Hello Everyone,

I passed PMP today in New Castle, DE, U.S.A with 3 proficient(planning,executing and M&C) and initiating with moderatley proficient and closing with below proficient.

I am very thankful to the God, Family and Friends. Special thanks to my wife who encouraged and supported me a lot all along from the intiation to till this day to make my "project PMP" to be a grand success. I also want to thank my in-laws who took care of my baby for the last 4 months and encouraged me, without which I couldn't achieve this today. Thanks to PM ZILLA and members for the wonderful information about the exam and concepts.

Initiation:

Last year in December,  one of my friends and me decided to prepare for PMP. I broswed through PMI website and internet for the eligibility criteria and the process. I became PMI member and bought PM Prepcast by the great Cornelious Fitchner for 35 contact hours.

Submitted the PMP application which went for audit :( !!. Initially, I was worried but I realized that I didn't have to as i didn't lie any where in my application. Got signature from my managers and PMI completed the auditing in few hours on the same day after they received the documents.

Planning:

Timeline: Planned for almost 4 months(excluding some breaks I was expecting due to personnal and work commitments) with atleast 3-4 weeks for the mock exams and fillingup the gaps in my knowledge. 1-2 hours in week days and 3-4 hours on weekends.

After the pmpodcast, my plan was to read PMBOK once followed by Rita Mauchay with chapter end exams and in the second round read each chapter side by side in Rita and PMBOK. This was a suggestion from many PM Zilla members. The specfiic mockup exams were unknown at this point (Was depdending on rolling wave planning after the preparation )

Study Material :

PM Podcast by Cornelius Fitchner : Power point presentation which simulates like classroon training was very helpful initially. I had difficulty to concentrate studying books and needed some motivation and pmpodcast was it. I also used to listen some audio chapters while driving to the office.

PMBOK: As I am a PMI member, I got electronic version of PMBOK.  ITTO's and input/output flow diagrams were very helpful. Offcourse it was a good reference while studying any other material.

RMC Rita Mauchay: Lot of PM concepts. This book is fully concept oriented. It was like reading my college text book more than a decade ago and I really liked it. The negative tone didn't really bothered me.

Chowdary Notes: Excellent. Was much useful before the exam on ITTO's and some concepts not covered in above material. I also used important points from Rajesh Nair notes.

Discussion forums: PMZIlla (Much appreciated for all the support from members and admin. I recommend every PMP aspirant to be member here and follow the discussions) and PMHUB yahoo group(used initially)

Executing:

I executed the above plan. Completed PM podcast and read PMBOK and Rita Mauchay with chapter end exams. At this point, I understood each knowledge area indivisually but never got the relation to other areas and overall concepts. When I did the second round with each chapter refering both Rita and PMBOK at the same, concepts and relations made lot of sense and interesting.

Just about 4 weeks before the exam, I started taking the mock exams. here is the exam list and scores.

Oliver Lehman  75 questions - 62% ( Tough one)

PM Study 1 free - 70% (Yes. close to real exam)

RMC Fast tack PMP - 75% (some questiosn repeated from chapter end exams)

Oliver Lehman 175 questions - 78% ( paper based. didn't follow time)

Exam Central - 82% (it was easy)

RMC Fast Track Super PMP - 73% ( Lengthy questions. I slept for 15 mins in between and realized that I  can't answer all questions but finished on the last second)

Headfirst PMP - 82% (easier one)

PM Study 3 - 78%

Simpilearn free - 75% ( recommended)

PM Study 2 - 81%( this gave me good confidence. I took 5 days before the exam)

PMP for sure 100 questions - 74% ( made me to relaize some facts which i explained in M&C. Failed with 2 BP and 3 MP)

I also practiced knowledge wise questions(over 1200) from fast track and scored between 80 to 90%.

Exam:

One day before the exam(yesterday), I analyzed the ITTO and went through the flow between knowledge areas.I also gone through PMBOK glossary and Chowdary/Rajesh Nair notes. Apart from final preparation, I visited testing center and i am happy that i did this. It took some time to find exact location as my GPS was showing the wrong location. I did get chance to talk to testing center professional to verify my appointment and chat on testing center procedure.

My exam was at 12:30 PM but I reached by 11:30 AM (Glad that I visited one day before to avoid any confusion) and started the exam at 12 noon. I wrote only formulas in scrap book and started the exam. Exam was mix of  tough questions with ambiguous answers and few easy ones. Most of them were situational but not too lengthy. I took break at 120 questions(2 hours) and and another at 200 questions(3.5 hours). I had about 40 questions for review but couldn't review all of them before exam ended. I changed only 2 answers. I thought I will get the result after the blank screen but I got the survey to complete. After completing the survey, I got the magic word "Congratulations". I was so happy and felt that my 4 months of hard work paid off. I clicked next and got 3 P in Planning, Executing and M&C and MP in initiating and BP in closing.

Monitor and controlling:

When I was taking chapter end exams in RMC, I was getting less score in HR and communications and average on procurement and integration. I could improve in procurement and integration but was consistently getting low on HR and Comm(RMC says these are easiest areas.. ). RMC fast track which gives score based on process group was showing me that my score in M&C is little low. I improved the score in M&C also later and confident in major process groups initiating, Executing and M&C

I didn't realize that I need to improve my score in initiating and closing until i took PMP for sure free exam which was just 5 days before the exam. I got 74% but result as failed because I got BP in both Initiating and Closing. i didn't want to be in a situation where I get 3 P in major groups planning, executing and M&C but fail because 2 BP in small groups initiating and closing(I was close to this situation in real exam also). I spent one whole day on these groups only which saved me in real exam. Hopefully all the mock exams(especially PMSTUDY) will come up the scoring on process group level.

Closing:

Today, I am closing my project PMP with this lessons learned information. It was wonderful journey which gave me lot of confidence.

Next steps: Apart from spending more time with my family (especially with my 4 months old) which i couldn't do due to the preparation, I would like to implement lot of the PMI concepts at work which we don't currently. I would like to contribute to the PM body of knowledge by participating in forums and spreading the PM concepts to my friends and colleagues.
 

Thanks and Regards,

Vivek, PMP