PMI PMP® Exam Self Study Group Get ready for success

I didn't contribute in the group as much  so here are my lessons learn.

Dear Vitaliy I want to thank you for all your contributions here in the group, and thanks for answering and helping to clarify some of those confusing topics.

Please note these are my personal experiences and it may not apply to everyone.

1.- Exam Preparation

It took me three months of self study to prepare for the PMP exam. Study resources are similar to those already listed in several of the LLs

1.-Rita's PMP fastrack 6th edition. Throughout the book you will find Tips that will help you in the exam. Rita's situational questions will test your overall understanding not only from the chapter that you are currently reading, but other areas as well. This is good practice to better understand ITTOS and the interrelationships between processes. Page 9 of Rita's book has some good Tricks and trade for the exam, keep this page in mind it will help with the actual exam.

2.- Head First PMP 2nd edition - This book was key to help me understand each of the processes and how to best applied them as a project manager for any given situation. It is important to read the book as well as to complete the exercises and practice questions for each chapter. The last chapter of the book provides an overall study practice session. This includes an additional 36 (higher level of difficulty) practice question as well a cross puzzle to help in memorizing the definitions of each of the 42 Project Management processes.

For those, undecided, and still looking for a book, here is a sample chapter that may help you in making your decision.
http://www.headfirstlabs.com/books/hfpmp/hfpmp_ch11.pdf

3.- PMbok 4th edition page 43 is key to help in you preparation. I actually printed this page while reading each of the chapters. It is important to understand why and when to use each of Inputs, outputs and Tools. While reading ask questions to help you better understand each of the processes, such as why do a need the Project Charter and list of Stakeholders (register) to start collecting requirements. What are the best tools (recommendations by PMP) to collect requirements. What documents should be created or updated when completing the collect requirements process.

If you can afford to buy Rita's and Head First book you will have a total of 696 good quality questions to practice from. I found some of the free online questions to be confusing and not reliable in respect to content or quality.

Free Practice Questions:

 Here are some additional practice exams available online. It is recommended to take these exams once if you pass with a score of 80% or higher you should be ok to take the PMP exam. If you score lower review the questions you got wrong. It may not be beneficial to take the same exam twice since you may end-up memorizing some of the questions and answers.

http://www.headfirstlabs.com/PMP/pmp_exam/v2/quiz.html

http://www.oliverlehmann.com/pmp-self-test/75-free-questions.htm

http://www.pmstudy.com/enroll.asp#PMP

The following is a good online option to help remember ITTO's I practice for 2 about hours and I was able to remember most of the Input and Outputs for each of the processes groups. After this I was also able to create 5x9 braindump.

http://www.monkibo.com/pmp-exam-itto-trainer/index.html

Learning techniques on how to answer PMP exam questions may help alleviate some of the pressure while taking the exam. This link has some good info

http://blogs.pmbestpractices.com/2009/09/example-of-how-to-approach-a-pmp-exam-question/#more-181

2.-My experiences while taking the exam

The place I went for my exam was very noisy; there were always people walking around me. It took me a while to concentrate and try to ignore most of the noise.
The exam has an online calculator and the test center offer me a spare calculator 2 pencils and a booklet with several blank pages.
I did a brain dump during the 15 minutes of the tutorial with several of the formulas and drafted my 5X9 with all 42 processes. Since I memorized all this, there was no need for me to refer to it during the exam.
The exam does give you the option to review all, marked and unanswered questions.

 The Exam itself

 
o No surprise, a high number of situational questions
o As expected several questions related to Quality, Time, Scope and Cost
o Several questions testing your knowledge and definitions for ITTOs
o Very few calculation questions, not all questions required calculations using formulas, but mainly knowing which formula to use for a particular scenario.
o Same as previous LL the exam will include words such as BEST, NEXT , EXCEPT , Most Likely,

o I didn't get a single wordy question, most questions where average similar in length to those given in Head First online exam.

Regards,

Pamela Ruiz, PMP, MCSE, ITIL