Thursday, August 30, 2007

Lessons learned - posted by Nitin in Orkut

Hi All,

First of all let me share that the PMP Exam will really test your project management skills, whatever Books and Reading materials you have read, unless and until you grasp the concept and are aware about the terminology it will not be a cake walk.

Preparation:

Scheduling :

I had been studying for the Exam from Feb 2007, when i did my 35 PDU course at astrowix,Delhi chapter and kept the momentum for two months but some how i was not able to schedule the exam due to silly credit card issue .Let me share that i was also under the impression that i can pay the charges through Debit card but this does not work .Finally was able to schedule the exam for august 2007( with new credit card) as i has been preparing quite religiously for last one month and I did not to keep postponing the exam ,since that could have made lose interest in the EXAM .

Final Exam Day

I had finished preparation on sunday and on Monday 27th Aug 2007 , i had scheduled the exam. On the Exam day I just watched Television, as i am quite interested in stocks so was watching the stock market......This helped me to relax before the exam .This strategy works………;) … ,try to focus on something else of your interest and you can relax much more beofre exam.

Here are my suggested reading materials :-

PMBOK Guide -3 times at least
Rita Mulcahy exam prep -4 times at least
and PMFastrack simulation CD-2 times at least
JIMBOk -In case you want to clear doubts and grasp the basic concept this one is too good

Tips:
1. Keep on reading as much as you can from materials you have decided to refer to but please do not keep changing books.
2. No use using plenty of material, Rita and PMBOK is enough for PMP just stick to these books you will pass.
3.Practice a lot of MCQ (like PMP fasttrack 5.0) helps to get used to the type of questions in real exam but the real questions in Exam is totally different so keep yourself ready for surprises (that is why your experience counts in handling projects )as well as your understand

2 comments:

Vikash Sethi said...

Whether taking classes from Astrowix was good? Whether it enhanced your chances of success or not?

Unknown said...

I cleared my PMP on 6/6/2008, it was really a sign of relief once i did that , i must say it was one of the toughiest exam i everhad taken up.Well some tips for PMP aspirants

- First go through the PMBOK throughly undertanding the terminology of every process , becuase in the exam either they give the exact terminology and ask for process name or viceversa.
-Understnad all imputs/tools & techniques/Outputs for every process if possible try to memorize them or try to build soem acronyms so that you can pen down them once you enter the exam centre.
-read PMBOK & Rita Maluchay atleast 3 times
-try to solve sample exams , which has a complete set of 200 questions.
-memorize all the formulas

Preprare throughly dont skip even a single topic, in teh beginning you would feel tough but when you finish for the first time and start with second reading you will start understanding and when you repeat it for 3rd time you will get confidence and above all this the 35 PDU classes that you take up will have give you most of the tricks to prepare for teh exam.

I followed exactly teh above steps and was able to crack the exam easily.