Just got my PMP on 3rd of November, after starting prepare the exam from end of July, with cancellation of my test twice by not having enough tester in the test center in October, so I have to go to online test in November.
I got 3 “AT” and would like to share some thoughts to the followers who might be like me one month ago that are looking for some good LLs.
PMP is tough due to
- the amount of time needs to spend to prepare
- the exam is super long!!!
My study plan
Materials
- Prepcast videos (fundamental materials you must watch)
- Precast simulator (you must try)
- PM BOK ed 6 (take a as dictionary)
- PM BOK ed 7 (take a as dictionary)
- Agile Practice Guide (quick read through)
- Scrum Guide (quick read through)
- PMI study Hall (worth to learn in one week and try the more “real” questions from PMI)
- Youtube 200 Agile PMP question (super useful for me who doesn’t have agile background)
Prepcast
These video are very good that you don’t need to read the book from A to Z. It provides a quick way to gain the knowledge and the instructor he is so passionate about his presentation, it’s a pleasant to enjoy the positive atmosphere he brings you into after a long busy work from office.
I divided the videos into several categories, and one topic for each week
- Introduction (exam, study plan, glossaries)
- People
- Process (most heavy topics)
- Agile
- Business environment + LL
After watching each topic, I will use simulator for this package to try and trial. Then I have taken 4 mock tests in total and the average score is 70%-75%.
Final notes:
1. Without trying simulators, you will have a hard time to pass the test. As my first impression after watching all the People videos then try the simulator on people, I got 50% failed. Exam and Book is so so so different.
2. Lots of questions are very very very vague, it seems like there were actually 5 answers, but they remove the most “make sense” ones in normal situation and give you the other 4 answers that are very indirect to the “right” answer. Sometimes none of these 4 are really make sense but you have to choose the “best option” based on elimination of these answers one by one that, for example this option is not correct because this person should not prioritize the backlog it's others responsibility, that option is not correct because we don’t use this tool/technique in this knowledge area process, another option is not correct because they ask “what to do first” instead of “what could do to prevent it”, so it’s a process step question but not what action could be taken to avoid this situation, or this is not allowed according to the principles xyz .................... (sometimes you can find them in the PMI studyhall and in the simulator when you are sitting in lots of doubts) So, you can’t just base on the Question to find the right Answer but you have to go the other way around, to Eliminate those “wrong/not suitable” answers. In another words, it’s not a test for one chapter but it could be easily transformed to be a question testing for several chapters you learn from the video/book.
