Kuldeep Kumar, PMP – 1 Goal, 2 Pages of notes, 3 Study aids, 4 Weeks plan

I feel very proud of reaching my PMP goal on the very first attempt. Following is brief account of how I achieved it.

PMP Study resources I used

• Head First PMP (3^rd Edition)
• PMBOK 5^th Edition
• Notes from Shiv’s blog

My 4-week plan

• Week 1 and 2:
  • Study Head first PMP thoroughly (targeted 1 chapter every day).
  • Complete all exercise from the book with each chapter.
• Week3:
  • Studied appendix from PMBOK to go through Acronyms. Basically to revise definitions of all important terms in PMBOK.
  • Practice creating Process chart and write all the PMP formulae (once every day, to achieve writing all of this within 15 minutes)
  • Revised from Shiv’s notes to quickly go through entire syllabus.
• Week4:
  • Practices 5 full length PMP practice/mock test (one every day).
    • 1 from Head first PMP book.
    • 2 from Exam central website.
    • 1 from Kim Heldman software.
    • 2 from KnowledgeWoods mock tests (earned my 35 PDUs by attending KnowledgeWoods training and they provided 10 full length mock tests).
  • Did not studies anything a day before the exam. (It was Sunday and I spent some quality time with family to relax myself.)

What worked for me

• Above study plan worked perfectly for me, expect few things which I will mention in the next section.
• I booked early morning timeslot (8:00AM) for my PMP exam on Monday. I reached at Prometric test center at 7:00AM avoiding traffic and stress which traffic would have created. Plan to reach early to your test center.
• Relaxing a day just before the exam helped a lot.
• Revising important definitions from PMBOK acronyms was a great idea.

What did not work

• Tried mugging up ITTO, and finally at the end of first week realized that it’s hard to remember. Then I started understanding what comes when and why; also how to create input for next process. Hence, my suggestion is don’t try to mug ITTO rather correlate between processes.
• Doing mock from Kim Heldman software was something which thrashed my confidence when I saw the result was just 55%. I suggest not continuing with anything which demotivates you. Like in my case it was this mock and I immediately stopped attempting more mock from the same resource.
• I earned my 35hrs education in July 2015 and wrote my PMP exam in 4^th January 2016. This was a mistake on my side. Don’t delay your exam as I did. It was very hard for me getting into PMP ‘feel’ after a long break.

Specific study tips or advice for PMP students

Create your own notes.

I created 2 pages of notes for complete PMP schedule, which helped me revise important terms and formulae in the last week when I was attempting mock tests.

Thanks and good luck!

Kuldeep Kumar, PMP

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