PMP !

It's official. I have done it. I am now a PMI-certified Project Management Professional (PMP)!

I took the exam yesterday (29-Dec) and spent a little over 3 hours on it. When I hit the submit button to finish the exam, I was fairly confident that I would pass. In fact, during my entire preparation I had full confidence that passing this exam was inevitable.

The reason for my confidence is that I had fully project-planned my entire PMP experience! I made the goal of attaining the PMP back about May 2010. I then realized my company was offering a prep course for the PMP exam in November. I signed up for the course and targeted December as to when I would take the exam. So my milestones were set!

I signed up to become a member of PMI & my local chapter in mid-June. I then spent Saturdays going into the office over the summer to count up my hours. To aid in this, I scoured the web for a spreadsheet that would enable me to easily count my hours. I found one and several Saturdays in June, July & August were spent tallying these hours going back 3-4 years.

The next step was to get these hours into the PMI website. I'll admit there was some slight procrastination here :) Actually, I already had a lot of slack for this task. The hard part was counting the hours. All that was left was data entry. So one Friday night, I stayed late at work and entered all the hours.

The next step came in November when I took the PMP course. I missed a lot of it because of work issues that came up, but the materials in the class were invaluable. It was taught by ESI and I got all their study aids as well as the 9-disc CD set for each knowledge area. I then decided to set a date for the exam in late December and made that my target. For over a month, I studied: Listened to the CDs, read the PMBOK, did practice questions, downloaded PMP apps for the iphone that I could play with on the subway; After this initial stage, I deep-dived (dove?) into each knowledge area. I bought the Head-First PMP book and did the entire book. I then re-took the practice questions from Stage 1, elevating all my previous scores to about 90% and higher. I was already sure that I would pass the exam at this stage. I then took a full comprehensive test exam that ESI provided me with and then the online Head-First PMP exam. On both I scored 85 % and higher.

I then just practiced writing down a few formulas and making sure I knew them cold. And that was it!

It's really amazing how planning this whole endeavor worked so well. I executed flawlessly and mission accomplished!

So tips for passing the PMP: I don't have much to add that would improve upon what many others out there already advocate. Just that you should know your own style of studying. I am an accomplished test taker and so I already knew what would be the most effective for me. Do the same for yourself and you should be fine. A little discipline goes a long way!