Dear Community,

It's really a privilege to share my overall experience.  It was my first attempt yesterday (22 oct 2012) and passed with 5 MPs at Bangalore-Jayanagar Prometric center.

I had experience(years back) of preparing & appearing for some of IT-industry technical certifications from erstwhile SUN, IBM & Oracle and was wondering why PMP/PMI certifications are made out to be difficult and people taking more than 1 attempt to clear.  I must admit now that PMP certification (and related process) is completely different than the ones dealing with  technical topics and more to do with situations and project circumstances.   So watch out if you are from technical background.

Another aspect was that most of the terminologies viz., WBS, baselines etc were known since it was used/followed in my past projects.  But the requirement here was that all of these topics/terminologies/areas should be understood and answered from PMI perspective.  Therefore some unlearning was required.

I got many useful information from 'PMZilla' & 'deep fried brain' especially.  Thanks to Guys who have put up these community forums.

Milestones:

• Started my preparation during May 2012.  It was not complete since some travel came up during July-Aug.
• Started afresh on Sept 10 2012 with target of 1 month for completing certification
• Applied for PMI membership on 6 Oct and sent my PMP application on same day.
• Waited for 'go ahead' from PMI for 5 days (I guess avg is 5 days for approval), made payment on 14 Oct and selected 8:00 AM slot on Oct 22 2012.  Fortunately my application was not selected for audit.
• Appeared for PMP certification on 22 Oct and cleared it.

References:

• Referred Rita 6th edition as main reference
• Referred PMBOK guide.  In my opinion these 2 are sufficient to pass.
• End of chapter questions from Rita is sufficient to give a feel of real questions.  If you need you can also use PM-fast track.
• My employer has  collaboration with 'Skillsoft' (a REP) and I used it to get eligibility PDUs for free.  It was an online training and there is nothing great about training since it was mostly narration from PMBOK.
• I had access to many other materials & books through Skillsoft library but never used any.

Following are some of my views and suggestions for PMP aspirants.

• Do not refer every material that comes your way.  It's always good to refer a single material/book at a time when you are trying to gain insights into project management.   
• In my opinion, Rita and PMBOK are sufficient with 3 to 4 iterations of Rita and 2 to 3 iterations of PMBOK.  I agree with others that 6th edition of Rita conveys topics with negative tone but I ignored it completely.
• I would suggest not to memorize ITTO (unless you are memorizer by habit).  I followed a mechanism to remember most of these ITTO (if not all, to some extent) through logical maps like for example:  eg1:   'change request' appears as output for all areas in procurement.  eg2:  most input and output in M&C contain work performance information, work performance measurement except for 'report performance' where both of these are inputs.  eg3:  product analysis in define scope, rbs in estimate resource etc
• The same applies for simulated tests.  Make a conscious judgement regarding simulation  tests that you are going to take during your preparation.  I referred Rita's chapter end questions, PM-fast track (around 600 questions spread across all domains), Head-first free 200 questions, simpliLearn and Skillsoft simulation tests.  From my observation,  sample questions from Skillsoft, simpliLearn and others were mostly or adapted ones from Rita.  Head-first tests were good. 
• visualize and have your thoughts organized in some sequential manner regarding each processes (why it is required and how it is used).  This will help in answering questions that asks 'what happens next'. 
• combine your reading session with tests.  I felt it was boring otherwise to just read.  
• In summary:  formulate the plan based on your past education experience on which you will feel comfortable and have confidence.  Do not try to put more pressure on yourself.

About the test center:

As you know there is only one prometric (atleast for PMI tests) in Bangalore.  Jayanagar is fairely crowded place and difficult to get car park on adjoining streets. Test center was crowded with people mostly appearing for other tests.  Reach early so that initial formalities can be done conveniently.

Good luck.