PMP Lessons learned Sep '09 (and some news for prospective exam takers).
Submitted by Retire on Sat, 09/26/2009 - 06:47
I recently got PMP certified. While studying for the exam itself was a
unique experience, i learnt a few things from the exam also. 
I thought I'll share my thoughts with some of the aspirants of the PMP certification.
(visit my blog http://levigate.blogspot.com for more):
- It
looks like PMI decided to do away with trick questions and stick to
straight forward Questions. I did not encounter a single trick question. (i haven't read this in any of the LLs on any forums so i'm presume that this is breaking news on a change in exam pattern) - I
was told that AOA was history and that I should only prepare for
AON, but I did get an AOA question and was required to calculate the
float. - The exam was easy and tough in parts. All in all, i wish
i had put some more time into the preperation but i had other
distractions. - Got a lot of EAC and other earned value
calculations. Very important that one knows all the calculations of
Earned Value and various ways at arriving at the results given only
parts of the forumla. (Danke, Oliver Lehmann!!) - I don't recall having encountered a topic that might not have been covered in the PMBOK.
Resources:
Andy Crowe,
PMBOK,
Training Material from Quahance, Bangalore (for revisions on days that I have not been able to study at all)
Oliver Lehmann's 75 and 125 questions
Other books in the PMI library (thanks again due to Oliver's sample questions)
PMI's Q&As for the PMBOK guide (3rd ed available in eReads & References section for PMI members) - i saw a couple of questions straight from the Q&As, so this is valuable practice exam.
admin
Mon, 09/28/2009 - 03:43
Permalink
Congratulations and Thanks
Congratulations and Thanks for sharing the lessons learnt with this forum
Welcome to PMP Club
Regards
Admin
Ramu
Tue, 09/29/2009 - 10:53
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Congraaats...
Retire, Congratulations and your LL will helps us a lot. Appreciate, if you can share your email id so that we can get in touch with you for additional info (ramur616@gmail.com).
Retire
Wed, 09/30/2009 - 12:33
Permalink
Thank you.
Thank you, admin & Ramu.
Ramu, i'm not comfortable sharing my mail ID on a public forum. Hope you don't mind. You can PM me or visit my blog for more details.
Cheers,
Retire (http://levigate.blogspot.com)
Retire
Wed, 10/07/2009 - 09:32
Permalink
Everybody, I just got
Everybody,
I just got word from Oliver Lehmann about the negative (or trick) questions in the PMP exam. Below is an extract from the conversation:
"It is not fully, but to some degree consistent with feedback I got from
others, who said that they have seen a few negative questions, but not
many.
As far as I can see, this is the work of one reviewer of exam items at
PMI who is rejecting any negative question (and any CAPM-like questions
too, by the way).
The person is a PMP on voluntary assignment - a person I know quite
well - and only assigned for a period of time. What will happen, if
this person will be no more reviewing the exam?
The exam is changing over time, as new exam items are being written,
reviewed, tested in the exam as non-scoring questions, and then updated
into the body of something around 1,000 items (I cannot verify that
this number is still true, but it was communicated some time ago by
PMI).
There were times when the exam did not include a single question with
calculations (Sept. 2005, June 2009), and other times, when candidates
reported they had up to 25% questions with calculations.
There were also times when the exam seemed to have no diagrams at all. At other times they had 10% or so.
What you saw was a selected freeze frame, a momentary view on a fraction of the exam item.
But again, thank you for the feedback. There were several moment when I
got consistent feedback from a number of candidates, and then updated
my material as appropriate.
Oliver"
So, bottom line is, be prepared either ways...
Retire (http://levigate.blogspot.com)