First of all, we have to know what is PMP®?
The Project Management Professional, or commonly known as
PMP®,
certification is a credential given to those who successfully pass an exam by
the Project Management Institute (PMI). PMI provides a professional development
program that is based upon the Project Management Body Of Knowledge Guide
(PMBOK®
Guide). The PMBOK® Guide
contains proven practices for managing projects and is constantly evolving as
new innovative techiques emerge and gain adoption.
PMP
will provide professional/personal recognition, expedite professional
advancement, create job growth/opportunities within an organization, provide
framework for standardized Project Management requirements and increase
employee’s value to the organization
Furthermore, the PMP® exam is for individuals who
have the requisite experience, education and training in project management.
The certification is not for individuals who never managed a project or at the
very minimum, do not have some training in project management.
The next question is what is the exam test?
To be honest, PMP®
certification exam does not test your project management experience, your
common sense, your knowledge of industry practices, your knowledge of how to use software tools,
what you learned in management school, and your intelligence.
But it does test your
knowledge of PMI’s processes, your understanding of the many terms that are
used to describe the processes, your ability to apply those processes in a
variety of situations, your ability to apply key formulas to scheduling,
costing, estimating, and other problems your understanding of professional
responsibility as it applies to project management.
Numerous times we had to
link our
experiences with PMI’s project groups, knowledge areas, ITTOs and processes;
this produced a ‘clarity’ for our
understanding. That is just our
opinion and we are sure
everyone is different but consider this. If you present yourself as an PMP
during an interview and were asked to explain some of the ‘intricacies’ of
managing a project, the interviewer may be able to poke some holes in your
answers (this happens all the time in the IT world...We refer to these individuals as pdf
experts...They may
have a certification but
have no experience and hence no real understanding to back up the certification processes).
How to study effectively to pass the exam?
1. You can create a study group where
you can discuss difficult
questions with your group, share knowledge and experience and
you also can study via presentation with your group;
2. Read
materials such as the latest edition of PMBOK® guide, PMP®
exam preparation in order to get familiar with the PM process that use and
explain on PMBOK® guide;
3. Then
you have to understand the PMBOK® guide by making short presentation for each Knowledge
Area then presenting or discussing it to your study group, understanding Project Management Mapping, understand
the main – input – tools – output, the project management process. Forget everything you know and have
experienced as a project manager. Come to the PMBOK® as a newly hatched baby bird and let
it's view of the world wash over you. Answering scenarios like you would answer
them in the real world is generally a bad test strategy.
In
order to read the PMBOK® Guide Fourth
Edition with appreciation, motivation and comprehension, you need to reverse
your academic position. Do not read it from the perspective a student. Instead,
imagine that you are a guest professor who has to deliver a lecture on one PM
Knowledge Area per day to a classroom of 300 graduate students at a prestigious university.
4. Create an OUTLINE of each chapter in the
PMBOK® Guide Fourth
Edition (putting an emphasis on what YOU think is important). Crosswalk the
important tools/techniques, inputs, and outputs (ITTOs) to each of the 42
processes and drill yourself repeatedly. Building the crosswalk helps you to
see patterns and drilling helps you to burn the PMI perspective into your
brain. You don't need to memorize every ITTO but you need to be able to
understand the schema so that you can intuitively guess where 70-80% of the
ITTOs go
5. Now
take 1 or 2 Practice Final Exams from preparation books or Internet, in order fine tune your
OUTLINES. When you feel confident to give your lecture, go take the PMP EXAM!
No matter how they spin the question, You WILL KNOW what you know!
The key to pass the exam, you have to practice over
and over again with PMP exam preparation books. It's important to note that the
exam can test you on more than just the PMBOK. The easiest way to learn items
the PMBOK doesn't cover is to read several study books. Each have their gaps
and coverage. All together they catch the vast majority.
There are some good books that can help you to
practice, such as: book from Rita Mulcahy, Andy Crowe, Kim Heldman, PMstudy,
Head First, etc. It is your preference to choose preparation books that you
understand more.
- Practice 1: Practice 200 questions that cover 9 knowledge areas and PM Process. See what is your current score and understand each wrong answer;
- Practice 2: Do you have any improvement? Do you have the same wrong answer? Or new wrong answer? You can mark them and analyze your answer to make you understand more.;
- Do cumulative practice per knowledge area;
- Try to simulate exam practice using fast track CD in order to get familiar with “real exam”;
- Practice repeatedly on the same 200 questions or per knowledge area, until your score reach 90% correct - consistently getting around 150 right
6. Identify answer patterns through the
practice exams. For example, you will find that in the ethics questions you
should almost always rat out the perpetrator to your boss or the PMI.
Similarly, don't pay "bribes" but do pay "fees".
Here some tricks for the exam
1. Answer the questions from PMI®
perspective, not your own experience
2. Focus on the words: first, best, except,
not, most likely, etc.
3. Read all four choices and read backwards
4. Do not follow the old rule that the
longest answer is the right one
5. Write down the formula and major
processes as soon as your are given some papers during the exam
HINT: If you take the computer test you can use
the first 15 minutes Prometric gives you to do a "data dump" and
write down the 42 processes and formulas in the blue book they give you before
starting the test. The 15 minutes is typically provided so you can take a quick
tutorial on how their computer testing works but that is pretty
straight-forward if you know how to use a computer already.
Why do candidates fail in the exam?
Some candidates
experienced some difficulties to pass the exam on first attempt though they
already took a PMP preparation course from a registered PMI education provider
or they prepared well the exam. There are several causes of the failure which
are:
1. They have a shallow understanding and
don’t study deeply
2. They fail to read all answers. They look
at the given options sequentially and if they think the option 1 or 2 is right,
they skip the other options
3. They do not think PMBOK is always right
The solutions for all
the causes as mentioned before are:
1. Read PMBOK Guide latest version from
cover to cover at least three times. You will be easily answering several
questions if you read the Appendix sections from (interpersonal skills) would
help you to answer lot of behavioral oriented questions on the exam.
2. Read questions and given answers
carefully. Re-read all questions containing negative words such as “not”
“least” or “except”. Likewise check for all qualifying words: “all”, “most”,
‘some’, “none” and keywords such as input, output, tools and project management
process. Since the exam is four hours you have enough time to go through all
the given four options.
3. When
you are taking the exam you need to think PMBOK Guide is always right and in
order to pass the exam, we need to use the right Key word phases used in PMBOK
Guide regardless of whatever you do today to manager your project.
and.........Good luck for the exam....wish you pass the PMP exam :-)
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