Friday, June 27, 2008

PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONAL (PMP) EXAM - LESSON LEARNED

1. My exam preparation was not continuous as I had to do the exam preparation with my job. So the time span for the preparation was from 5-7 months. Initially it was roughly one hour per day including gaps between days.

2. My initial plan was to learn different concepts presented in PMBOK so for some topics I was going into a bit of detail which later helped me in the exam preparation.

3. It is recommended that you should try to implement what PMBOK is saying at your workplace as it was quite easy for me to remember earned value/planned value and performance reporting as I was involved in preparing monthly progress reports for three projects at my work place.

4. If you have not done your training yet, make sure you schedule the training after going through the course once. As five days are quite hectic and one can easily lose way in the middle of the training. Remember training is important.

5. Regarding Input/T&T/Output; rather than learning by heart just try to understand the concept.

6. Sample questions are VERY important, make sure you understand and theme behind your incorrect answers. Free sample questions are available from different website (Google will help you in this).

7. Joining different groups on yahoo also help a lot as some the material there is quite helpful especially the lesson learned from those who have appeared in the exam.

8. Make sure you visit the exam site once before your exam. Even the exam center was in my city, it took me some time to find the site on my first visit.

9. Four hours is quite ample time for answering 200 questions. So don’t worry if some questions are taking a bit more time. I recommend you to take at least one break (I personally took two breaks).

10. I tried to answer almost all the questions in my first attempt. If I was 80% sure about the answer I still marked that answer for later review.

11. PRAYERS; the most influential ingredient for my exam success. I did not have the expected build-up to my exam. Two-Three days before the exam my grandfather was quite sick and I even though about rescheduling my exam. Last day before exam, the electricity went off for four hours. BUT ALLAH ALMIGHTY HELPED ME AND I MANAGED TO PASS THE EXAM.