TOPIC: Re: How was the PMP Exam?

I have successfully passed the exam on 14th August 2008 in my first try. I would like to thank Cornelius Fichtner for his great audio lessons. Here are my lessons, learned.

Initiating
First I registered with PMI in September 2007 and then got the podcast from The PM Prepcast. I applied for PMP on November 2007.

Planning
My original plan was to
1. Listen to podcast from The PM Prepcast 5 times.
2. Read PMBOK 3 times.
3. Read Rita book 3 times.
4. Read Kim Heldman book 3 times and
5. Practice atleast 3000 to 5000 questions{ 3 is my lucky number } starting from December 2007.

Executing
This process was going at a very slow pace due to my hectic work schedule. I would say that I did most of the preparation in the last 3 months. After coming here I realized the risk of time constraint,( its June already) and couldn't do everything that was planned. Since I anticipated this and created a contingency plan, I did the following,
1. Listened to podcast from The PM Prepcast 3 times.
2. Read PMBOK 2 times.
3. Read Rita book 3 times and
4. Practiced around 3000 questions.
I didn't not memorize ITTO instead just understood the concepts. Found free sample questions from Google it helped me a lot.


Monitoring and Control
Here I commited to spend atleast 3 hours daily for this preparation. If I couldn't for any reason, I made sure that I compensate it on weekends. Tried and answered as many sample questions as possible. I have tried all the questions which I have gathered thru yahoogroup and took PMStudy's simulation exam and scored 81%, also tried head first mock exam and got 85% and then tried Oliver Lehman 75 Questions but got only 68%.

Closing
The actual exam questions was not very difficult as I expected and I didn't get questions on Network diagrams at all. I got around 12 Earned Value calculation questions and few questions on delegation. Most of them had two correct answers and I had to select the best one, here my experience and Rita book helped me a lot.

I took 1 break after 100 questions and another one after 200 questions and managed to finished in 3hr 30 min, reviewed for remaining 30 minutes and submitted at the last minute. Waiteeeeeed fooooooor looooong threeeeeeeee minutessssss ) and finally saw "CONGRATULATIONS" on the screen.

PMP certification needs lots of consistent preparation, understanding, experience and patience. Good luck to all PMP aspirants.

Regards,
Kamesh Ganesan PMP
Ireland