to scan through some sections PMBOK book, but to be honest PMBOK looks very good once you have grasp of all the subject matter :-) . As Rita clearly pointed out, there is no need to memorize any ITTO's. I strongly agree with her, once you understand you dont need to memorize.. After all we want to use them in our

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every day work. All the EV formulas needs to be memorized and brain dumped in the beginning of exam. Its even more important to understand interpretation of the results from calculations. By memorizing ITTO's you may get couple of questions more right, but its not a good ROI as per me. Rajesh Nair's notes are tremounds and he deserves a big thanks, its a wonderful summary for last week review. I was running out of time and hence decided to buy commercial practise tests. I tried samples PM exam simulator, PM study. I decided to take PM study 4 exam tests and consistently scored 72 to 77 % in tests. After 3rd test I felt that I can do the exam confidently. I cant comment on pracise tests from different vendors since I did not do a comparitive study. I just went with PMStudy. But I feel most of the commercial/free ones might be just fine.. Honestly I think once you understand the concepts one or two resources for practise exams are good enough. I took the 4th exam day before exam ( this was a bad decision) and suggest couple of days early to make sure to review the wrong answers. Inspite of several people suggesting to have a good night's sleep previous night I did not follow. It was bad on my part. Recommend doing whatever you like previous day,..watch movies, play with your kids, listen to music.. Day of Exam : Till date, I have never finished any exam early and same went with PMP exam. I took 5 minutes break in between, but finsihed exam in exact time of 4 hours with answering one question which I marked earlier. But to be honest, I started to get confident after answering 20 to 25 questions that I would defenitely pass. Finally, for me managing work schedules,personal work, family and playing with Kid was challenging and would defenitely thank my wife and son for sacrificing 6 to 7 week ends allowing me to prepare. The best part is going to be application of knowledge areas which I was not using till now. Next to my heart is Agile PM methods and closely plan to follow PMI. All the best :-) Aravind, PMP

Passed PMP today 26-03-2012 first try ! Submitted by kaps07 on Mon, 03/26/2012 - 12:10

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

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I am pleased to share that I passed the PMP exam today on 26-03-2012 in my first try. I was rated proficient in all the areas except closing where I got MP. I studied for 3 months. I used PMBOK 4th ed (3 or 4 times) and PM Prepcast (once) as the main study materials. I had ESI power prep book, slides and questions from my company but used only the slides and questions there. I tried only the free exams on the internet like examcentral, pmstudy (1), simplilearn, Oliver L, and few others. I scored 75-85% on average on these exams. I am into full time IT project management for a captive unit and my on job experience helped in studies and exam. I completed the exam in 3 hrs and marked about 10 questions for review and changed only 2 in review. I just wanted to finish the exam and know the result, hence did not spend the remaining time reviewing many things. Overall the quality of the exam questions was very good. There were many situational questions and you need to read it all and understand completely by removing unnecessary information and extracting all the required information to select the best answer. You must read and understand PMBOK. I did not memorize all the ITTOs but from the question and answers I was able to find the right choice. I mean I cannot right them all on the paper but when given as the choices for a question I would recall the right ones. Thanks to the guys here who posted here and guided me in my preparation. All the best to the guys who still need to pass the exam. Study well and it will pay off ! It is not a rocket science. Regards, Kapil Gahlot

Passed PMP today (27-Mar-2012) - First Attempt- With only 3 months of study Submitted by pri_july on Tue, 03/27/2012 - 16:43

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PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt.

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I passed my PMP exam today at my first attempt. I'm still not able to belive I've done it!! It was a 3 month hard work with daily effort of 7-8 hours!! Thanks to PMZilla which has been a source of great information to me. Now it would be my chance to help others. I would strongly suggest to go through the PMBOK guide word by word as many questions are direct based on definitions and ITTOs. This would help you to solve a good no. of non-situational questions in less time and would give you more time to analyze on situational questions. When I started the exam, the questions initially seemed tough to me (may be I was nervous) but I answered and marked those questions to be analyzed later. As soon as I got into the flow, I was able to solve good amount of direct/non-situational (including numericals) questions, without being marked, for which I was sure and shot. This gave me confidence. And after 2.5 hours, I was done with 114/200 sure and shot questions. Another 60 minutes went for second round, to analyze remaining 86 confusing questions (for few questions out of 86 in first round, I was 90% damn sure I did it right, but marked them to review in second round). After second round, more confusing questions were still left marked (around 40). Last 15-20 minutes went for 3rd round which could not be completed, as time ran out. But finally, I was glad to see "Congratulations" on my screen after sitting for exam for continuously 4 hours without any break. My suggestions: 1) Read PMBOK guide thoroughly atleast twice 2) Rita Mulcahy (read 3 times to clear the concepts). Questions at the end of each exercise are very useful. 3) Solve as many sample questions as you can from all the sites possible and the links provided in PMZilla (I Went for all free and demo exams!). Though some sites do not have quality questions/authentic answers but searching for authentic answers in books again would help you to memorize. Although, there are many good links with good quality questions. Few of which I recommend are -EPMC -Exam Central

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-Oliver Lehmann (both 175 and 75 questions) -Headfirst -Fradricks 4) Going through PMZilla discussion forum is useful. These may provide good analysis of questions and many undiscovered links. I hope my above experience would be of help to you. In case of any other query, please feel free to revert.

Lesson Learned Submitted by drebutters on Wed, 03/28/2012 - 05:09.

The first time I failed the test I memorized all the terms and did not understand how the processes work in realtion to each other. I found the following link the most useful as I did not read the PMBOK guide.

I would not suggest not

reading the PMBOK guide. However, I found the PMBOK guide tedious to read from front to back. Notes (most useful for me) http://pmzilla.com/comprehensive-pmp-notes I took a several test listed here. (took thousands of test questions) http://pmzilla.com/passed-pmp-today-first-try-see-below-lessons-learnt-and-resources-used-and-myjourney ITTO's Practice (MUST undterstand Inputs tools& techniques and outputs) http://www.brainbok.com/

Took all 21 of the Practice test below http://www.pmperfect.com/

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35 percent of the test was similar to questions I had viewed and practiced before. But, for the most part I had t think through the process to attain the best answer. EMV and critical path videos came in handy http://pmzilla.com/evm-and-critical-path-video-explaination

Cleared PMP at first attempt on 27th April 2012 ! Submitted by dasmrinmoy on Sat, 04/28/2012 - 01:31 

PMP Exam Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learnt. Cleared PMP at first attempt on 27th April 2012 Hi, I can’t believe that one day I will be able to write my lessons learned in this forum. I must say thanks to this forum at Pmzilla. I have cleared my PMP yesterday (27th April) with Proficient at Initiating, Executing, Monitoring & Controlling and Moderately Proficient at Planning and Closing. It was never easy for me being away so many years from study and I have huge workload at office as well as family commitment. Thanks to my wife and my daughters for their great support ! I have been silent onlooker at this forum from past 6 months. I started my preparation from Sept’ 11, but started very slowly. I could not progress well with PMBOK as it is difficult to concentrate. Then I bought Rita & Andy Crowe. But after reading few initial paragraphs from Rita I felt bit tough. As I said I was away from studies for long years. Then I started with Headfirst and then my real PMP journey started! For those who has problem starting with PMBOK, it is highly recommended to start with Headfirst. I didn’t realize when it took me into studies. Even my 8 years daughter felt interesting and started few pages of it  But my journey was not smooth. I was very inconsistent about my study hours. I have huge workload at office, so after coming back at home it was difficult to concentrate. I tried to read in the morning while commuting to office. Then I registered myself to one of REP in Singapore, but it got cancelled due to some problem. Then I came to know about PMPrep Cast by Cornelius Fichtner and I bought their online course. But again, after few lessons I was loosing concentration. Initially I planned to appear for exam at end of Nov’11 but I had to go India for vacation, so my preparation got lost. Then I started again on January, but unfortunately my work load at office increased a lot. It was really difficult for me to keep focus on studies and I was struggling.

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Then at March I decided to fix a date for exam and take a challenge to put more focus and motivate myself. But my workload at office kept on increasing, I was not able to concentrate fully at my office work also. It was almost killing me. Then I decided to prepone the exam on 27th April (originally it was on May 18) since my project was affecting at office and it was import for me as well as for my office. As I preponed the exam I had to fast track some of my preparation work and it increased risk as well as errors. I could not complete some of my planned activities (could not finish Rita’s all chapter test, PMBOk Glossary, Brainbok flash cards etc). Anyway, finally I appeared for the test yesterday and completed the Project PMP ! I must say thanks to PMZilla and Harwinder from DeepFriedBrain. My Exam was bit tough as compared to mock tests. After completing 100 questions, I was not sure whether I will pass or not. Then from last 100 it was mixed blend of easy to moderate questions. But I found hardly any Professional & Ethics questions…may be one or two. Mostly from Quality, Risk, Earned Value, Schedule etc. Lessons Learned (main topic ): 1. For those who are away from studies for long time and can’t concentrate on PMBOK easily, may start with Headfirst. It will take you into the subject easily. Then you can start PMBOK or Rita 2. Try mock test as much as you can with real exam mode. After mock test you can realize your gaps. It will keep you charged. It may not be easy for sitting 4 hours at initially. So as with me. I tried : Headfirst, Andy Crowe, Tech Faq, Exam Central, Simpli Learn, PM Study, BrainBOK. Could not find time to have PMZilla test and not tried Oliver. After PM Study, I realized the importance of reading PMBok. Point to note that the topics which I read earlier from PMBOK, I actually got into deep & real meaning after mock test like PM Study / BrainBok as most of their questions directly quote from PMBOk. 3. I did one unique thing, I am not sure if anybody has done the same at this forum. I copied all the good lessons leaned into one file from last 6 months (though I missed some) and I tried to read whenever I feed dull or bore to boost myself as well as to get good feedback. 4. I did not try to memorize all ITTOs. I tried to understand first. Then important ones I tried to memorize by mnemonics. I prepared one page short note of mnemonics, one page of formula. Last few days I kept on revising those with PMBOK Page 43. 5. Not recommended to start with too many books at a time. I did so and loosing track. You may start one book at a time. Anyway, I followed – HeadFirst, Rita beside PMBOK. Even though I bought Andy, I could not start it, only tried the test.

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6. Great help from Rajesh Nair’s note from this forum. It gave me bird’s eye view each Knowledge area. 7. Sleep well at previous night of exam day. I was very unfortunate and I couldn’t do so due to some stress. But my exam was at late afternoon, so somehow managed. 8. Read and understand PMBOK well. I know it’s easy to say but very very difficult to do. So, as I said, start with some easy book like Headfirst and they try to read PMBOK each chapter. And then try PMStudy or Brainbok exam and they you can under the real meaning of PMBOK. 9. During the exam, if you find wordy mathematical Q’s, better to mark and come back again after completing one pass. 10. Try to prepare & appear for the exam at one go. Too long planning may not be possible if you have heavy workload at office and other commitment. Again, thanks to this forum at PMZilla, Deepfried Brain for great knowledge sharing and thanks to my wife & daughters for their ultimate support. Thanks & regards, Mrinmoy Das

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