.

Focused on exam questions & identified weak knowledge areas – Maria Keane, PMP

When I came to know that she passed her PMP exam, I didn’t waste time asking her for sharing her PMP study schedule, strategy and study tips. 🙂

Maria readily agreed, and here she shares her PMP journey…

Maria Keane is an expert in crane installation projects. When it comes to planning and scheduling, labour and equipment, contracts and agreements with customers, hire companies and other sub contractors – both technical and commercial conditions – she is one of the best.

Read on…

How did you decide on PMP?

After putting in over a decade in corporate work I decided it was time to up-skill. For a period of time I was working shorter weeks. And this helped me spare time for my professional growth.

What better certification than PMP? It covered all aspects of project management, has highest approval in the industry, and is quite challenging. And I was up for the challenge.

Also Read: PMP tools & techniques you must know for the exam (group 1)

What were the areas you focused on?

I really felt that I had to focus my attention to risk assessments that the PMP covers. Apart from that I spent a lot of time studying the three important knowledge areas: Scope, Schedule, and Cost.

Even after the certification now I would see myself spending more efforts on time, cost and schedule estimating. These are the skills I use at my day-to-day work so I want to continuously strive to get better at ’em.

• I took a 4-day course through my employer in late November/early December
• Next, I completed Joseph Phillips course on Udemy
• And in parallel I also studied through Rita Mulcahy’s book.
• For mock questions I used PMTraining.com.

[continue reading…]

“How do I prepare for inputs, tools and techniques, and outputs (ITTOs) based questions on the PMP exam?”, is one of the most asked questions when it comes to PMP exam preparation.

Sometime ago I wrote an article on this which was picked up by Cornelius to include in one of his books. While the article talked about 3 techniques to answer the ITTO based questions, I wanted to simplify the tools and techniques themselves.

And that is goal of this series.

PMBOK 6th version defines 6 groups of tools and techniques across 49 processes. When you think about ITTOs of any process, chances are you would be talking about one or more of the tools and techniques from one of these 6 groups.

1. Data Gathering techniques
2. Data Analysis techniques
3. Data Representation techniques
4. Decision-making techniques
5. Communication skills
6. Interpersonal and team skills

In all there are 72 tools and techniques categorized under these 6 groups. Apart from these, there are 60 more ungrouped tools and techniques. In this series we shall look at tools and techniques from each of these 6 groups only.

Are these numbers overwhelming you?

Please do not worry! Here is an easier way to digest this information. [continue reading…]

We invited all of PMESN community to leave feedback about my recent PMP training videos last week. And the winner was to get lifetime access to my most popular course PMP Last Mile Prep Pro!

Owing to not being on facebook we got many comments by email, few as comments to the original post, and few on the facebook post itself.

If you got a chance to leave your feedback- Thank you! You truly made my day.

…and the winning comment was written by Abinaya Ramakrishnan!

(…your lifetime access code to PMP Last Mile Prep Pro course is on the way! 🙂 )

Let’s go ace that exam, 🙂

Shiv

[SneakyAffiliate sneakyaffiliateurl=”https%3A//www.pmexamsmartnotes.com/pmprecast-myposts” sneakyaffiliatecookiexpdays=”1″ sneakyaffiliatesplash=”Are%20you%20sure%20you%20want%20to%20leave%20before%20you%20checkout%20special%20PM%20PrepCast%20sale%20by%20Cornelius%3F”] [/SneakyAffiliate]

Rajasekar Rajendran always had a penchant for learning. Working for an IT major for about 9 years specializing in Quality Assurance and Agile-Scrum practices, he felt the need to get PMP trained. 

He is one of the active PMESN community members and it wasn’t surprising that he aced his PMP certification with ‘Above Target’ overall score.

If you had time to read just one ‘PMP Lessons Learned’ article ever, I would recommend it to be this one. Because Rajasekar’s PMP journey and his study tips based on insights are  sure to give you the motivation and support you may need.

– Shiv

What triggered your desire to take up PMP exam?

I earned my Professional Scrum Master (PSM-I) certification last August. After that I was contemplating of getting comprehensive knowledge about all the aspects of project management.

A casual talk with one of my colleagues kindled my interest in taking up PMP exam.

Now that you PMP trained, what changes would you foresee in near future?

It would definitely create some profound impact personally and professionally.

I am going to perceive and deal with things differently and can manage everything in a better way. It will help me perform as a better project manager.

Achieving PMP certification has created some positive vibes around me in the workplace and is going to bring in some better opportunities.

I always have had desire to learn relentlessly and would try to help others by sharing the knowledge that I’ve acquired. So, there are plenty of opportunities coming my way to share with others and reap collective benefits.

What study resources did you consider, and eventually used for the exam preparation?

Here is the list of the books I referred to:

• Completed Online training from SimpliLearn (review here)
• PMBOK (you can get free by becoming PMI member)
• Kim Heldman Study Guide & practice questions book
• Joseph Phillips Study Guide
• Subscribed to Shiv’s PMP tips and regularly practiced sample questions from his Facebook page, and LinkedIn study group downloaded free resources and study guides.
• Dan Ryan webinars
• Christopher Scordo
• Oliver Lehmann’s mock questions

How did you approach the exam and what was your study plan?

[continue reading…]

Have you taken any of my free PMP training published in the recent past?

• PM foundational elements
• Environment in which projects operate
• The role of a project manager
• Integration management
• Scope management
• Schedule management
• Cost management
• Quality management

Overall 20+ hours of video training and 16 mock tests so far.

Not just these, you can now get access to rest of the training in the series as well.

Keep reading..

If you have taken any of the above training, now is your chance to get lifetime access of my most popular course PMP Last Mile Prep Pro for PMBOK-6 (check out the complete Curriculum section!).

Yes, Free forever!

All you do is simply leave a comment in the Facebook post and tell me how the training has helped you.

The best comment will get lifetime access to the popular PMP Last Mile Prep Pro course for PMBOK-6.

Note – Length of the comment does not matter. Simply explain the benefits you got out of the training, that’s all.

Leave your comment today. Because the winner will be announced on 21 March, 2019! 

[ujicountdown id=”freedomoffer2018″ expire=”2019/03/21 20:00″ hide=”true” url=”” subscr=”fbcomment-for-lastmile” recurring=”” rectype=”second” repeats=””]

To leave you comment click below (it opens in Facebook page) –