TOPIC: Cleared PMP

Hi,

Very glad to announce that I have passed the PMP exam couple of days ago, and here I am sharing my LL for those who aspire to join the elite family of project management professionals.

Working in the field of project management under a PMO Dept. was crucial to easily grasp the standard that PMBok guide tries to address.

I prepare for 3 months, was not very consistent due to juggling work load and family responsibilities, however, I set the exam date and was determined not to re-schedule.

Materials & Study:
I read the PMBok guide twice, after finishing each chapter for the first time I watched Cornelius’s videos which really help decrypting some of the securely-encrypted information in the PMBok guide
Plus, I’m not a reading kinda person and I don’t read fast too so the videos were a sweet deal for me. Nevertheless, you still need to read the PMBok guide and understand the Data flow diagrams for the 42 processes, this will tremendously help in understanding how the different processes interact and how an output from HR mgt. process for instance becomes and input to a Time mgt. process.
After that, if I felt like I needed a little more I skimmed through Rita looking for a specific subject or information. Finally I wrapped up by doing the end of chapter questions.

Exam:
Four days before exam, I started sitting for 4 hrs. to do a full-set PMP exam, but didn’t have the patience to go through the complete 200 questions more than twice. Average score was 80%.

Two days before the exam I paid a very important visit to the prometric center, got familiar with the place, location, traffic and all that..

Exam was very reasonable for me, not very tough though comprehensive, ITTO’s were important, understanding the tools and techniques (what they do and when they should be used) very essential.

Spend extra time on Quality, Risk, Procurement, Integrated change control.
Mostly two of the four choices were easily eliminated.

I used to feel very confident during my preparation but the night before the exam nervousness crept in and started shaking my confidence, this continued till I answered around 10 questions from the exam, by then I restored my confidence and moved through the remaining questions comfortably.

Time was a major concern for me, I used almost all of the 4 hrs. marked some questions for review, but really didn’t go back there, Didn’t take breaks and didn’t need to.

That was a briefing for my PMP journey, it is all worth it. Good luck to all.

Congrats. Thanks for sharing it. Can you give an example of a ITTO question? As cornelius says, and I agree, it is about understanding and honestly, I am pathetic at memorizing. So am scared of these itto kind of questions and want to make sure i understand them well. Dont want to rely on real world experience.
Thanks,.,

Thanks a bunch,

ITTO questions can be as simple as "which of the following tool and techniques is used in scope control" to a scenario-based question. however, you will almost immediately realize while reading the question that it is an ITTO question.

no one likes memorizin' specially when it comes to sth as dry as the PMBok guide, in my case, i started something that i found very useful and will share it here. I created an excel sheet, mapped all the 42 processes as they appear in page 43 of the guide, added two extra columns to each process group, one on the left for the processes inputs and one on the right for the processes outputs, then I inserted the tools and tech. below the process somehow.
I didnt list all of them ITTOs, I selected the most important ones, not more than 3 maximum.

I realized while working on this sheet that I became more familiar with most of the ITTO's...
Observed which processes share the same inputs, outputs, tools & techniques...for example (outputs such as work performance measurements, change requests & updates are the outputs in almost all the processes in monitoring & controlling process group)...and many more.

this helped me alot. I ll share it with you if you care however, I strongly recommend that you start it yourself.

Hassan,
Thanks for your reply. Would you mind sharing this sheet? I have prepared something of my own, but feel that I could do with a different template.

Ok. send your email Pls.

Hassan, would love your template as well. Please email if you could. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Hassan,

If you don't mind, you can upload the template here in the forum. That way you don't have to send it out individually.

There you go.

Template is attached and apologies for the delay.. I hope all can benefit from this humble effort.

Hassan.