Hello All,I was a silent listener of the forums and thanks to everyone who contributed to the forums. I made a determination that my first post would be after I pass my PMP exam. My journey started in Decdmber 2010 and ended yesterday (I took a 2 month gap in between due to personal issues). I have decent experience with project management and so visualizing the concepts was easy.

My study approach:

1) Started with reading Rita and PMBOK simultaneously. I used to read a chapter from Rita and then immediately read the corresponding contents from PMBOK. I created my own spreadsheet of notes. After each chapter, I immediately answered the exercises and whenever my score was less than 75%, I reread the chapter from Rita again to address my gaps. PMBOK itself seemed very tedious to read. But, since I had a preview from Rita's book, it did not seem too cumbersome. This step consumed my time from December 2010 to March 2010. I spent 2-3 hours during the weekdays and relaxed over the weekend.

2) After I was done with Rita, I read PMBOK fully, including the glossary and appendices. Reading PMBOK at this stage was a breeze. I completed the book in 10 days. I updated my notes simultaneously.

3) I had access to my local library that carried headfirst and Kim Heldman's book. I first attempted the exercises from Kim's book and was scoring around 80%. For each chapter, I attempted the quiz first, skimmed through the chapter for any new content (in this case, I updated my notes with the gaps), updated my notes for existing information when the perspectives from this book. Repeated the same steps for Head first. I completed both the books in 10 days. I was close to 3rd week of April and I scheduled my exam at this point (to mid June 2011). My notes now was comprehensive enough to cover everything from PMBOK, Rita, HF and Kim.

4) I started attempting sample questions available freely on the websites. I did  this in mid-June. I had to take a break from May to mid June and therefore postponed my exams to August. Some free questions were pretty good and some seemed erraneous. I dumped some websites from my study plan due to the apparant errors and continued working on sample quizzes.   I simultaneously reviewed my notes and started creating my own mind map (this was almost as comprehensive as my notes). Writing my notes over a second time helped me digest the material better. I used the "Free Mind" opensource tool to create my maps. I started concentrating more on the ITTOs. I did not memorize them blindly. Understanding how the ITTOs relate to eachother lead to soft memorization of the tools and I could remember them easily anytime.

5) During the same time, I took some sample tests and here are my scores. In general, I was able to score in the 75s - 85s range.

http://www.pm-abc.com/Free_Simulated_Test.asp - 75%
http://www.headfirstlabs.com/PMP/pmp_exam/v2/quiz.html# - 85%
http://www.techfaq360.com/pmp_4thedition.jsp - 87%
http://www.pmpmodel.com/home.php - 77%
http://www.edwel.com/courses/pmp-certification-exam-prep/pmp-exam-200-pr... Free Exam - 75%

PM Study 1 - 80%
PM Study 2 - 85%
PM Study 3 - 81%
PM Study 4 - 85%

I was pretty saturated that I was impatient to wait till August. I advanced my exam dates (I kept checking every hour to see if any slot was open and fortunately found one on Sunday - 24th Jul 2011). In my opinion, knowing the information from all the books mentioned above should be more than sufficient. PM Study was very close to the actual exam. Also, I did not read the materials (except PMBOK) more than once. I did not attempt to redo any of the questions to improve my score. My reasoning was that I might get too familiar with the questions and may not get a good feel of where I stand. I used the quizzes as an opportunity to identify my gaps that helped me go back and read the specific sections of the book.

My impression about the books I used:

Rita - A must. Rita's book, especially the tips and trips may seem annoying in the beginning, but they directly relate to the exam concepts. This is the way PMI percives what a correct approach should be. Thank god, I did not quit reading the book midway. Rita's book makes you think the PMI way. HF - I read this after Rita, PMBOK and Kim. I wished I had read this first. It would have made my life much easier. The concepts are explained in simple layman terms. I should have read this first, understood the concepts and moved on to Rita. This way, I would have build a solid foundation on why Rita is interpreting something a certain way. It was hard to grasp the concepts and also remember how to do it the PMI way.Kim - Covers many concepts not covered in Rita and HF. Some questions in the exams were directly related to the concepts covered in this book. PMBOK - I dont have go gaga over this book. I read this only once, but thoroughly.

My impressions about the exam itself - The exam was not very tough and at the same time not so easy. Most of the questions we see on the practice tests are not 100% representative of the actual exam. Some problems like calculating NPV, IRR, etc seem to be a overkill in the sample questions we see in these free websites. Ofcourse, may be I did not get those questions and it does not hurt to be prepared. There were many direct questions/ one liners from the ITTO and many questions that directly relates to Rita's trips and tricks and Kim's exam spotlight. I got so many EVM questions and all of them were so simple. Nothing complex to calculate. The questions were not so wordy like what you see in Rita's book. I saw questions that were maximum 3 - 4 sentences long (about 15 or 20 of them). There were about 20-30 questions that were so confusing (both questions and options were ambiguous). The rest, I could pinpoint what the answer was even without reading the other options. May be I was lucky !! . Some questions asked for what come after this process; Some questions elaborately explained something which required you to figure out which process you were in to answer the question. There were lot of questions from risk management and change control area. Overall, if you grasp the material well, you should be able to crack the exam.

Thanks,
Prithi Narasimhan, PMP