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I am a Civil Engineer by profession and my focus is on the Asset Management of Urban Water Infrastructure Systems.  Since beginning of this year I began to work seriously on my PMP goal.

PMP Certification, which is one of the most demanded credentials in project management was my step to the career progress. It is my belief that it would be a solid step for project managers in dealing with difficult and emerging challenges, especially when it come to the water crisis and climate change.

Several challenges confront managers today and these challenges are mainly arising from the significant change in the outside world. Dealing with complexity and diversity requires visionary leadership in managers. The managers will need to shift their approaches and philosophy to resilience management in face of the water crisis and climate change.

Thus I achieved my PMP goal on my 1st attempt.

In this article I would like to share my experiences with you.

Exam Preparation

First, I made up my mind 3 months ago on why I should acquire this certification. Convincing myself on the need of this certificate for my career growth ensured that I got into the right mindset.

Next, I defined a strategy for preparation and tried to stay on the target.

I studied approximately 4 hrs each day on weekdays and 6-8 Hrs on weekend during initial 2 months. In last month of exam, I continued same vigor on weekday but increased my efforts on the weekends to 10-12 hrs.

Also Read: Preparing for PMP or CAPM exam? You can’t afford to miss this information.

Study Material

I studied from just 3 resources – [continue reading…]

Shiv, I’m super glad to let you know that I passed CAPM exam. I’m happy to share my CAPM exam study tips – few insights I have gathered, with those preparing for the exam. Hope this helps your readers.

Always plan ahead

I began by purchasing a whiteboard, dry-erase markers, and an organizer.

Call me old school, but I have found that there is some magic that writing down on a whiteboard adds to our learning. Lot of things simply make sense when you are engaged physically as well as mentally – writing, drawing, solving problems, creating mind maps – things that engage both left and right brain while using the whiteboard.

The next thing I did was to create an account on PMI.org and download all CAPM exam objectives and CAPM handbook. With this I made sure that I met the requirements to take the exam (you can download a guide to CAPM certification from here).

Also Read: How Elizabeth passed her CAPM – lessons learned.

Sources I used to study and gather information on the CAPM exam

1. Books –

PMBOK guide – this is one book I didn’t want to ignore.

Rita Mulcahy’s CAPM Exam Prep book

2. Websites –

Quizlet (practice questions, index cards, memory games),

PMExamSmartNotes.com

YouTube – Praizon (great for exam day dumps),

project-management-prepcast.com

3. Android Apps – [continue reading…]

The beginning

I have been managing projects for over 6 years now, following the project management practices from my organization. These were good, they did the job required but I used to feel that I did not have a well rounded insight about the project, including various areas that I need to be proactive about. When I relocated in Malaysia last year, I witnessed the systematic project management and also understood the importance of having a globally recognized certification. I realized how it can help me become a better project manager.

Thus began my PMP journey.

In this article I will share few PMP insider tips that I have gained along the way, hopefully you will be able to make use of some of this.

Overall time taken

Overall, it took me about a month of initial preparation time and a month of revision efforts.

I didn’t have a firm study plan to start with, but then things slowly began to take shape. By having a well thought-out plan you can save lot of time and get better clarity about how you are going to achieve your PMP certification.

With a good plan, and the commitment to stick to it, it is possible to get your PMP in even lesser time than what I spent.

That takes me to…

Tip#1: A study plan, first.

I recommend coming up with a plan upfront. It need not be a perfect one, but good enough to start with. I mean, as a project manager we know that no plan is perfect, right? 🙂

The whole idea of planning is that it helps us focus and gives us a direction to move towards the goal. Then of course things change, and we respond to it by refining our plan.

Here is the study approach I took.

[continue reading…]

Yay! I got my PMP! I’m happy to share my study plan, study resources I used to prepare for my PMP exam and insights that have helped me along the way.

My first lesson is to keep it cool. I took PMP just like any other exam, not paranoid about what would happen if I didn’t pass. I noticed few people approaching PMP exam as if everything depended on it, and this approach, I felt was adding unnecessary pressure. Keeping cool and having the right perspective helps a lot, in my experience.

Everyone has a different way of preparing. We are all built differently. Some like to study late nights and some like to study early mornings. And some are quick to grasp the concept and some need to go over few times, some have fantastic memorization skill and some understand good and able to express it in their own words.
I took a hard look at myself to figure what works for me, and included that in my study schedule.

What started it

I began my career in Information Technology field soon after completing my Masters of Computer Science from Osmania University. I began working in the USA for various sectors such as Manufacturing to Automobile to Financials etc., in various roles from Development to Leading/Analyst.

For some reason, I felt my career was becoming stagnant and my mind was saturated because I was not finding the work challenging enough. I was looking for a way to gain complementing skills that help me grow in career.

This was what triggered my quest for PMP.

Also Read: Sivamalini found a weird pattern during exam, and she shares what to do if that happens to you.

My study approach

I decided not to rush and joined a study group of PMP aspirants. I found a WhatsApp group with high success rate and this helped me keep the motivation levels high. We also shared our findings on this group and helped each other. Sort of a Progressive Elaboration approach, to quote in terms of PMIsm!

We shared which books to read, where to take contact hours, and such information with each other. I would gather everything and dump it into a folder on a shared drive so I could access on the go from any system.

Pre-study

Even before taking the contact hours training, I tried to read once entire book even I didn’t understand it very well. I recommend Head First or Andy Crowe.

This approach helped me gather some concepts here and there. This acted like an anchor during my second round of study, and actually help understand the concepts faster.

Next, I took the contact hours project management education – which is a mandatory requirement for appearing for PMP exam.

I recommend PMPrepCast by Cornelius. Here are few more you can use off Internet – izenbridge is good, Praizion might be good, because I saw his videos and they were really helpful.

Also Read: How to fill your PMP exam application (use this free template): an easy step-by-step tutorial.

[continue reading…]

“Don’t let question pattern mislead you on the exam” – this is one of the points I would like to highlight even before sharing my prep journey. This is so crucial, as it almost tripped me on my exam. I will explain what happened in a bit.

The seeds of PMP dream

When I had around 3-4yrs experience, I saw my manger getting his PMP certification. I was managing quality function for my project and in one of the team meetings my manager told us that she is going to be the next Project Management Professional… that was when the first seed was sown in me.

Later when I was working as a Team Lead, I felt I should take up the PMP certification to add value to my role. I identified a PMP training institute and took up the training, after which I realized that its an ocean difficult to cross, and its not as simple as some of the other certification exams.

My first son was around 2yrs old when I took up the PMP training and I was not able to spare much time for study between tight work schedule and kid. One thing I had in my mind was that I had committed myself to PMP this and so was determined on taking up the  certification and exam. I did not want to give up.

Also Read: Keith Demers shares his simple 4-step process to fail-proof PMP prep

I went about scouting for PMP study material

One mistake I did is that I collected all the materials I heard off. You name a book, an exam simulator or a material and I would have it. I had invested lot of money in purchasing books, browsing and taking printouts, assuming that I should pass PMP whatever it costs me. Request you all not to do the same.

All the books are good, you need to choose the right material based on your comfort and your way of studying.
I used the following –

• PMBOK. You can read this book if you do not get sleep and I’m sure it will help you … Yes, its so dry to read. I made it a point to read PMBOK page to page.
• Rita’s book – I would say that it’s the best reference book. The explainations of terminologies, concepts, examples, Q&A are the best in its form.
• Prepared my own notes – a summarized version of PMBOK
• ITTO chart – I prepared my own ITTO chart for all the processes as one pager(A1 size). I tried to create a linkage between the output of process to the input of another process. Basically you need to understand the relation between processes and the Tool used, you need to analyse and understand as Why is this an input, why are these tools used and the purpose of each of them, etc
• For mock exams I used PMPrepCast. I attended questions Knowledge area wise and this helped me a lot. Then took up 4-5 full mock exams. Initially I was able to score only 60% to 65%, but later was able to reach 70% (I found this tough though).

And then a couple more. [continue reading…]