PMP - Lessons learned

Submitted by sidfever on Sat, 01/26/2013 - 07:14

I passed my PMP exam this week with Proficiency in all domains. The different posts on PM Zilla forums helped me a lot during preparation, so I think I should also post my experiences here. However I feel one needn't take others' lessons learned too seriously, as we all have our own styles of learning and what works for someone else needn't work for us. So one needs to create a study plan that suits his or her style. 

 
I think PMP is a great way to learn a lot of interesting concepts in a short period of time and it would be wrong to study for the exam just to pass it. My company is tring to promote agile methodologies and as such the importance of PMP has reduced drastically (I don't know why!). So I was studying more with the intent to learn and took my sweet time to prepare. Of course considering the high re-exam fees, once I had registered for the exam, I had to pass it. So all those posts like "passed PMP with 8 days of preparation" didn't have any value for me. 
 
I went through Skillsoft e-learning courses available for free on our intranet and got my 35 PDUs. The skillsoft videos are excellent and I will highly recommend them. For example instead of just telling what nominal group technique or sensitivity analysis are, it took real life examples and explained how these are used. I knew 8 hour classroom sessions on project management weren't for me as my mind can hardly stay awake (to the relatively dry concepts of ITTOs) after 3-4 hours, so online sessions worked well for me.
 
I used Rita Mulcahy as the primary text and I think it is very good. However the book contains a lot of stupid lines such as "if you can't fill the below table with the tasks done in project executing, you are inexperienced and you may fail the exam". I took a red pen and striked off such lines. For the concepts I still didn't understand, I searched in google and found a lot of materials (ex: free float vs total float, attribute vs variable sampling, project vs product scope etc). 
 
One problem I faced was that I was forgetting the things I had read in 3rd chapter by the time I went to 5th chapter. So I started creating mind maps and spider diagrams containing key concepts. Once I did that, it was really easy to revise. And later on when I found something where I had knowledge gaps, I put into my notes. Writing is a learning process, so you need to write your own notes, others' mind maps don't help. 
 
I didn't go through PMBOK in that much detail. PMBOK process flow diagrams and glossary are very good, but the language isn't memory friendly at all. May be if I had a hard copy instead of the PDF copy, I'd have liked it more.
 
I tried the following free tests: 
1. PMstudy - 5/5 - scored 87% 
2. Skillsoft simulated test - 5/5 - lots of high quality situational questions - 78%
3. Oliver Lehmann 75 + 175 - 4.5/5 - scored 83% - some questions are out of syllabus
4. Simplilearn - 4/5 - scored 84% - some badly worded questions
5. Headfirst - 4/5 - 85% - simple test. can be used to find when to book the exam slot and how much more efforts are needed. 
6. Edwel Programs - 3.5/5 - scored 80%
7. Christopher Scordo test 12 to 18 - 4/5 - ignore the ethics questions
Stay away from PM Fastrack. 
 
I think the idea should not be to do as many test as possible or to feel disappointed if the scores are not high. Rather one should find things that still need attention and revise them.
 
I read some excellent articles on net on how to handle situational questions on PMP exam. As others have said, one needs to go through all the choices and not only find why a choice is right, but also justify why other choices are incorrect/less correct. 
 
ITTOs: You should learn all tools and techniques and outputs excluding generic ones like OPA updates, PM Plan/proj doc updates. It is only the inputs that can get mind boggling. I created some nice excel sheets that were quite helpful with ITTOs. You can find it from http://www.pmzilla.com/learning-ittos-helpful-excel
 
No matter how well one prepares, I think it is natural to feel anxious on the exam day. If you have prepared well, you'll definitely pass. Wish you all the best. 
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admin

Sat, 01/26/2013 - 09:33

congratulations.

uglory

Sat, 01/26/2013 - 19:34

 Congrats and many thanks for sharing.

dlhawe

Wed, 02/13/2013 - 20:36

Just out of curiousity, why did you stay away from PM Fastrack?

sidfever

Sun, 02/17/2013 - 18:00

 PM Fastrack has a poorly designed interface. I liked other tests because I was able to pause the tests in between and resume them later. Once my laptop shut down for some reason and I lost almost 3 hours of work I had put on a test. It was horrible. Every other test I wrote had a feature to save the checked answer before I moved on to the next question. 

And I hated Rita's style of giving too much of unnecessary details in the questions. Sample ones were like "You are a project manager in xyz project. You have finished creating a scope statement, stakeholder register and Quality plan. A bridge your team had designed has collapsed. The subcontractor of the project has told that they don't want to work with you anymore. One of your employees is asking for 30% hike in salary....What should you do next?"

I didn't see frustrating questions like these elsewhere. 

I think it is a waste of time and money. There are better products at lesser cost.  

 

dlhawe

Mon, 02/18/2013 - 00:06

Good to know, thanks for the explanation.  Honestly, I feel like many of the sample questions I have seen on Rita and other test simulatorrs use the same distraction technique, but I kind of chalked that up to the official test being the same way.

The lack of ability to save a response to a question is very problematic given that is one of the surest ways of identifying weak areas of proficiency.

Thanks again for the info!

sunitaPMP

Fri, 02/15/2013 - 22:42

congratulations...

Did not understand  PMstudy - 5/5 - scored 87%?

You mean 5 tests from PMStudy?

sidfever

Sun, 02/17/2013 - 17:34

I just gave the free PM Study test. I'll give a score of 5 out of 5. It is a must do like many others have said.