Hi,

I have been a silent reader of this forum for past 1.5 moths and the information here has provided me a great help  in putting together my  PMP study strategy.

I passed my PMP two  days ago on Oct 22 2013 in first attempt - San Jose, CA Prometric center.  I wanted to share my view points to benefit news readers on forum
  
Exam Strategy

 Study Duration:

   ~6.5 week Sep 2nd 2013 (First day) --> Oct 22nd 2013 (Exam Day)  

    Part time study except last 3 weekends

     
Books
     Reference Only
          - PMI PMBOK 5th Edition

    Primary Books I read...
          - Rita 8th Edition PMP Exam Prep  (550+ pages)     Primary Reading & Exercises.
          - Head First PMP                                (775+ pages)   Used only for Exercise Solving.

Headfirst Book has  200+  extra pages, same concepts as Rita in a much larger space and less optimal font size. Exercises in Rita are much better than Headfirst, I did exercises from both books and able to differentiate the quality.   Lot of people have preferred this book over Rita and were equally successful, I preferred Rita though.

I used PMBOK for reference reading only,  mostly when I answered a question wrong in Mock Exam.

   Other Books (I briefly reviewed prior to Study start)
      -  PMP Andy Crow Book (Content looked lighter compared to Rita & Headfirst)  - Used only for Cost
       - PMP KimHeldman (Chapters are organized by process instead of knowledge areas, no apple to apple chapters comparison with PMBOK chapters)

  ITTO
      - Memorize ITTOs if you want to pass this exam in short time and first attempt.  Initially i thought I am only supposed to logically understand the ITTOs but when later I saw bunch of dumb questions in PM Study and Rita asking what comes in this process/ before this/ after that, it broke my myth and I corrected myself  that I need to learn it by heart  in addition to logical understanding. Memorization helped in next set of Mock & Real Exams

Simulation/Mock Exam Used

 Attempt Without ITTO Memorization
     - PMStudy Exam 1 (Score 68% )

       --> Went back and started reading PMBOK for 1 week to fix all the gaps.   Started memorizing ITTOs.

    With ITTO Memorized
     - Rita Track Fast Track PMP v8   Scores  (70-->79%)   ..you can run multiple exams in the SW.
     - PMStudy Exam 2 (Score 74%)
     - PMStudy Exam 3 (Score 76%)
     - TechFaq 360 (80%) - this exam is lower quality & easier than real exam, all knowledge area questions are clustered together unlike real exam.

 My view on best Mock
     - PMStudy Exams for $60 is the best exam and best value.  This is better value than $299 Rita Fast Track v8  which I also used for practice.  PMStudy exams Q&A uses PMBOK reference and the exam quality is fairly comparable to real exam. FastTrackv8 uses Rita language instead of PMBOK language which in my view makes it  inferior and less realistic product compared to PMStudy.
 
 Time Management in Real Exam
    
       You get 17 mins prior to 4 hours PMP exam
            2 Mins  - to read initial Agreement/Disclaimers and then START button gets pressed automatically
            15Mins - Tutorial about how to Click Mouse, How to Eat & Drink & breath 

        I used my 17mins as following:
           2mins Formulas:   I wrote all Formulas on empty sheet given to me  (1 paper consumed)
        15mins Formulas: I used "short hand" acronyms and wrote all ITTOs by knowledge areas  (2 papers consumed)      ** This helped me for questions after 120+ when mind starts getting a bit tired

       Execution pace:
         - 1st Hour:   Soft Target of 50 questions
         - 2nd Hour: Hard Target of 100-120 questions (increase pace)
        I finished the exam with 2 minutes remaining.      

 
  Post Exam Tips

  - I got over 20-25 calculation questions in various forms EAC, BAC, CPI, etc, , a few CPM questions,  These questions consumed more time than other questions and spread all over exam. Like even towards the end of exam - question 189, 198 suddenly shows up as Calc question again which becomes a pain at last minute.

 - There are few questions on S-Curve (EV, PV, AC), it shows a SCurve graph. Fairly simple , you just need to pay close attention.  I don't recall these graphs in Rita or PMP Study exam mock though.

 - 2-3 questions from Stake Holder Management (Power/Interest Grid, Stake holder analysis), confirming that this exam was updated to PMBOK5

- 20-25 questions on Change Request

    
Cheers!!
Khurram