Tips for passing the PMP from the first time
On 8th Dec 2010 I passed my PMP exam from the first try, it was very interesting experience to see “Congratulations for passing the PMP exam”.
By applying to the exam one should accept the terms and conditions of PMI which prohibits the disclosure of the type and syntax of the questions in the exam, I will provide tips about my study style and a general description of how questions are expected to be.
First of all, passing the PMP exam is not a miracle neither failing it will make someone less capable person, you have to apply for the exam whenever you are confident you have studied enough and any extra study will not add to what you have already studied.
Note: the studying style I will describe was well and good for me, it might not suit everyone, everyone has his own style and approach to understand and memorize things.
1. Remember that to pass the PMP exam you do not have to memorize a lot, it is just few equations to memorize. Rest you have to know how to understand and relate how different knowledge areas and process groups interact.
2. The first reference was the PMBOK 4th Edition. Personally I read it one complete time and I used to highlight thing I never knew before, the second time I used to read only the highlighted text I already marked in the first time and that’s all for the PMBOK.
3. The second reference was Rita’s package. This was the real start to understand what project management is. This package included its PMP exam prep 5th edition and its fast track 5.0 or 6.0 both are good.
4. I also did 10-15 online exams of 10-50 questions each depending on the site.
My schedule was as follows:
1. I started preparing on for the exam on 12th Aug 2010 and I passed on 8th Dec 2010 so it slightly less than 4 months.
2. For me the last few days were relaxed I used to study for 60-90 minutes clarifying the major things I am weak in.
3. The night of the exam I just relaxed spent some time playing with my kids and done good race on need for speed. Believe me, the night before the exam you have to relax because if there is something that you did not understand in the last two months then you will not understand it one night before the exam.
4. My daily routine was not to study more than 4-5 hours daily. But in few odd days I used to go up to 7 or 8 hours specially the weekends.
5. I advice to pay a lot of attention to Rita’s material, believe me or not while I was testing I was thinking that I am reading the practice questions of Rita.
6. I used to study Rita’s chapter about integration for example, highlight the main points then I will go a test myself for 50 random questions in that knowledge area. And those things I got wrong I used to write them by hand on external papers so that I will revise them later. I have done this for all knowledge areas and done them by process groups.
7. In Rita’s package i.e. the fasttrack you can search by keyword that was very helpful, it will save you time and effort. This was very useful for things that I was unable to understand fully.
8. Make sure to do one or two full exams before appearing in the real one, it is not an easy job to sit for four hours in one go. If you score is less than 70% in these mock up exams then you should consider rescheduling your exam if it was in the near future. Personally I used to score 78% -88 % in most mock up exams.
The exam session
Remember if you have told a lot of you colleagues and friends, then you have to expect a waterfall of phone calls asking you about the result. Some will be asking because they really concerned and others just to see that you fail. Anyhow; in my case even my wife did not know that I will be having the exam in that day. But if you were that type of person who needs encouragement then make it as tight as possible.
Personally I was good in quality knowledge area because I used to be a QA for the last 4 years, so I got the questions about quality right without even giving it a second thought. But for areas like risk or procurement I was not familiar with I used to read the question up to three times in order to understand it fully.
There were some questions about social responsibility that till today I am unable to know what they were asking about, and for a moment I thought that the answers given were mistakenly placed for this question. So I advice reading the social responsibility part two to three days before the exam once or twice and that’s it.
For the earned value and critical path questions there were 5-6 questions and they were straight forward, the questions in Rita’s package are much more detailed and elaborated. So if you can solve 50% of Rita’s question then I am sure it will be easy to answer the exam questions right without trouble.
There used to be question 5-8 lines long and some are one line, but do not worry, the 8 line questions will usually have extraneous information that are just to distract you, try to understand what is the key statement or key word in that lengthy question and try to relate it to the answers provided.
The exam was 4 hours, but it took me about two hours and 50 minutes to complete it, I marked 10-12 questions for revision. I revised them for correctness and I was outside the examination hall in less than 3 hours. Some people say in case they have completed before the 4 hours period, they will review the questions for the remaining time. Personally I think this is wrong, because I am sure if I review answers if I alter the answers I might get them wrong.
