Hi Everybody,

I Passed my PMP exam today. 3 Ps and 2 MPs.

Here are my lessons learned.

Don't memorize just understand the concepts. Memorization can help you answer 10 or 20  questions. Remaining 190 are applying concepts from the PMBOK (which I did not study).

I did not study the PMBOK 4 at all. (Did not have that kind of time)

I did Read Any Crowes book. - I liked the book because it gives you the concepts quickly. I took the chapter tests and scored 70 %. (If you don’t have much time go for Andys. It  is easy to understand and efficient use  of time. The other book I read was Head first.

I used PM Prepcast training material. (podcasts )

Just two weeks before the exam, I attended pmstudy bootcamp. . There were chapter tests which I scored about 70 %.  My thought was I was completely underprepared and wanted to really pass before the book changes to PMBOK 5.

I took two sample tests from pmstudy . 

pmstudy test 1 - 66% (before

pmstudy test 2 - 78 %. This is after the boot camp.

Memorized the page 43 of PMBOK 4. Memorized all formulas for math.  (My only memorization for the whole program)

My strategy was doing PMIs way to handle projects and hence did some question bank that came with Andys website and pmstudy.

Here is my last two weeks of schedule.

• Thursday 11 – took first pmstudy test scored 60 %. This is before the boot camp.
• Weekend 1 (july 13,14) bootcamp.
• Week of  july 15 – brushed on the boot camp concepts after work. Did some advanced preparation for the next week.
• Weekend 2 (July 20,21) boot camp.
• Week of (July 22) – brushed on boot camp conecpts.
• Took a test on Monday July 22 – scored 75 % in pmstudy test 2.
• Did some chapter exercises in pmstudy and Andys.
• Walked through all notes from boot camp.
• Took my mind off the test Friday night.
• Did not Want to not exert too  much hence did not take any other test after my Monday test.
• Exam Day :
• Got up about 7 am and brushed some more concepts.
• I refreshed important concepts from 8 am – 10 am for the noon test.
• Reached exam center on time and started my test on time.
• I did my 15 min brain dump before the actual test reproduce the process map and formulas. I referred to it few times during the test.
• Took two breaks. First one after 100 questions. (I fnished first 100 questions in about 90 minutes)
• Second one after I finished the last question. Second half took little longer.(I had 30 minutes to spare)
•  Took a break and came back and went back to marked questions only.
• I was relieved when I saw the word “Congratulations”.