Core Lesson – Expect Situational questions on the exam.
Finally, after a month of studying I was finally able to pass the exam. My method was different than what was recommended by a lot of people- including reading the books and attempting a few of the well known practice tests – but I thought I share the strategies that worked for me.
Here’s my PMP Lessons Learned
Reference books
PMBOK / I only read the PMBOK once. I really hate how dry it was and it was good enough to give me a good idea on the foundation of the guidelines of project management and process.
Lesson learned notes / A few guys had their own notes on pmzilla.com and they were amazing. I downloaded a couple of and concentrated on the summary version of each knowledge area. It gave me a quick insight on the main things that I needed to know.
Quick reference guide / I bought this from amazon. I highly recommend getting this. This had everything I needed to know and helped me in the last stages of studying.
PM Exam Simulator / I jumped in quick in just taking exams to start getting ready for the exam. I figured I can learn from all the mistakes I made. I did get a lot better as I practiced the problems I didn’t do well in.
Brainbok / The ITTO simulator and quizzes were amazing. This really help me a lot in the areas I wasnt good at. I hated taking 3 hr tests so the quizzes were short and sweet. I recommend getting this.
pmzilla / I bought the 200 tough questions. These were tough and a couple helped me in approaching a few things on the exam. However, these questions were a lot more tough than the actual exam though.
pmstudy / 400 questions – this was awesome as well!
I didn’t use these –
Rita Mulcahy book / Oliverlehmaan prac tests. – I had these printed out and and the actual book but never looked at it once. I never got around to it.
More reference sites –
pmexamsmartnotes.com – Thanks a lot and you have done great work with your site. I really did enjoy it!
edward-designer.com – shoutout to him to really make everything a lot easier.
pmstudycircle.com – this helped me a lot in getting clarity on a few things including Critical Path etc
deepfriedbrainproject.com – Learnt a lot from here as well.
In the end, we live in a world with a lot of information and sites that can help us. You really have to see what helps you. In the end, experience is what will also help you throughout the exam as the exam is mostly situational and very different from the practice exams.. However, if you are doing above 70% on all these – you should be fine.
brain dump.
The way I did it was simple. My first page was all formulas and concepts i needed to know during the test including communication nodes, cp methods etc. However, the 2nd and third page I created an entire ITTO chart with the outputs. This way it gave me the roadmap of a few things. To be honest with you – just 2 – 3 questions came for the ITTO so its up to you on how you want to approach this.
Thank you! – I will be taking the PMI – ACP exam end of this year so I will keep you guys posted.
Navroop Sehmi, PMP
Vancouver, Canada
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