Here is my experience on PMP journey starting from the end:

Exam day:

Oh boy, it is tough one!

It is difficult to stay 4 hours on a chair, focusing on a screen and with very less movement.
Staying focused all four hours is the key.

The exam itself is difficult and it is not a linear addition of how many exam questions you
answered correctly. Rather, it is psychometric exam – it counts the number of questions and
difficulty level too - the results are aggregate of how difficult questions you answered
correctly.

There are tutorials online showing the exam screens. Better check that so once the tutorial is
played you can quickly go through it and spend the spare time to jot down brain dumps.

In the exam screen you can answer the question and move on, skip the question and move
on, answer the question and mark it before moving on, don’t answer the question and mark
it and move on. My strategy was:

1. Answer the question if I am sure about the answer and move on

2. Answer the question with the best answer I think it has, mark it and move on – if I am
not sure about the answer.

If you just skip the question then may be at the end you don’t have time to review and
unanswered questions will not help. Rather, if you have answered it, even incorrectly, there
is 25% probability that your answer is correct - so why to leave it blank?

Also once I completed all 200 questions (in around 3 hours and 10 minutes – see here the
pace built in self-exams helps), I went back to marked questions and concentrated on their
answers I marked before. It helped me to bring back focus to that question as I already
marked something.

The process map grid jotting down was quite waste of time. Hardly a question asks directly
about process sequence. Rather knowing the process is important – you should practice
jotting it down before exam and should be able to do it, but putting it on a piece of paper is
waste during the exam. However, it might give you confidence before the exam starts that
“Hey, I know the processes, now bring things on!”. I did write it down in 3.3 minutes – all the
process grid.

Formulas are important. You can jot them down. I got around 3 to 4 questions where I had
to see formula. Other questions about formula were more theoretical – so knowing the
implication of formulas is more important. I did on the exam scrap paper in 2.3 minutes – all
20 formulas.

Almost 50% or questions were like this:

 What should the project manager do next?

 What is the first thing project manager do now?
 What did the project manager not do right?
 Where this should be documented?
Basically you must know the list of documents in the PMBOK and should know the contents
of each of these documents, when they are created and when they are updated.

Then you must know the ITTOs. It is not possible to jot all of them down during exam. But is
very critical to know which documents/plans are input to what process, what tools and
techniques are used and what is the outcome of this process. Knowing this should result in
at least 30 to 40 percent questions getting right.

What I did to make it clear is that I printed all process maps and then physically highlighted
all unique inputs, TTs and Outputs with yellow highlighter. Went over these sheets at least 5
or 6 times a day for at least a week before exam.

The questions are similarly worded, and it is very difficult to understand the process area of
process itself what the question is about. If answering such questions is not like second
nature (as if you are a really practicing PM), it really gets difficult to answer.

A bit of disclaimer here: Every exam is different. No 2 candidates can have same format of
questions. Whatever I mentioned above, is what I got in my exam. Will be 100% true for
your exams too, no it will not be like this. The questions pool will be different. For example, I
got only 3 hard equation based question, you might get 10 to 20! However over all other
observations are true about nature and environment of the exam.

Once week before exam:

I had collected some cheat sheets, and created some of my own notes, cheat sheets during
studies. I went through them every day, multiple times.

Went through PMBOK process maps and highlighted unique ITTO in each process. Also the
process diagrams were restudied. Practiced the formula jotting down and process chart
jotting down on paper. I did it every day till exam day and I could reproduce the process
chart and all formulas in less than 10 minutes.

Practiced a lot of exam questions – at least 200 questions every day. Timed this activity so I
could answer 100 question in 1.5 hours, 200 questions in 3 hours max. This helped me in the
exam to match the speed.

Every day I put in around 4 to 5 hours dedicated to go through PMBOK and see if any of the
area I did not understand.

Overall study plan:

I took one PMP preparation class in October last year. Then I just parked the idea as I was
actively trying to get a job. Later, around December timeframe – when job market was less
hot – I started studying again.

During last 6 weeks or so, I studies Rita complete book first. One chapter every day. After
completing the book. I re-studied it but only highlights and took end of chapter exams. I
noted down the percentage I got in each chapter. Restudies the chapters where my results
were less than 70%.

Then I moved on to PMBOOK and studied all of it. Later restudies it with focus on the parts
which are NOT related to ITTOs (on each section there are non-ITTO information, so I studies
that).

Studies glossary of PMBOK and if I did not understand any item, I went to that section to
understand that.

I had a booklet with PMBOK chapter-wise questions. So I did each chapter questions and if
percentage was low, I repeated that chapter.

After that I started on practice exam from 1200 question bank. I did 50 questions –
composite - meaning mixed from all knowledge areas and processes. After completing the
test, I used to see which questions I answered wrong and why it was wrong.

Then at this stage I studies complete Stevbros slides. This material is to-the-point and less
fluffy. It helped me to focus on needed materials only.

I had Rita Mulcahy fast track simulator but unfortunately I could not use it. I tried some
online simulators with limited questions but it did not help as they had put in very hard
questions. Once I tried and got low scores there, they lured me to take their training
courses.

Final observation:

It is doable – at least 700,000 people have done it over the last 30 years. If I can do it, so
can you.

It needs a lot of study. I was lucky enough to get this escape to Saudi Arabia – no family, no
outdoor activities and almost confined to my room after work hours. This gave me plenty of
time to focus on studies and practice. You need to put in extra hours to study and practice. It
is a project in itself guys!

Focus on PM documents as mentioned in PMBOK, their contents, their update times. Also
ITTOs and sequences of activities within processes.

The very first and very last knowledge areas bear very small percentage of questions but if
ignored, they dent the overall score. There might be only 5 questions from Closing the
project area but if you answered 3 wrong, your overall score will dip down steeply. So don’t
ignore these areas.

That’s all what I could relate to. If you have any specific questions, please send them to
swaqarhaider@gmail.com and I will try my best to answer asap.