My PMP Lessons Learned and Recommendations to Ace the Exam
Hi Shiv,
First of all , thank you very very very very very much for giving back to the community and helping all the PMP aspirants, maintaining the website as well as Facebook page with Q&A and great tips, and introducing us to PM PrepCast as well. Without which I do not think I would have passed the exam.
Also read: 3-Month PMP Journey of a Test Manager – by Nihar Mishra, PMP
Your 11 day smart study plan was beyond helpful, your personal touch with encouraging us to take action was beyond commendable. Here are some of the points that helped me pass PMP, which I would like to pass on to people aspiring to get their PMP certification –
- The first rule is “Commitment”. No matter what roadblocks you face in day-to-day life, commit yourself and set a goal starting with date of the exam, make your study plan and follow it without failure daily. My commitment was 2 hours daily and 3-4 hours during weekends for overall 8 weeks. Do not get interrupted unless there is an emergency, dedicate and get ready to study (not just read).
- Enroll into Shiv’s PMP Smart Notes and strictly follow his 11-day fast tract study plan with free e-books written by him. They were succinct and to the point with good pictures, real-life examples, tips and diagrams/mind maps that wouldn’t bore you even if you read all 11 books at one time. These books helped me to kick start even before I dedicated myself to studying the PMBOK guide.
- Other than Shiv’s 11 day smart study plan, his PMP Formulae book with really great and easy tips, PMP Q&A, creating mind maps, memory jogger really helped me a lot to ace the exam.
- Shiv also introduced me to the PM PrepCast and with the time I had left, I bought PMP simulator with 9 Exams and they helped me extremely in passing the exam. Just practice a lot and I saw repeating questions on the exam. Yes, I saw the questions on the exam repeated from PMP Simulator with just different names and numbers, exact same concept. So, please practice a lot.Please feel free to Download my ITTO cheat sheet at the bottom of this page!
- Listen to Belinda Freemou’s (Passionate PM) free 38 video clips on YouTube, where she explains the different confusing terms of PMP very easily and articulates to real life examples. I listened to her videos every single day for about 30 days during my morning and evening commute. Very helpful.
- Do not forget to learn page 61 by heart for all 10 KAs, 5 process groups with 47 Processes, write it daily for 30 days. Attached is the ITTO that I have prepared for myself and learned the Tools and Techniques by heart as well for all 10 knowledge areas. Inputs and outputs I remembered with main deliverables and with commonalities as attached mostly and by understanding.
- Lastly, apart from study, prepare yourself for the real exam by practicing Simulator exam by PrepCast. This is the only way you will learn to get used to 4 hour exam. Also, lessons learned, do not get used to pin drop silence during exam, do take your noise cancelling ear buds without failure. Make sure to prepare the brain dump (practice it) – page 61, any formulae that you have trouble remembering and any ITTO that you can remember during 10 minutes you have after going through tutorial on exam for 5 mins (you have total 15 mins before you start your exam clock). Good luck.
- Thanks a bunch to Shiv again for his motivation, his e-books, his creativity, helping all of us and introducing me to PrepCast (with discounts J) that helped me to ace the exam. Forever grateful.
Thanks,
Srilatha Pagadala, PMP
>> Download my ITTO cheat sheet here (or just right-click and save as..).
