How to Pass the PMP exam: Lessons Learned (Part 1)…
Recently I sat for and passed the project management professional (PMP) exam on my first shot. Given that 40% of test takers fail, this was nothing to shake a stick at.
I got a lot of advice from people on how to pass the exam. Having been through the whole experience, I think some of that advice was actually flawed. There is a whole sea of people out there who are thinking about, studying for, or restudying for (after failing) the exam. So I wanted to share a few tips which worked well for me.
- Don’t memorize the ITTOs. Everyone kept telling me to memorize all of the ITTO’s (inputs, tools, techniques, and outputs). So about three months beforehand I dutifully starting making flashcards with the process on one side and all of the ITTOs on the other. About two weeks later, I decided this was ridiculous. Who can memorize 400 items? This was horrible advice–ignore it (and see next tip).
- Focus on EXPOSURE instead of memorization. The exam is multiple choice, so you don’t need to be able to completely reproduce the ITTOs on a blank sheet of paper from memory, you just need to be able recognize them by name and associate them with a process. The key to doing that is repeated exposure from multiple angles. Use multiple books, multiple techniques, and multiple mediums (audible, read the PMBOK glossary, play a match game, write them, type them, draw them, speak them). Basically just activate as many different parts of your brain in learning them as possible.
- Don’t buy Rita Mulcahy’s PMP Exam Prep Book. Everyone and their dog told me to buy this book. I did and it’s good. Huh? Then why would I say don’t buy it? Because it does everything well and nothing great. The layout is pretty good, the instruction is pretty good, and the practice questions are pretty good. If you work *really* hard, you can pass the exam with just this book! But why work harder than you have to when two other books are better? See the next two tips.
- DO Buy Andy Crowe’s How to Pass the PMP Exam on your First Try. This is probably the best organized study guide for any exam that I’ve ever read (SATs, GREs, MCSE, etc.). Within minutes of cracking the cover, your head is completely wrapped around the enormous task at hand. Crowe is the king of context, priority, and focus. Every section without fail asks the same questions over again: What is it? How important is this on the exam? When is it used? Reading this first saved me so much time which I would have wasted studying material of minimal importance. Unfortunately, the weakness of this book is that the teaching instruction is not especially good (for example the section on critical chain is a disaster), but Crowe is so darn good at putting the entire PMBOK into perspective, that I consider this indispensable for the exam.
- DO buy O’Reillys Head First PMP. This book is the polar opposite of Crowe’s book. The crazy format (”the latest in cognitive research!”) makes it seem utterly, completely unorganized. I constantly found myself wondering, where am I? What process is this? Am I dead? But its saving grace is the teaching instruction, which is insanely, magically, alarmingly good. These guys could teach a small child earned value. So if you pair this book with Crowe’s in a tag-team approach, then you get two books which do two things really, really well. Crowe gets your head around the exam and gives you laser-like focus on whats important. Head First teaches you everything you don’t know. Together, they’re better than Rita.
Continue to Lessons Learned Part 2…
