Dear Reader,

This is Anup Kumar S

First of all my heart-felt thanks to all those PMP certified who have shared their valuable LL in internet. This really helped me in my preparation. I was waiting for my time to share my few drops in that ocean.  The time has come on Mar 15^th 2010 when I cleared the PMP certification.

My Lessons Learnt:

In my LL I don’t want to mention the very basic information like “please don’t read before exam day” & “Use Mark for review” during the exam when you are not clear about any questions etc.  I would like to share the specific information which I have not read in other LL’s and which are my own specific lessons which I have experienced….

Tricks & Strategy for exam preparation:

1.       Usage of correct version of the book is very important. I used 2 books for my preparation. PMBOK version 4 & PMP Exam Prep by Rita Mulcahy version 6.

2.       I used Rita Mulcahy to understand all concepts & used PMBOK as a reference book. 

3.       The language used in Rita Mulcahy is very simple English and helped the reader to understand the PMI concepts very easily & effectively in a user friendly way.

4.       PMBOK can be used for referrence document. I observed the language used in PMBOK is quite hard to understand even for native English speakers because of which some definitions, concepts are quite difficult sounds quite misleading to me. In those situations I referred Rita Mulcahy and other articles found in Google helped to improve my understanding better.

My Strategy of usage of material:

1.       PMBOK  -- Go through once & review second time  (During your second time, take notes wherever you find difficult to understand. So that if it’s required you can memorize those)

2.       Rita Mulcahy -- Go through once & review second time. It’s very important to follow the direction of the book.  Please don’t read this book in your way of reading also I don’t think mug up is required. What is very important here is clear understanding of the concept and follow the correct flow as advised in the book (for eg. Read the content carefully, do the exercise first then check answers, understand the trick for trade and do the sample questions)

3.       Take one week for complete revision of PMBOK & Rita Mulcahy.  Any concepts you want to get more detail you can Google it and make use of the relevant articles.

4.       Take sample tests & full length mock tests as much as you can (In mock tests, it’s better to target a score above 80% for simple tests & 70% above for tests which is hard (ie. Questions which will make you think a lot)

5.       Once when you are comfortable in mock tests then take the certification exam and clear PMP.

Exam point of view:

1.       In exam it’s always a mixture of situational questions & straight forward questions. It’s not the case that situational questions are tough & straight forward questions are easy. I would say even straight forward questions are equally tougher if you have difficulty in understanding the concepts.

2.       For straight forward questions I would suggest, if you have difficulty in understanding certain PMBOK definitions, concepts, ITTO of some process areas then please memorize those. Do not mug all ITTO or all definitions. Memorize only those who you find difficulty in understanding.  It helps you to answer the straight forward questions easily.

3.       For situational questions think that you are managing big projects and all the key points mentioned in Rita Mulcahy's book and have the right attitude so that you should get many questions right in the exam.

ALL THE BEST…!!!