Passed PMP , Attempt #1: Lesson Learned from PMP

Suyog

I passed my PMP exam recently & here is my experience using different tool & material on PMP. Before I write my review in no capacity I have any association with Harwinder (the maker of BrainBok & Deepfried Blog or PM Hangout) , other than the fact that I regard his work.. 'Blog & Brainbok tool or Brainbok PMP Exam' to be high quality stuff .

With that been said I used the following material to Pass PMP

1)PMBOK (Must read Once)

2)Rita's Book (Good Read - I read this book first before I read PMBOK it helped me understand the concepts)

3)BrainBok - ITTO (I used it to understand the data flow & realized the big picture & understanding of key concept )

4) BrainBok - Simulator Exam (Very Tough Exam , never scored more than 70% but passed 3 out of 4 exam I gave – (PMP Exam1, PMP Exam2 , PMP Exam3 & PMP Numerical Exam) – Tough Questions & very vital for someone who really wants to understand the concept & application area. It helped be realized my knowledge gap & always kept me away from getting complaisant.

4)Cornelius PMP - Exam Simulator (Easy to Moderate Exam) (Gave 3 exam on this simulator I score in high 85+% in most exam , in one exam I score 96% - if you want to build your confidence it’s a great tool but maybe I would rather give tough Prep Exam & Fail those to find out my Knowledge Gaps before the real Exam )

5) Solved around 1800+ Q including (Random Question, Prep/Mock Exam, Rita's Q)

Other than this I used DeepFried Blog to learn some few very key concept & bookmarked them on my laptop - Like Difference between

1)Schedule Baseline Vs Project Schedule &
2)Quality Control Vs Quality Assurance or
3)Point of Total Assumption

All the above Great reads help be understand a lot .

Also used Saket Bansal video’s (available for Free on youtube )

Also for someone very curious person like me used this link http://www.pmhangout.com/uploads/editor/qz/uu1b7hg2vj86.pdf & http://www.deepfriedbrainproject.com/2010/04/pmp-passing-score-secrets.html to analysis my chance tones of time.

To me only drawback on 'BrainBok tool' is no ‘video’ means no user interaction which means you need to be very focused to study with this tool . Also 'Brain Bok Exam Simulator tool' should add few more filter on the result page to analysis the exam result .

Harwinder

Hello Suyog,

Congratulations! You did it.

Thanks for sharing your lessons learned. Great to hear that you found my blog posts on Deep Fried Brain blog useful. I'm working on revamping the blog and hope to post a lot more content in future.

There are some new changes coming up for PMP Passing Score. I'll post it on the blog soon.

Thanks for your feedback on BrainBOK as well. It's understandable that some people prefer the video format, some audio and some like to read.

BrainBOK is meant to be an application and not a video course. Just getting through a video course can take 60 on average, even though the course length is usually around 40 hours. That's almost 4 weeks of effort (assuming you view 2 hours of video every day) to get the 35 contact hours. Along with the video course, you still need to go through the study guide, take practice exams, and other study aids. With BrainBOK, you can save your 4 weeks as you can earn the contact hours simply by taking the practice exams.

All the best for future ..