I passed with what looks like 86% (by checking proportion of grade)! I wanted to share with you how I implemented the learning from PrepCast WHILE studying for PMP. Check pictures and text below for details!
Costs management plan: I didn't set any limits to prepare for the test, just wanted to minimize my total committed time. My company paid for everything: PrepCast course (350 U$) + TIA exams (40 U$) + Certification (450 U$)
Schedule management plan: I tracked very precisely my time using a gadget called Timeular. In my first week I did parametric estimation plus buffer to predict 187h of total study time and used it as a baseline to track progress (worked greatly). I did the average of ~2h for all 90 days prior to the test.
Scope: I used only PrepCast to go through all content for the PMP exam (all books were out of scope for my study like PMBOK6 or 7 nor the Agile book).
Quality management plan: With PrepCast I quizzed myself after each chapter until I hit 75%, then I moved on to the next chapter.
Risk management plan: Each wrong question I answered I then logged them as a risk register entry and studied before the simulations (total 495 concepts I got wrong in my journey).
Lessons learned: 1- I probably only needed half of the time (around 90h) to pass the exam, so if you hit 65% on your TIA exams (or 60% on PrepCast), you are probably good to go. 2- The exam questions are VERY similar to the PrepCast ones. 3- Time management during exam is crucial. I read questions twice and I did not have time to review, just did it all slowly but surely, never looking back. 4- Around one third of exam questions are very ambiguous and you are left with two almost equally viable options (many times it felt like a random decision).