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I passed my PMP exam successfully at an exam center in Paris, with 2Ps and 3 MPs. Here’s my PMP study plan and some of the valuable lessons that I learned, and I hope this article will ease your PMP journey a bit.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all my well-wishers who supported me on this wonderful journey towards PMP certification.

With a lot of personal priorities, I had finally decided to have my certification completed by 2016. In fact, I did my 35 hr boot camp with PMGS in the beginning of Jan 2016 itself.

I took it as a challenge to achieve this milestone at least before Feb 2017. Your PMP application once validated allows you to take your exam within 1year from the time it has been accepted and validated for taking exams. You have 3 trials to clear the exam.

My PMP Study Plan

I settled for a 13 Weeks schedule. I had already read RITA’s prep book and PMBOK once.

I had completed my bootcamp with PMGS before the schedule started. [continue reading…]

We share the PMP study tips and success stories of PMP exam takers here at pmexamsmartnotes.com frequently. PMP study tips of recent PMP exam takers is very helpful for PMP aspirants. Because, feedback of recent PMP exam takers and lessons learned during PMP study will help other PMP exam candidates find success in their PMP Journey as well, by avoiding pitfalls and traps that are not easily seen.

This article is a contribution by the good folks at Master of Project Academy.

Master of Project Academy shares feedback and PMP study tips of recent PMP exam takers on their blog as well. We wanted to gather the Top 5 PMP Study Tips from recent PMP test takers in this post.

-Shiv Shenoy

Here’s a consolidated article bringing you chosen prep advice from PMP students that have passed their PMP exam recently.

PMP Study Tip #1

First, and the most important PMP study tip of recent PMP exam takers is, prepare a PMP study plan. Each PMP candidate has a different schedule, different availability and different dedication to prepare for the PMP exam. Therefore, before starting to prepare for PMP exam, make sure that you set a target date to pass PMP exam and make your plans for this date.

There is not a certain time to prepare for the PMP. However, recommended time for a working professional to prepare for the PMP exam is 4 months. And in total, a typical PMP study takes 70-85 hours. [continue reading…]

How would you find out number of days in the month of May, or say September, without looking at the calendar?

If you looked at your knuckles and figured it out, you just used a mnemonic.

Something like this –

Image courtesy: Wikipedia

If you’ve read PMESN content earlier you probably are aware of this sentence that helps you recall 10 PMP Knowledge Areas in the exact sequence, without putting in much effort to remember them –

“Integrating Scope and Time will Cost our Quality Human Resources to Communicate with a Risk of Procuring Stakeholders“.

Let’s try another one. Can you remember this sentence – [continue reading…]

Shiv, here is something that I would like to share few tips with your readers for their PMP prep plan. I hope they will find this article useful.

My PMP Prep Plan

I planned to write PMP examination about 6 months ago. First, I bought PMBOK in order to go through the theory and concepts. Yes, it is a bit boring read, that is what I understood at first. 🙂

As I visited the PMI website, I understood the advantages and disadvantages of having a PMI membership. My intention of getting a membership in the first place was to get a reduced exam fee. That was the primary reason why I enrolled myself for the PMI membership at that time.

Meanwhile, I subscribed to the Online training for PMP, PM PrepCast from Cornelius (this is only one which I used, there are many others available in the market)

I started watching the videos daily spending at least 2 hours a day.

I was not comfortable watching the videos always on a computer, hence I used to stream those lessons to my Television set and then sit and prepare exam notes. Self-made notes are the ones I would rate as best reference material to go through before the day of examination.

Going through the concepts, I was pleasantly surprised to notice that I have already been doing in my daily work most of the concepts. I just did not know the technical terms.

Also Read: How I Passed CAPM Exam: By Mandalee Daria Mason, CAPM

A Technique I Used to Internalize Knowledge [continue reading…]

Getting PMP certification is only half the job done. It’s a nice milestone to reach for one’s career growth, but there is more to it. Application of PMP concepts at work is certainly one of them, which is what the PMP questions train you for.

Continuous improvement is as much a required aspect of one’s career-growth as it is for Kaizen projects.

For many the very thought of getting PDUs can be a painful one. I receive a lot of ‘how to earn PDUs for PMP renewal‘ emails. I fret over it for many months before coming up with a plan. But with this article you can have it like a breeze. Almost. You’ll have to put in some hours to get them, but this planning exercise can make it seem like a breeze.

PMP PDU, CCR And The Quest For Career Growth: The Complete Guide to Earning PDUs

In this guide we shall look at the exercise of earning PDUs from career-growth perspective.

BONUS: Download PDU planner spreadsheet template from the bottom of this page.

Also, in the last part of this post I’m going to share with you a way to get PDUs by simply sharing your knowledge on a favorite project management topic!  [continue reading…]