The below LL is from a gentleman I do not personally know, but recently emailed with. I am posting his LL since I have not seen many recent LL posts on the various PM sites...
Stu,
I'd be happy to share many lessons learned that come to the top of my mind:
-I approached the PMP training/exam with a lot of PM experience though little in the 'PMI PMP' realm (that is, PM in the Navy shares a whole bunch of the concepts but few of the actual terms used by PMI-PMP.)
-I wish I had a better appreciation of the overall process to PMI's PMP structure. E.g.better understanding of the interconnections that among the 47 processes and how outputs of one process tend to be inputs to others.
-If I were to 'do this all again' I would spend more attention to the inputs, tools & techniques and outputs of each of the 47 processes. I did not memorize any of those (inputs/t&t/outputs - with 2 exceptions, see below.) Point being, even though I would not recommend 'blanket memorization' of the inputs/t&t/outputs, I would pay more attention 'along the way' as one is learning, in order to help overall comprehension.
- The exam itself of course had many challenging questions (probably a 'duh' statement) and varieties and flavors of questions I hadn't seen. For me, I took an online prep course (36 modules, each about 1/5-2 hours long) was probably enough to pass the exam, though I spend a decent amount of extra time to 'make sure' I wouldn't have to take the exam again. So I bought and read the PMBOK (which I would recommend) another (somewhat pricey) exam prep book (recommended if you can get over the sticker shock) and two 'bargain priced' exam question books. See below for the details on the books.)
- While I can't of course divulge actual test questions (not that I really remember them a week later :-) I did find two questions very interesting (I have a B.S, and M.S. in mathematics) that I found really interesting and did not run across any similar examples in all my prep:
Scenario: Think of the network analysis questions (e.g. A has Start as a prerequisite and lasts 5 days. B has Start as a prerequisite and lasts 3 days. C has cannot start until A and B are both complete.)
Question 2 (note: NOT the question I saw on the exam!): Describe the relationship between activities B and C in terms of lead/lag:
a. Activity C has a lag of 2 days
b. Activity C has a lead of 2 days
c. Activity B has a lead of 2 days or,
d. Activity B has a lag of 2 days
My question may be a bit messed up (since C is on the critical path) but I hope you get my drift.
Question 1: How long would the project last if an additional activity, D, was added? Activity D lasts 4 days and cannot finish until B finishes. Point being, think of other activity relationships besides finish-start within such a question type.
Books:
I purchased the following books (and added some comments on each) ...
Book: PMP Exam Prep, Eighth Edition: Rita's Course in a Book for Passing the PMP Exam
Comment: Pricy ($87 from Amazon) but probably worth it. Best was the 'tricks of the trade' (I think that's what they call it) observations that were very good (things like, 'Unless the exam question tells you otherwise, assume you're PM of a large {>200 people} organization.') The questions were also very good - more so because I got the feeling many of them were designed to trip you up (well, attack tricky subjects/points) if you didn't understand the nuance involved (and better to trip up on a practice question than the real thing.)
Book: PMP® Examination Practice Questions for the The PMBOK® Guide,5th edition. Paperback by Sean Whitaker
Comment: I thought this was a great resource and very reasonably priced ($12 from Amazon.) The explanations, I thought, were a bit lacking (maybe it was because the answers in Rita's guide and the book below were so good.) I also thought there were a bit too many questions of the type "Project Information is an input to all but which of the following processes?" -- that is, the frequency of these questions in this book was higher than I experienced on the exam (/what I was led to predict by the other sources.) Of course, knowing those inputs, T&T and outputs are a definite part of the exam, and spending more time on those will help answer questions on the actual exam, but nevertheless, it got a bit tedious as those questions (rather looking over the answers) didn't really help me (in many ways, learning those is pure memorization/familiarization.) Anyhow, a decent 'workhorse' book.
Book: PMP Exam Preparation: 600 Questions with Explanations Paperback
by Daud Nasir
Comment: This is actually 3 separate exams of 200 questions each. Again a great value, I thought ($15 from Amazon) and well thought-out questions (in particular, the answers were very valuable in helping me learn the many PMP nuances out there.) Distracting for me was that the grammar of many of the questions was a bit lacking (I don't know - little stuff like "You're Project Manager for big project" rather than "a big project") that threw me off a bit as I had to stop a lot and ask myself 'Is this what Duad is asking?' I hope that does not sound petty and on the VERY positive side, the answers were very well thought out and definitely helped me pinpoint places where my knowledge was lacking. I also only did 2 of the 3 exams so I can't comment on the 3rd one.
I'd also like to mention one website I found extremely helpful in preparing for the exam -- most specifically, it seemed to mimic very closely the actual screen look of the exam, and the 'review' page of the exam. I suppose there very well could be other similar resources out there that help mimic the actual test conditions, but I didn't run across any that were free (like this site.) There's a bank of 1000 questions and you randomly get 200 on an exam with a 4-hour time limit. Once complete you can have the system just print out the questions you missed (which was useful.) Also useful is the way the presented the answers (that is, repeated the whole question, with the correct answer highlighted -- very useful, I thought.) -- I took 2 exams and of course saw some repeat questions. I chose to do only 2 {exams}, as I thought that by the 3rd there be too many repeat questions. In any event, the site is: http://www.examcentral.net -- you have to register, but otherwise the exams are free.
Disclaimer on all the above is that I'm not affiliated with either Amazon, any of the authors or examcentral.net -- they were just the resources I used to prepare for my exam.
Best of luck:
John
On 03/21/14 4:34 PM, Stu N. wrote:
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Congrats, John!
If you don't mind, I would much appreciate any thoughts you may want to share regarding PMP exam lessons learned. I teach PM among other things and have a blog site where I share LL on the PMP exam from my students and other interested parties... You can either send me a note and I'll post it or make a comment on the site
