On January 20, 2015, I finally sat for the Project Management Professional (PMP) exam, passing it with a ‘Proficient’ rating in all 5 knowledge areas. The details of my exam path are below:
From mid April to mid May 2014, I attended the PMP Exam Preparation class, PJM104, at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.
I participated in a weekly study group with two other students from that class. They were also both working professionals, so we had less frequent, longer sessions to maximize everyone’s time. As for format, we used that time to review one knowledge area with one member as the facilitator of that topic. The facilitator would review it in more depth and put together notes for the others. (Hint #1 – be the facilitator for the areas that are more difficult to you. To teach is to learn twice).
After we went through the PMBOK 5th edition and the associated Rita chapters, we looked more closely at some of the deliverables. For my part, I created a project management plan template that cross referenced with most of the other sections. (Hint #2 – write a project management plan). After that, we concluded the group study and worked on our own.
I planned on taking the exam in December of 2014, but work and life got in the way. I didn’t get serious until I scheduled the exam for February 14, 2015 (“The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre”). I figured I’d get more out of it if I had it completed before my review at work, so I moved it to January 20th, a work day, to get it done on time.
Having a date made it much more real, and made the self study more effective. For this, I primarily reviewed the process, trying to follow a project from beginning to end through initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing. Most of my effort was on initiating and planning, as that is where project managers really add value.
After that, it was answering questions, examining what I missed (or got right due to a 50/50 guess) and reviewing that section more. I answered around a thousand practice questions, preferably in groups of 200 at a time, and typically scored around 70-80%. The week before the exam, I spent 2 hours/night, and spent 9 hours on Saturday and 7 hours after church on Sunday studying. I didn’t study on Monday before the test. I prefer to study in 90 minute increments, with some sort of physical activity in between. In my case, the break usually was letting my toddler ride on my back.
From my practice tests, I estimated that I could finish the actual exam in about an hour and a half. In reality, it took me almost 2 hours. During the tutorial (I know how to use a computer) I wrote down my brain dump of every formula, the format of a network diagram box, the type of proposal that matches procurement types, and drew page 67 of the PMBOK. I also wrote the word “ETHICS” on the top of my scrap paper to remind me to watch out for those questions. I took a break after 90 questions to wash my face in the restroom and returned to finish the test. At the end, I reviewed the marked questions, changing about half of the marked ones (it’s amazing what you learn after taking a 200 question exam), then reviewed all 200 questions again to check my work. After all of this, I had about 8 minutes to spare, and hit submit.
I was confident enough in my work that had I failed, I would have left the project management profession entirely rather than retake the exam, as being confident and wrong is a bad sign.
Good luck on your own PMP journey!
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