My PMP Exam Prep: Beginning of the long, short journey. Wasiu Tijani
I want to share my PMP exam prep story with your readers. It indeed is a great feeling passing the PMP exam. Actually feels nothing less than conquering Himalayas.
My PMP journey started last year in August when I had enrolled for training program for a week. Post training, I did do one round of study for PMBOK as well as Rita Mulcahy but that was more of scanning.
These books were not able to bind me well as they were too exhaustive and verbose. Post one reading of books, from October 2015 to June 2016, I was pretty much held in my assignments, which did not leave me with much time to study.
My books were packed away and it was like out-of-sight-out-of-mind story. In late May I received Paper Submission event from PMI and I logged into their site, only to realize that my membership was expiring on 31st July. I was planning to take personal time off for June and it worked perfectly well with my plans of passing PMP exam.
So essentially my PMP preparation was 3 weeks. And here’s my schedule.
My 3-Week study schedule (little over 150 hrs)
I studied from June 1st to June 20th and cleared my PMP exam on 21st June. During these 3 weeks, I did plan the breakup. Below is the snapshot that I followed.
Since the material for PMP is vast, post my one read, I jumped on to mock tests.
Initially my score was too low and I started with 50% but I spend equal time analyzing where I had gone wrong.
On a daily basis for around 5 days, I gave 2 mock tests every day and analyzed where I was going wrong.
I also scanned questions on Rita, M Fahad Usmani and Internal Infosys Portals which helped me bridge my gap.
All in all, I believe my preparation was question based approach and it clarified lot of concepts. I would have practiced over 4000 questions.
With just 5 days of exhaustive mock exams, my score had reached to about 85% to 90% and I felt more confident.
Then I decided to do one last round of PMBOK and Rita’s book for the topics where I had more incorrect answers.
Other PMP exam prep resources I used
Besides this for almost 3 weeks during my preparation, on a daily basis I answered question posted by Obalim on our Whatsapp group page. The Quality of these questions are really good and thought provoking.
I also installed 2 apps on my Phone which had good question bank which I usually used to scroll before signing off for the day. Explanation on these questions is pretty detailed in these apps.
I also mugged Process Chart as per PMBOK, it definitely helps you get few questions correct on exam.
If I had to give one solid prep tip...
that would be to use the 15 minutes given before the exam for exam interface study to draw the process chart and brain dump on paper.
This can be very valuable during the exam. You also won’t have the pressure to recall formulas and lists etc during the exam.
The exam day
Though I had my exam scheduled on June.
During 4 hours on the exam I felt that I managed my time well.
For initial 100 questions I took almost 2 hours 10 mins.
I took 5 mins break and did another 100 questions in 1 hour.
I had approx. 30 mins to re-visit marked questions.
I hope this will help people in their own PMP exam prep. Good luck!