Its great pleasure for me to share; yesterday I cleared PMP exam at first attempt. Though the score remained 4MP and 1P, but in given circumstances and situation for me its great feeling!!!
First of all, thank Almighty God, all my PMP gurus / PMP resources, my family members and everyone in this group who shared their success/failure stories of their PMP exam;
PMP resources I used
Simplilear
n (Jason Gorman – PMP expert at Simplilearn)
nFor fantastic video tutorials. The concise course design, content, explanation methodology, presentation, especially voice of Mr. Jason is simply superb. In around 15 hours of total video content, they cover entire PMBOK such smartly that one can score 40-50% marks from just these alone and get most basic/important concepts cleared!!! I preferred online self-learning to learn at own pace and repeat/revise stuff at convenience.
Izenbridge (Saket Bansal)
The real challenge in clearing PMP lies at crossing 50% marks. For this one need in-depth explanation/understanding of all 10 knowledge areas, concepts cleared at root level. And on that part I feel Saket Bansal’s youtube videos on PMP are best, a PMP aspirant should not miss these. Izenbridge’s PMP training, I consider the best-most among available today, personalized one-to-one attention, honest, sincere approach.
PMExamSmartNotes (Shiv Shenoy)
Specially for his practical tips & techniques in memorizing stuff. PMP exam has psychometric test pattern, but still it need to brain dump lots of stuff, his one example; (“See See See Husband Father Playing Soccer” – C-C-C-H-F-P-S) translating brain dump to Quality tools (Check sheets, Control Charts, Cause-and effect diagram, Histogram, Flow charts, Pareto Charts, Scatter Diagram).
Markus Klein
For directing me to topics on how to find the best answers for the PMP Exam Questions.
and of course,
Google!
My PMP Preparation
My PMP Journey started Nov-14 with online Simplilearn course. With great respect for PMBOK guide book I acknowledge that I read just 150 pages of PMBOK guide book and then stopped reading it! Somehow my brain wasn’t able to get in sync with the style of PMBOK guide and digest knowledge from it. Please don’t mistake this as PMBOK guide book being difficult/hard to read, it’s just that I wasn’t able to decode it somehow. It’s a must-read for a PMP aspirant, it’s each sentence has a typical PMP question hidden in it.
Next I explored Izenbridge YouTube videos, PMExamSmartNotes and lots of googling of PMP topics, building GBs of stuff, images, videos, notes etc.
After some confidence level on core 10 KA, 5 PG and Integration, I explored PMP Q/A tests. The real challenge, shocks were felt here at this point, was scoring 50-60% initially in most mock exams. This wasn’t sufficient to hit bull’s eye. Moreover in each test I was finding some new stuff or some complex scenario that was difficult to crack.
Reality is you learn PMP just like that, to clear PMP exam, one will need to do at-least 3000-4000 Q/As, from various sources. There’s plenty mock PMP exam test on the internet, and all chances of getting mislead. The best-bet on this part I say is Scordo PMP Lite Mock Exams. Once you get PMI membership, you get eligible to access this source at PMI site. Its 18 Scordo mock tests, each 50Qs with answers & Explanations covering all KAs. On EVM Qs – Izenbridge is best.
In nutshell
My real PMP exam had most questions similar on the pattern of Scordo. And one most important part – practice answering PMP questions rapidly with clock while answering mock exams. In my real exam 50-60% questions I felt quite lengthy, taking me at-least 1 minute to read a Q and its A options, then it was to analyze situation, process in brain best answer, knock-off. In last 40 minutes, I did around 50 Qs, there I think I lost few due to time pressure.
Good luck!
Prakash Tulsiani, PMP
