10 Practical tips that will help in your Project Management Professional (PMP)® Exam Preparation

We have had a series of blogs that were based on discussions with some of the renowned practitioners on various topics related to Scrum and Agile. In this series of blogs based on discussions, we wanted to cover one of the key topics that is probably on top of the list for most of the PMP® certification aspirants. Yes! In this blog, we will cover some of the handy exam preparation tips provided by Saket during his conversation with Ankur Sighal.
Ankur, like many of you is a PMP® certification aspirant with nearly 10 years of experience in telecom industry. He comes with a strong project management background and has been preparing to appear for the PMP® exams. As a part of his preparations, he has read A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide)-Sixth edition and has been watching educational videos on this subject.

Despite his strong project management background and good preparation so far, Ankur has similar worries or concerns about his examination like that of most of you. He has invested considerable time attempting all the numerical based questions and has invested significant amount of time in completing the chapters in PMBOK® Guide .

10 useful tips from Saket to Ankur on preparation for PMP® exam, which is applicable to most of you trying to attempt for this exam:

1. For those preparing based on Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide)-fifth edition, there is limited time. You will have to complete the exam by 26^th March
2. Further, the mathematical part is no more than significant in PMP® exam . This portion is shrinking & the complexity of this segment is reducing too
3. Time invested on PMBOK® Guide: While understanding the key concepts of PMBOK® Guide is important, we need to be judicious about the time spent in doing so. There are too many terms and concepts discussed in it, and we may not be required to get into the details of every aspect of the term. We need to know when to stop and focus on the applicability of these terms.
4. Ideal time to be spent on preparation: While 20hrs per week is given as a general guideline, you should remember that this is generic advice and may vary from person to person.
5. How do you know that you are really ready? – The best way to gauge this is by taking the practice test. If you start scoring 80% plus, it means that you are moving towards the readiness of the exam. If you don’t, then explore what makes your score go down and address those areas.
6. Perform a knowledge area wise assessment – On the areas such as quality, HR & communication, the PMBOK® Guide may merely mention that these are tools & techniques. But in the real exam, the question may be in the form of when to use a flow chart or root cause analysis. So the possible next step, once you have a fair idea of the overall content is to take knowledge area wise assessments. If you score good, you move forward, otherwise, analyze each and every wrong question. This will show you the weakness in the preparation process and will help you fix it.
7. Refreshing Preparation – one recommendation is not to refresh based on reading the content again. The best way to refresh is to relate your work to PMBOK® Guide concepts. Whenever you do your work, think of which project management process are you executing.
8. How different is PMBOK® Guide Edition going to be? – Not very different. There is only 20% new content to be understood. The key new additions are a few trends and a flavor of Agile that needs to be grasped.
9. What is the process to register & Schedule the exam? – PMP® exam is a 2 step process: i) First process is the application process and & ii) the 2^nd step in the process is scheduling the exam. Once you complete the application process, you will receive a go-ahead to make the payment. After the payment, you get an eligibility ID, using which you can book a slot at the prometric center. One thing to keep in mind is that while there is a provision for you to book slots 2 months in advance, the availability varies from city to city. It is usually easy to get a slot for the upcoming week. You can find out centers near you by doing a web search on PMI exam centers.
10. What is expected out of us to be filled in the application? – You need to describe the type of projects that you have worked in and demonstrate your project management experience. We have videos that provide specific guidance on how to fill these applications.

We hope the above tips will be useful in your preparation for PMP® exams. This is only an excerpt from the detailed discussion with Ankur. To know more about the preparation process, understanding your readiness for exam, practical tips for completing the chapters in PMBOK® Guide and details around the registration process for the exam, please watch the video below:

Please do write to us if you have further queries on preparing or registering for PMP® examinations.

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