As indicated in my previous post, this post is meant to share my study plan and materials. I’ll also list a few tips that will help you overcome the examination.

PMI members can enjoy a free download of the PMBOK in pdf format! Alternatively, you can purchase the PMBOK book off the PMI website or request your training provider for one.

During the course: I read PMBOK cover to cover once and marked areas which I felt were important. I read about 2-3 chapters prior to each of the 5 training days of the PMP Exam preparatory course. As this was my first read of PMBOK which coincided with cricket matches, my attention was diverted. I didn’t mind this as my initial objective of PMBOK reading was simply to get a feel of what the chapters were trying to say and put that in context when the instructor delivered the subject. Needless to say, experienced professionals who have worked or have had visibility across all project management areas would have no difficulty in grasping the concepts quickly. You may find few areas of struggle perhaps due to minimal experience / exposure but do not worry; you’ll get over that hurdle.

I was fortunate to have worked across all project management areas which made majority portions of the PMBOK book easy to follow. I was introduced to few new terminologies and techniques that made it interesting and even worth contemplating in my present job. Many of you may find Earned Value Management (EVM) a tricky subject. This presentation titled Earned Value Management by Obsideo Training & Consultancy explains EVM in simplistic language with examples. I highly recommend going through their document if you aren’t familiar with this facet of Project Management. Needless to say, the concept of EVM is important from the exam’s perspective.

Note: You’ll hear comments that PMBOK is a boring read and that it will put to you sleep. Well, I can only say that if a person is focused & motivated – these things shouldn’t happen. PMBOK alone sufficed for me. Being a seasoned Project Manager, I didn’t find the need to read any other book. If you aren’t confident, then you may need to look for alternate sources. What are they? My reliable friends tell that Andy Crowe’s book is good due to its simple way of articulating PMBOK content (so, people who fall asleep reading PMBOK may want to contemplate this). Another recommended book is Rita’s exam preparation book.

After the course – Week 1: Immediately after the course, I did around 3 casual tests (200 questions each) via Rita’s PM FASTrack v6 and scored between 65% & 75%. PM FASTrack v6 is considered hard. As I had done these casually and had not done any preparation, getting these scores made me believe that the exam isn’t tough and that I needn’t require months of preparation. If you wondering what the passing mark for PMI is then let me surprise you – PMI doesn’t explicitly state one!

After the course – Week 2: I went through the PMP application process. Caution: This can wear you down. It is tad tedious. It can take longer than the actual examination time itself! Fortunately, you can stop midway and resume the application process. Make sure you have your resume next to you to assist you. Upon finishing and receiving the confirmation, I scheduled my exam for a date after 17 days.

After the course – Week 3: With my exam less than three weeks away, I now had to start my exam preparation. I used my weekend – two full days of dedicated preparation. I had all my meals in the study area. So yes, this was two full intense days of quality time on exam preparation. I used the weekend to do the following:

• I prepared a spreadsheet listing all process groups, project management areas along with their individual inputs, outputs & tools techniques (ITTOs). Feel free to use this document; however I’d strongly suggest you do it yourself as it’s a way how you’ll remember these things as you proceed further.
• I read PMBOK cover to cover with some attention this time. In parallel, I began documenting PMP study notes. All the areas that I had marked in the PMBOK book during the training course were now typed in my study notes. At this stage it looked like a cut down version of the PMBOK. Again, feel free to use this document – but I’d once again suggest you do it yourself as you’ll have a higher chance of grasping the concepts & recalling it when it matters.
• I went over the presentation slides of my training provider and added bits of content that were not covered in my study notes.
• Areas where I felt that I had difficulty understanding the concept or felt areas where PMBOK hasn’t elaborated much – I leaned to my trusted friend, Google, and updated my study plan notes.
• After completion of the PMBOK, I managed to do sample questions from Initiation & Planning phases off Rita’s FASTrack v7 scoring over 75%.
• Reflection: I was impressed that I was able to accomplish all of the above in two days while I thought it would take much longer. I rescheduled my PMP exam to an earlier date as I believed that I was ready and there was no point in prolonging it.

After the course – Week 4: We had a long weekend (courtesy public holiday). I once again used these three full days to my advantage. I am not listing my efforts spent during weekdays as they were negligible. I split my long weekend of three days into two sessions each, day and evening, making it a total of six sessions. In each session I did the following:

• Went over my study notes thoroughly. As and when doubts surfaced, I went to my trusted friend again – i.e. Google
• Sample Exam (full length 200 questions)
• Reviewed me exam results.

3 days, six sessions equated to six sample exams. The exams were comfortably completed within 4 hours with scores generally between 70% and 90%. The exams that I attempted were:

• PM Study (200 questions – online)
• SimpliLearn (200 questions – online)
• ExamCentral (200 questions – online)
• HeadFirstLabs (200 questions – pdf)
• Oliver Leahmann (175 questions – pdf)
• Techfaq360 (200 questions – online)

Following a good night’s sleep, I reached the venue for the examination 20 minutes prior with the intent of skimming over the study notes for one last time!

Tips:

• If you are not used to attempting four hour long multiple choice question style of exams, then midway through the examination will bring about some form of fatigue in you. This will cause you to rush through the remaining questions. So, keep practicing until you overcome the fatigue factor. You need to achieve a state wherein you are relaxed & focused for the entire duration of the exam.
• Try to do as many sample tests as you can, ideally from different sources. Keep to a minimum of 10 sample tests.
• As you do your sample tests, it is extremely important to assess where you scored wrong and reflect those back into your study notes.
• Get a good night’s sleep before your exam
• Know the ITTOs for each of the 42 processes. I used this resource which helped to some extent – http://pmzilla.com/memorizing-inputs-tools-and-outputs-pmp. People may say that memorization isn’t critical. Subjective comment, but as you do more and more sample exams – you’ll get an idea on which ITTOs to focus on.
• The examination may have multiple questions having the same answer. This may influence you to doubt your previous answers, so know your content well and be confident.
• Don’t give up once you are faced with difficult or tricky questions up front. This only means that the remaining three quarters is going to be easy. So, don’t get bogged down. Remember – you have to be relaxed and focused throughout the exam duration!
• Feel free to mark numerical questions for second review at the end of the exam as they are easy scoring opportunities.
• After reading the question once, make sure you read it once again to look for words that we can easily miss in our first read such as “is not” / “cannot” / etc… as these missed words could change the answers easily. Again, you need to do these for all 200 questions, so remain focused and alert for the entire exam duration.
• In addition to the previous point, read the question again with the intent of identifying if the requested answer is an input, output, tool technique or process. The question could be worded in a way to trick us into choosing the wrong answer. So, relax yourself – read the question carefully with the intent of finding what answer is being requested.
• Feel free to note down the formulae and/or your weak area processes with their ITTOs in the paper that the center provides. This would help you should you get bogged down midway with certain questions.
• Make sure you are comfortable and confident with most parts of the project management areas, if not all.
• Don’t be dejected if your scoring pattern lowers from test to test. As long as you are consistently over 65% and confident of the PMBOK content, you should do well to clear in your first attempt.

Summary: Following the mandatory 35 hours of formal Project Management training, I cleared the PMP exam over five days of exam preparation. Hopefully this will motivate those who think that this takes a lot of time or that it is too difficult. The study material attached above shouldn’t be seen as a winning formula for everyone to pass. You will come across individuals who have taken over 8 months to prepare and also people who have taken few weeks or even days. This shouldn’t be always seen as a measure of preparation time as individuals could have been occupied with other things. It depends on your confidence, ability, experience & grasping levels. If you are ready, just go for it!

To end this post, the “study approach” listed above is not rocket science and can easily be applied to other certifications / initiatives. Hope this post helps aspiring individuals to achieve excellence in whatever they strive for. Feel free to contact me if I can assist you any further and good luck!

August 11^th, 2011: As a result of my post titled “Is a Project Management Certification Worth it?”, I was involved in several constructive talks and was even hinted by few individuals that I shouldn’t have made comments especially since I wasn’t certified.

October 18^th, 2011: My friend, Paresh Nagar whom I hadn’t heard from in several months sends me an email regarding his interest in registering for a PMP Exam preparation course running between October 29^th 2011 and December 10^th 2011. I immediately contacted Paresh wishing him luck and he asked me if I wanted to join him for the course. I unfortunately had to turn it down primarily due to my intended travel plans that coincided with major portions of the course.

October 27^th, 2011: The 1% probability that my travel plan would get cancelled due to an external event occurred leaving me dejected. Well, destiny has its games! My wife calls and informs me that our friends, Paresh Nagar and Lupita Arrese, who also happen to be her work colleagues, had just received their copy of PMBOK 4^th edition delivered to their office. I was like “WOW – that service coming from a training provider is something that I haven’t heard in a long time”. What next? She continues that I should use our travel cancellation as an excuse or reason or hint to enroll myself for the course too. Here we go again; I started the debate with my loving wife on “Is PMP certification really worth it?”

I took her viewpoints seriously and spoke to the training vendor Platinum CPD situated in Knowledge Village, Dubai, UAE. I was personally attended by the Managing Partner of the institute, Anas Abu-Hamam, who impressed me with his professionalism. He answered my queries and put me at ease despite being a last minute entrant.

October 29^th, 2011: Attended the 1^st of the 5 full day classes. I was pleasantly surprised that the instructor, Omran Zbeida, was one of the contributors to the PMBOK 4^th edition. His name was on the book too. As with any instructor and with all due respect to all, I initially had reservations about this instructor too – not from a knowledge perspective, but from a communication perspective. Within the first few minutes, I knew that I had nothing to worry about. The instructor demonstrated fluency in his presentation & communication skills that would keep me awake for the full day. Yes, this is extremely important as you wouldn’t want to be in a situation where you cannot follow the class due to reasons ranging from language, accent, pitch, tone, pauses, content delivery, etc… Omran was right up there!

Mid-November, 2011: My friend, Karthik Chamy, contacted me in regards to my blog post and we continued discussions on the same subject. Yes, we did take it positively and reached consensus! He later told me that he had just cleared his PMP examination. Needless to say, he was extremely excited with a sense of achievement all over him that was very much evident during our talk. Once again – congratulations mate!

December 10^th, 2011: My 5^th and final day of the course. You might be wondering, how can a 5 day course stretch so far, well – it was conducted on Saturdays with two Saturdays skipped in between due to public holidays. In hindsight, such breaks are not ideal – at least for me.

December 12^th, 2011: I became a member of PMI (Project Management Institute)

December 14^th, 2011: Application for PMP submitted

December 19^th, 2011: PMP Eligibility received. My wife was asking me when I intended to write the exam – I told her at the earliest. She reminded me that I should factor in exam preparation timelines along with personal family commitments.

December 20^th, 2011: PMP Test scheduled for 5^th January 2012 @ 07.30am. Why am I in a hurry? Well, I like to work with deadlines and plan my work around it. Yes, despite the personal commitments including wedding anniversary, attending to guests living with us and in midst of the festive atmosphere, I selected this date. Why 07.30am? Well, I prefer early mornings and the other choice of 12.30pm doesn’t sit well with me.

December 27^th, 2011: PMP Test rescheduled for 2^nd January 2012. Are you thinking that I’m insane? As if 5^th January wasn’t too far and that I’ve rescheduled to 2^nd January 2012? My wife despite being confident of my abilities was visibly concerned and asks me again if I did the right thing to reschedule the exam to an even earlier date. I smiled and she got her answer.

December 31^st, 2011 & January 1^st, 2012: Nothing related to the PMP journey, but I had a nice long walk with my wife to watch the fireworks off Burj Khalifa (the tallest man made structure in the world at 829.84m). Just using this space to tell the visitors to never forget spending quality time with your family even if it means to forgo something important! Know your priorities and manage your work around it.

January 2^nd, 2012: I had my exam scheduled at the Prometric centre in Knowledge Village, Dubai, UAE at 7.30am. As indicated before, I like early mornings so found this time to be my best to take a go at the test. Fast forward four hours and the computer screen displays: “PASS – Congratulations”. Don’t quote me on the exact wordings as I didn’t store that in my memory cells

That was my journey and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone mentioned on this post and others who were part of this journey. I’ve been introduced to few new concepts during this journey which will certainly benefit me in the longer run. And yes, I still stick with my viewpoints mentioned in my previous post even after being certified. For those who are interested in the details on my study plan, resources used, tips, pointers, etc… please be patient as I work towards compiling a comprehensive subsequent post.

Often when I’m working on an initiative, there are many people who are inquisitive to find out what Business Process Management is all about, why is there so much of talk about Customer Experience Management, what techniques do I deploy, amongst several others. I endeavor my best efforts to educate them in the limited time that is made available with practical examples and case studies. Needless to say, majority of them find it promising and commend this discipline and immediately begin to reflect on how they can bring about a positive change in their organisation. The examples were well received with a constructive feedback for me to dedicate a few posts on simply articulating those examples in my blog. So, here is an example of a Claims process for a Property insurance product! Of course, I’ll also be touching on its relevance to Customer Experience Management.

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At the outset, I’d like to make it clear that I’m not taking a dig at the Project Management (PM) certification providers or certified PM professionals. I also congratulate those who have taken the time and effort to get a certification in PM. Being certified would mean that they have fulfilled the criteria of a certain number of minimum working hours in leading projects along with passing a form of test. Back in 2001, my then colleague had told me that the situation in Dubai was based on the principle “Experience will get you the job but certification would get you the money”. It’s been a decade since his saying and things have obviously changed. Aside from the personal feeling of achievement, what compels people to get a specific certification?  Is frequent mention on the job boards a valid reason for a certification?

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The purpose of a Cause-and-Effect analysis is to identify the cause(s), factor(s), or source(s) of variation that may lead to a specific event, result, or defect in a product and/or process. The Ishikawa diagrams (aka Fishbone Diagrams or Cause-and-Effect diagrams) is simply a tool to be used along with Brainstorming and the 5 Whys. These diagrams provides a structured way to help you think through all possible causes of a problem which inturn assists in carrying out a thorough analysis of a situation.

Figure: Cause and Effect Diagram

How to start?

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The summer break is going on and very soon the stores will have “Back to School” promotions / offers. Am I selling or promoting a stationary store in this post? Definitely not!!! So what does achieving excellence got to do with “Back to School” lingo?
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Swamped with orders, papers, files, reports, tasks, records, meetings? Traditionally in a process improvement initiative, the approach has been to what people do in a process, how we can speed up their steps to assist in increasing people & process efficiency. The all important question is: Are we really competitive in the market? Do we have *the* differentiating factor to better serve our customers?

Companies should be fast, flexible and responsive to customer needs. We’ve always focussed on “people”, but the reality is that, people are not the problem.

Many BPM specialists would agree that one can easily take 70% time out of the processes. It may sound very extreme, but we could easily share our experiences where this has been achieved across various industries & products. By making people work harder or do things faster does not cut process times drastically. Hence, in this post – I’d like to give an intro into one of the key ingredients of a process: “Time”.
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“Hello World” means a lot to me. Not only does it remind me of my programming subjects and lecturers during school days, it also reminds me of the fun days that I had then! We all miss our school days and in our conversations regards those fun-filled days, one can easily notice the enthusiasm when he/she speaks. I’m sure you will agree that a school related conversation / reunion is always refreshing!
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