S P E C I A L R E P O R T

Sometimes students struggle with how to effectively allocate study time between the course completion and exam day. While there is no “one size fits all” approach, the following is a framework that will help ensure you are prepared and confident when you sit for the exam.

1. Allow Sufficient Time to Prepare

Some training providers set an expectation that you should take the exam immediately after completing the course (i.e. pass on the fifth day). That method may have worked many years ago when the PMP® Exam was much easier. Unfortunately, the exam is much more difficult these days and thus you will need extra preparation time. Therefore, we strongly suggest that you take a few weeks to study on your own before taking the exam. There are a few reasons for this.

First, you will likely feel mentally fatigued after the boot camp training, and therefore not in a position to perform your best immediately following the course completion. Second, the exam is difficult, and you will need time to solidify your understanding of the materials. Finally, you will want to take additional practice exams after the class to ensure you are truly prepared to take the exam.

Some students choose to ignore this advice and try to take the exam within a couple days of the course completion. The success rate for these students is dramatically lower than for those who allow at least a week of individual study time. Sometimes students feel constrained by their schedules, and feel they have no choice but to take the exam immediately. However, scheduling concerns should not force you to take the exam prematurely, because if you fail the exam you will have to find time to re-take it anyway. It is much better to put yourself in a strong position to pass on your first attempt.

2. Understand the Big Picture

Our course provides a large amount of information over a fairly short period, so your first step should be to solidify your understanding of the course materials. To do this, we recommend reviewing the in-class course materials, including your handouts and notes to make sure you understand the broader concepts. Make sure you are familiar with each of the 49 processes, and that you can describe in one sentence what each process is meant to achieve. By doing this, you should be able to see how certain processes interrelate with others, and hopefully recognize how each process is used to maximize project success and avoid project failures.

You might begin this process by memorizing each of the 49 processes and the process groups to which they belong. You should refer here to your Process Map sheet showing all of the processes in a grid format.

Along with memorizing the names of the processes and where they fit in, you should also be memorizing the outputs of each. Don’t get hung up on inputs and tools and techniques just yet, as that will come later on. Understanding the outputs of each process will go a long way towards helping you later fill in the inputs and outputs.

As you work towards memorizing each process and its outputs, make sure you understand why that process is important. You will likely be given scenarios on the exam where certain failures have occurred, and the question will then ask you how they may have been avoided. Therefore, think about what types of problems may occur if certain processes are skipped over or performed improperly. For example, if we created a deliverable which functioned properly but did not include all of the functionality the stakeholders were seeking, then we likely had some type of breakdown during the Collect Requirements process, or perhaps we did not properly define or control our scope.

Once you have a basic understanding of the 49 processes, then you can start filling in details.

Thank you for downloading the “8 secrets to passing the PMP exam”. This document is a very small part of the broader PMP Strategy Guide that we provide students during our live 4-day PMP exam prep course. In it you may see references to our binder or laminated course materials that students rely heavily on during their study efforts to prepare for the exam. This document assumes you will take a PMP exam prep course, which is vital to preparing for the PMP exam.

For more information about our PMP courses, please visit our website at: http://projectmanagementacademy.net/pmp-certification/

PMP Strategy Guide Contents (the selection highlighted below is in this document)

Chapter 1 - Top 10 PMP Exam Tricks pages 3 - 26

Chapter 2 - Top 25 Common Confusions on the PMP Exam pages 27 - 40

Chapter 3 - 8 secrets to passing the PMP exam1. Allow Sufficient Time to Prepare 432. Understand the Big Picture 433. Use the PMBOK ® Guide Strategically 444. Identify and Fill Gaps in Your Knowledge 445. Understand Inputs, Tools and Techniques and Outputs 456. Study Terminology, Formulas and Charts/Diagrams 457. Take Practice Exams 468. Practice a Brain Dump

Chapter 4 - What to Expect on Exam Day pages 47 - 50

Chapter 5 - Additional Study Aids pages 51 - 56

Chapter 6 - PMP Exam Readiness Checklist pages 57 - 59

Remember that you have online access to video lectures covering every topic from the PMBOK® Guide, so you should use these as needed to help clarify your understanding. Sometimes this will be the most efficient way to fill the gaps in your knowledge, as the book often glosses over certain areas or uses confusing language.

5. Understand Inputs, Tools and Techniques and Outputs

You will likely get a handful of questions on the exam requiring you to identify inputs, tools and techniques, or outputs (ITTO’s) for a given process. For many students, these may seem like the hardest questions to answer, because many processes have so many ITTO’s that it is nearly impossible to memorize them all. You should instead consider a more strategic approach to the ITTO questions.

As mentioned earlier, you should start by memorizing the outputs to each process. This is important for other types of questions as well, but it also puts you in a good position to handle questions asking for inputs to a particular process, since we know that outputs to one process nearly always become inputs to later related processes. Memorizing all outputs often allows us to use chronology to help us navigate through these questions. For example, we know that Quality Control Measurements are an output of Control Quality. Since we know we must perform the Plan Quality Management process before we can actually perform the Control Quality process, we can easily eliminate Quality Control Measurements as an answer to a question asking for the inputs to the Plan Quality Management process.

The tools and techniques present a tougher challenge, because some processes employ so many of them, and because some tools and techniques are used in multiple processes. Spend some time understanding each tool and technique you come across, just as a general matter without worrying about the process per se. Take “Make or Buy Analysis” for example, which falls under the "Data Analysis" techniques. We know this is used to determine what we can produce ourselves versus what we need to acquire from outside the organization. We could therefore eliminate Make or Buy Analysis as an answer choice to a question asking for tools used in the Control Procurements process. Naturally, we would have already made our Make or Buy Decisions before we entered into the procurement relationship, so it simply does not fit.

You might grab a notebook and simply jot down in your own words a one sentence summary of each tool and technique you come across, then refer back to these notes frequently during your preparation. Having a basic understanding of what each tool and technique accomplishes will help you effectively navigate through these ITTO questions (and others) without having to memorize every tool and technique used in each of the 49 processes.

6. Study Terminology, Formulas and Charts/Diagrams

By this time you should have a pretty good understanding of the material as a whole, so you should focus now on the more discrete items such as unique terminology, charts, formulas, etc. To do this, you should rely heavily on the course handouts. If something is listed in the handouts, you should understand it. Therefore, keep those sheets handy and refer to them often. If you take the train or bus to work, study your handout sheets on the way. You might also want to look at them during your lunch break, or other times when you want to study without committing a large block of time.

Pay special attention to the charts, as you likely will see several questions asking you which type of chart will assist you in a given situation. Along with the handouts, there is a helpful summary of each chart (located in Chapter 5) which you should understand thoroughly. In particular, make sure you understand the following items for each chart: 1) the information it contains; 2) what it looks like; 3) the purpose of it, 4) the area(s) in which it is used, and 5) the specific name(s) used to identify the chart.

Let’s use the Cause and Effect Diagram as an example. First of all, we need to know that it shows all factors we believe may be causing a particular outcome or defect, and the factors are lined up along diagonal lines which connect to a horizontal line leading up to the outcome in question (hence the “fishbone” structure). Because we are looking at factors causing certain outcomes, we will use Cause and Effect Diagrams both in Control Quality ("Data Analysis") and Identify Risks (Root Cause Analysis). Finally, we need to know that this chart is also called a “Fishbone Diagram”. Keeping track of synonyms is always important on the exam, because if you see two answer choices that mean the exact same thing, you can eliminate them both, since there is only one correct answer.

You should also understand all of the formulas and when to use each one. The earned value formulas are especially important, and you may see several questions requiring you to perform these types of calculations. In some rare cases, you may simply need to plug the numbers from the question into your formulas and do the math. More likely, however, you will need to determine which formula is appropriate based on the facts provided in the question. For example, if a question is asking about EAC and it states that the project has faced unexpected financial obstacles which are now resolved, we know the variances are atypical and we would therefore use the following formula: AC+(BAC-EV).

Apart from memorizing the formulas, make sure you understand what a particular earned value measurement means to your project. For example, you may be told that your project has a Cost Variance (CV) of $1,000 and a Schedule Performance Index (SPI) of 0.8, and you must identify what that means for your project. In this case, those values show you are under budget (since CV is a positive number) and behind schedule, since SPI is less than 1.

You may also be given an earned value figure and asked what that means for another earned value measurement. For example, if the question states that your Cost Performance Index (CPI) is 0.5, you must know that your Cost Variance (CV) will be negative. Again, remember that simply memorizing the formulas will not help you much if you don’t understand what the values are telling you.

7. Take Practice Exams

In addition to the mock exam from class, you should do at least three (and often more) full-length practice exams online. Since these questions are shorter and more straightforward than those you are likely to see on the real exam, it is imperative that you score above 85% on a full-length, online practice exam before you sit for the real thing. If you happen to score above 85% on your first try, take another one to validate the first score and get more practice.

Of course you need to understand the materials to succeed on the exam, but you also need to get comfortable with taking a long exam. It is not easy to keep focused and alert throughout a 200-question exam, so you should work on conditioning your mind so it will hold up during what is likely to be a long and challenging four hours.

When you are taking the practice questions, especially the online questions, keep in mind that these are not always designed to mimic what you will see on the exam. Instead, many of these questions are designed to help you learn the material as efficiently as possible, and to help you identify gaps in your knowledge. As such, the online practice questions can be a bit shorter and more straightforward. Do not assume the questions on the real exam will be like this. It is a difficult exam, and you should therefore be prepared for longer, and perhaps more confusing questions.

If you want to practice with some of the longer and trickier questions, you should refer back to the in-class practice questions, which are provided in the online training portal. Many of these questions are designed to be trickier and more complex, and the explanations will identify the particular tricks being used so you can be prepared to spot them on the exam. You may also want to re-take your mock exam from class, as this also contains longer and trickier questions.

8. Practice A Brain Dump

By now you are ready to take the exam, and you just need to make sure you can write out some materials to which you will refer during the exam. When you sit down to take the exam, you will be given scratch paper or a dry-erase board. There are two things you will want to write down: 1) all of the formulas and 2) the grid showing the 49 processes. You should practice doing this at least twice before the exam, and time yourself to see how long it takes you. Your brain dump will be an invaluable resource as you go through the exam, so make sure you are in a position to get the maximum possible benefit.

For a complete listing and description of all of the course materials we provide in our PMP course, please click here: http://projectmanagementacademy.net/pmp-certification/

3. Use the PMBOK® Guide Strategically

Some of you may have read the PMBOK® Guide before class and that hopefully helped you better absorb the material. Unfortunately, the PMBOK® Guide can be somewhat confusing to many students because it does not follow any chronological order, and because it uses terminology which may be very different than what is used in your workplace. If you read the PMBOK® Guide before class and found yourself scratching your head, then this would be a good time to go over it again. By now you should have a pretty good sense of the broad concepts, chronology, terminology, etc., so it should make more sense this time around.

For those who did not read the PMBOK® Guide before class, this is the time to do so. Because the PMBOK® Guide is not organized chronologically, you may want to read it in conjunction with your PMA® course book. For each section of the course book you will see a number (i.e. 2.1), which corresponds to a PMBOK® Guide chapter. It may help to read the PMBOK® Guide chapters in the order presented in the PMA® course book, so you get a sense of context and chronology. Just make sure you check off each chapter as you read it, so you can make sure you have covered the whole PMBOK® Guide.

The material in the PMBOK® Guide will form the basis for much of the exam (though the examiners may test on other items they expect you to have learned from your work experience). As such, you should spend a good deal of time reading and understanding the PMBOK® Guide, but you should not spend all your time simply re-reading it. Once you have read and understood the entire book, you should then use it as a reference guide to help reinforce your understanding of key concepts, and to fill gaps in your knowledge. For example, when you miss a practice question and realize you are a little hazy on that topic, go right to that section of the book and read up on it. Then put a flag on that page as a reminder that you had some confusion on that issue, and perhaps keep a separate log showing areas of confusion that you need to clarify before exam day.

4. Identify and Fill Gaps in Your Knowledge

Since this is a pass/fail examination, you will be able to pass without knowing every single detail for every topic in the PMBOK® Guide. It would be great if you did achieve this level of understanding, but we need to be realistic and use our time strategically. Instead, you should make sure there are no significant gaps in your understanding of the material, as these can very easily cause you to fail the exam.

The best way to identify gaps in your knowledge is to do lots of practice questions. Sometimes you will miss the question because you didn’t read it carefully or because it contained a trick. When you miss a question because you don’t understand the material, however, you need to fill that knowledge gap.

Sometimes reading the answer explanation is sufficient, but oftentimes you will need to delve deeper into the material to make sure you really understand the topic in question. There is nothing wrong with missing a lot of practice questions. Indeed, you should view a missed practice question as a good thing, because it identifies gaps in your knowledge which you can now go back and address. Make the mistakes during your preparation, not on the exam. The key here is to review every practice question carefully, whether you got it right or wrong. Sometimes you will get the answer right, but you chose it for the wrong reason, or maybe you just got lucky. Remember, answering the practice questions is only part of the exercise. The learning occurs when you closely review every question and answer.

To help you identify areas of weakness, you should keep a log showing the type of questions you missed. This log will identify trends in your performance, thereby allowing you to focus your study efforts on those areas where you are weakest. Try to be specific when you create this log. For example, instead of simply noting a missed question on risk management, note that you missed a question about the difference between qualitative and quantitative risk analysis.

PMP Strategy Guide

© 2018 Project Management Academy®. All rights reserved.PMI, PMBOK, PMP, CAPM, and the PMI Registered Education Provider logo are registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.PMI R.E.P Provider ID #3348

Sometimes students struggle with how to effectively allocate study time between the course completion and exam day. While there is no “one size fits all” approach, the following is a framework that will help ensure you are prepared and confident when you sit for the exam.

1. Allow Sufficient Time to Prepare

Some training providers set an expectation that you should take the exam immediately after completing the course (i.e. pass on the fifth day). That method may have worked many years ago when the PMP® Exam was much easier. Unfortunately, the exam is much more difficult these days and thus you will need extra preparation time. Therefore, we strongly suggest that you take a few weeks to study on your own before taking the exam. There are a few reasons for this.

First, you will likely feel mentally fatigued after the boot camp training, and therefore not in a position to perform your best immediately following the course completion. Second, the exam is difficult, and you will need time to solidify your understanding of the materials. Finally, you will want to take additional practice exams after the class to ensure you are truly prepared to take the exam.

Some students choose to ignore this advice and try to take the exam within a couple days of the course completion. The success rate for these students is dramatically lower than for those who allow at least a week of individual study time. Sometimes students feel constrained by their schedules, and feel they have no choice but to take the exam immediately. However, scheduling concerns should not force you to take the exam prematurely, because if you fail the exam you will have to find time to re-take it anyway. It is much better to put yourself in a strong position to pass on your first attempt.

2. Understand the Big Picture

Our course provides a large amount of information over a fairly short period, so your first step should be to solidify your understanding of the course materials. To do this, we recommend reviewing the in-class course materials, including your handouts and notes to make sure you understand the broader concepts. Make sure you are familiar with each of the 49 processes, and that you can describe in one sentence what each process is meant to achieve. By doing this, you should be able to see how certain processes interrelate with others, and hopefully recognize how each process is used to maximize project success and avoid project failures.

You might begin this process by memorizing each of the 49 processes and the process groups to which they belong. You should refer here to your Process Map sheet showing all of the processes in a grid format.

Along with memorizing the names of the processes and where they fit in, you should also be memorizing the outputs of each. Don’t get hung up on inputs and tools and techniques just yet, as that will come later on. Understanding the outputs of each process will go a long way towards helping you later fill in the inputs and outputs.

As you work towards memorizing each process and its outputs, make sure you understand why that process is important. You will likely be given scenarios on the exam where certain failures have occurred, and the question will then ask you how they may have been avoided. Therefore, think about what types of problems may occur if certain processes are skipped over or performed improperly. For example, if we created a deliverable which functioned properly but did not include all of the functionality the stakeholders were seeking, then we likely had some type of breakdown during the Collect Requirements process, or perhaps we did not properly define or control our scope.

Once you have a basic understanding of the 49 processes, then you can start filling in details.

PMP Strategy Guide

Remember that you have online access to video lectures covering every topic from the PMBOK® Guide, so you should use these as needed to help clarify your understanding. Sometimes this will be the most efficient way to fill the gaps in your knowledge, as the book often glosses over certain areas or uses confusing language.

5. Understand Inputs, Tools and Techniques and Outputs

You will likely get a handful of questions on the exam requiring you to identify inputs, tools and techniques, or outputs (ITTO’s) for a given process. For many students, these may seem like the hardest questions to answer, because many processes have so many ITTO’s that it is nearly impossible to memorize them all. You should instead consider a more strategic approach to the ITTO questions.

As mentioned earlier, you should start by memorizing the outputs to each process. This is important for other types of questions as well, but it also puts you in a good position to handle questions asking for inputs to a particular process, since we know that outputs to one process nearly always become inputs to later related processes. Memorizing all outputs often allows us to use chronology to help us navigate through these questions. For example, we know that Quality Control Measurements are an output of Control Quality. Since we know we must perform the Plan Quality Management process before we can actually perform the Control Quality process, we can easily eliminate Quality Control Measurements as an answer to a question asking for the inputs to the Plan Quality Management process.

The tools and techniques present a tougher challenge, because some processes employ so many of them, and because some tools and techniques are used in multiple processes. Spend some time understanding each tool and technique you come across, just as a general matter without worrying about the process per se. Take “Make or Buy Analysis” for example, which falls under the "Data Analysis" techniques. We know this is used to determine what we can produce ourselves versus what we need to acquire from outside the organization. We could therefore eliminate Make or Buy Analysis as an answer choice to a question asking for tools used in the Control Procurements process. Naturally, we would have already made our Make or Buy Decisions before we entered into the procurement relationship, so it simply does not fit.

You might grab a notebook and simply jot down in your own words a one sentence summary of each tool and technique you come across, then refer back to these notes frequently during your preparation. Having a basic understanding of what each tool and technique accomplishes will help you effectively navigate through these ITTO questions (and others) without having to memorize every tool and technique used in each of the 49 processes.

6. Study Terminology, Formulas and Charts/Diagrams

By this time you should have a pretty good understanding of the material as a whole, so you should focus now on the more discrete items such as unique terminology, charts, formulas, etc. To do this, you should rely heavily on the course handouts. If something is listed in the handouts, you should understand it. Therefore, keep those sheets handy and refer to them often. If you take the train or bus to work, study your handout sheets on the way. You might also want to look at them during your lunch break, or other times when you want to study without committing a large block of time.

Pay special attention to the charts, as you likely will see several questions asking you which type of chart will assist you in a given situation. Along with the handouts, there is a helpful summary of each chart (located in Chapter 5) which you should understand thoroughly. In particular, make sure you understand the following items for each chart: 1) the information it contains; 2) what it looks like; 3) the purpose of it, 4) the area(s) in which it is used, and 5) the specific name(s) used to identify the chart.

Let’s use the Cause and Effect Diagram as an example. First of all, we need to know that it shows all factors we believe may be causing a particular outcome or defect, and the factors are lined up along diagonal lines which connect to a horizontal line leading up to the outcome in question (hence the “fishbone” structure). Because we are looking at factors causing certain outcomes, we will use Cause and Effect Diagrams both in Control Quality ("Data Analysis") and Identify Risks (Root Cause Analysis). Finally, we need to know that this chart is also called a “Fishbone Diagram”. Keeping track of synonyms is always important on the exam, because if you see two answer choices that mean the exact same thing, you can eliminate them both, since there is only one correct answer.

You should also understand all of the formulas and when to use each one. The earned value formulas are especially important, and you may see several questions requiring you to perform these types of calculations. In some rare cases, you may simply need to plug the numbers from the question into your formulas and do the math. More likely, however, you will need to determine which formula is appropriate based on the facts provided in the question. For example, if a question is asking about EAC and it states that the project has faced unexpected financial obstacles which are now resolved, we know the variances are atypical and we would therefore use the following formula: AC+(BAC-EV).

Apart from memorizing the formulas, make sure you understand what a particular earned value measurement means to your project. For example, you may be told that your project has a Cost Variance (CV) of $1,000 and a Schedule Performance Index (SPI) of 0.8, and you must identify what that means for your project. In this case, those values show you are under budget (since CV is a positive number) and behind schedule, since SPI is less than 1.

You may also be given an earned value figure and asked what that means for another earned value measurement. For example, if the question states that your Cost Performance Index (CPI) is 0.5, you must know that your Cost Variance (CV) will be negative. Again, remember that simply memorizing the formulas will not help you much if you don’t understand what the values are telling you.

7. Take Practice Exams

In addition to the mock exam from class, you should do at least three (and often more) full-length practice exams online. Since these questions are shorter and more straightforward than those you are likely to see on the real exam, it is imperative that you score above 85% on a full-length, online practice exam before you sit for the real thing. If you happen to score above 85% on your first try, take another one to validate the first score and get more practice.

Of course you need to understand the materials to succeed on the exam, but you also need to get comfortable with taking a long exam. It is not easy to keep focused and alert throughout a 200-question exam, so you should work on conditioning your mind so it will hold up during what is likely to be a long and challenging four hours.

When you are taking the practice questions, especially the online questions, keep in mind that these are not always designed to mimic what you will see on the exam. Instead, many of these questions are designed to help you learn the material as efficiently as possible, and to help you identify gaps in your knowledge. As such, the online practice questions can be a bit shorter and more straightforward. Do not assume the questions on the real exam will be like this. It is a difficult exam, and you should therefore be prepared for longer, and perhaps more confusing questions.

If you want to practice with some of the longer and trickier questions, you should refer back to the in-class practice questions, which are provided in the online training portal. Many of these questions are designed to be trickier and more complex, and the explanations will identify the particular tricks being used so you can be prepared to spot them on the exam. You may also want to re-take your mock exam from class, as this also contains longer and trickier questions.

8. Practice A Brain Dump

By now you are ready to take the exam, and you just need to make sure you can write out some materials to which you will refer during the exam. When you sit down to take the exam, you will be given scratch paper or a dry-erase board. There are two things you will want to write down: 1) all of the formulas and 2) the grid showing the 49 processes. You should practice doing this at least twice before the exam, and time yourself to see how long it takes you. Your brain dump will be an invaluable resource as you go through the exam, so make sure you are in a position to get the maximum possible benefit.

For a complete listing and description of all of the course materials we provide in our PMP course, please click here: http://projectmanagementacademy.net/pmp-certification/

3. Use the PMBOK® Guide Strategically

Some of you may have read the PMBOK® Guide before class and that hopefully helped you better absorb the material. Unfortunately, the PMBOK® Guide can be somewhat confusing to many students because it does not follow any chronological order, and because it uses terminology which may be very different than what is used in your workplace. If you read the PMBOK® Guide before class and found yourself scratching your head, then this would be a good time to go over it again. By now you should have a pretty good sense of the broad concepts, chronology, terminology, etc., so it should make more sense this time around.

For those who did not read the PMBOK® Guide before class, this is the time to do so. Because the PMBOK® Guide is not organized chronologically, you may want to read it in conjunction with your PMA® course book. For each section of the course book you will see a number (i.e. 2.1), which corresponds to a PMBOK® Guide chapter. It may help to read the PMBOK® Guide chapters in the order presented in the PMA® course book, so you get a sense of context and chronology. Just make sure you check off each chapter as you read it, so you can make sure you have covered the whole PMBOK® Guide.

The material in the PMBOK® Guide will form the basis for much of the exam (though the examiners may test on other items they expect you to have learned from your work experience). As such, you should spend a good deal of time reading and understanding the PMBOK® Guide, but you should not spend all your time simply re-reading it. Once you have read and understood the entire book, you should then use it as a reference guide to help reinforce your understanding of key concepts, and to fill gaps in your knowledge. For example, when you miss a practice question and realize you are a little hazy on that topic, go right to that section of the book and read up on it. Then put a flag on that page as a reminder that you had some confusion on that issue, and perhaps keep a separate log showing areas of confusion that you need to clarify before exam day.

4. Identify and Fill Gaps in Your Knowledge

Since this is a pass/fail examination, you will be able to pass without knowing every single detail for every topic in the PMBOK® Guide. It would be great if you did achieve this level of understanding, but we need to be realistic and use our time strategically. Instead, you should make sure there are no significant gaps in your understanding of the material, as these can very easily cause you to fail the exam.

The best way to identify gaps in your knowledge is to do lots of practice questions. Sometimes you will miss the question because you didn’t read it carefully or because it contained a trick. When you miss a question because you don’t understand the material, however, you need to fill that knowledge gap.

Sometimes reading the answer explanation is sufficient, but oftentimes you will need to delve deeper into the material to make sure you really understand the topic in question. There is nothing wrong with missing a lot of practice questions. Indeed, you should view a missed practice question as a good thing, because it identifies gaps in your knowledge which you can now go back and address. Make the mistakes during your preparation, not on the exam. The key here is to review every practice question carefully, whether you got it right or wrong. Sometimes you will get the answer right, but you chose it for the wrong reason, or maybe you just got lucky. Remember, answering the practice questions is only part of the exercise. The learning occurs when you closely review every question and answer.

To help you identify areas of weakness, you should keep a log showing the type of questions you missed. This log will identify trends in your performance, thereby allowing you to focus your study efforts on those areas where you are weakest. Try to be specific when you create this log. For example, instead of simply noting a missed question on risk management, note that you missed a question about the difference between qualitative and quantitative risk analysis.

Sometimes students struggle with how to effectively allocate study time between the course completion and exam day. While there is no “one size fits all” approach, the following is a framework that will help ensure you are prepared and confident when you sit for the exam.

1. Allow Sufficient Time to Prepare

Some training providers set an expectation that you should take the exam immediately after completing the course (i.e. pass on the fifth day). That method may have worked many years ago when the PMP® Exam was much easier. Unfortunately, the exam is much more difficult these days and thus you will need extra preparation time. Therefore, we strongly suggest that you take a few weeks to study on your own before taking the exam. There are a few reasons for this.

First, you will likely feel mentally fatigued after the boot camp training, and therefore not in a position to perform your best immediately following the course completion. Second, the exam is difficult, and you will need time to solidify your understanding of the materials. Finally, you will want to take additional practice exams after the class to ensure you are truly prepared to take the exam.

Some students choose to ignore this advice and try to take the exam within a couple days of the course completion. The success rate for these students is dramatically lower than for those who allow at least a week of individual study time. Sometimes students feel constrained by their schedules, and feel they have no choice but to take the exam immediately. However, scheduling concerns should not force you to take the exam prematurely, because if you fail the exam you will have to find time to re-take it anyway. It is much better to put yourself in a strong position to pass on your first attempt.

2. Understand the Big Picture

Our course provides a large amount of information over a fairly short period, so your first step should be to solidify your understanding of the course materials. To do this, we recommend reviewing the in-class course materials, including your handouts and notes to make sure you understand the broader concepts. Make sure you are familiar with each of the 49 processes, and that you can describe in one sentence what each process is meant to achieve. By doing this, you should be able to see how certain processes interrelate with others, and hopefully recognize how each process is used to maximize project success and avoid project failures.

You might begin this process by memorizing each of the 49 processes and the process groups to which they belong. You should refer here to your Process Map sheet showing all of the processes in a grid format.

Along with memorizing the names of the processes and where they fit in, you should also be memorizing the outputs of each. Don’t get hung up on inputs and tools and techniques just yet, as that will come later on. Understanding the outputs of each process will go a long way towards helping you later fill in the inputs and outputs.

As you work towards memorizing each process and its outputs, make sure you understand why that process is important. You will likely be given scenarios on the exam where certain failures have occurred, and the question will then ask you how they may have been avoided. Therefore, think about what types of problems may occur if certain processes are skipped over or performed improperly. For example, if we created a deliverable which functioned properly but did not include all of the functionality the stakeholders were seeking, then we likely had some type of breakdown during the Collect Requirements process, or perhaps we did not properly define or control our scope.

Once you have a basic understanding of the 49 processes, then you can start filling in details.

Remember that you have online access to video lectures covering every topic from the PMBOK® Guide, so you should use these as needed to help clarify your understanding. Sometimes this will be the most efficient way to fill the gaps in your knowledge, as the book often glosses over certain areas or uses confusing language.

5. Understand Inputs, Tools and Techniques and Outputs

You will likely get a handful of questions on the exam requiring you to identify inputs, tools and techniques, or outputs (ITTO’s) for a given process. For many students, these may seem like the hardest questions to answer, because many processes have so many ITTO’s that it is nearly impossible to memorize them all. You should instead consider a more strategic approach to the ITTO questions.

As mentioned earlier, you should start by memorizing the outputs to each process. This is important for other types of questions as well, but it also puts you in a good position to handle questions asking for inputs to a particular process, since we know that outputs to one process nearly always become inputs to later related processes. Memorizing all outputs often allows us to use chronology to help us navigate through these questions. For example, we know that Quality Control Measurements are an output of Control Quality. Since we know we must perform the Plan Quality Management process before we can actually perform the Control Quality process, we can easily eliminate Quality Control Measurements as an answer to a question asking for the inputs to the Plan Quality Management process.

The tools and techniques present a tougher challenge, because some processes employ so many of them, and because some tools and techniques are used in multiple processes. Spend some time understanding each tool and technique you come across, just as a general matter without worrying about the process per se. Take “Make or Buy Analysis” for example, which falls under the "Data Analysis" techniques. We know this is used to determine what we can produce ourselves versus what we need to acquire from outside the organization. We could therefore eliminate Make or Buy Analysis as an answer choice to a question asking for tools used in the Control Procurements process. Naturally, we would have already made our Make or Buy Decisions before we entered into the procurement relationship, so it simply does not fit.

You might grab a notebook and simply jot down in your own words a one sentence summary of each tool and technique you come across, then refer back to these notes frequently during your preparation. Having a basic understanding of what each tool and technique accomplishes will help you effectively navigate through these ITTO questions (and others) without having to memorize every tool and technique used in each of the 49 processes.

6. Study Terminology, Formulas and Charts/Diagrams

By this time you should have a pretty good understanding of the material as a whole, so you should focus now on the more discrete items such as unique terminology, charts, formulas, etc. To do this, you should rely heavily on the course handouts. If something is listed in the handouts, you should understand it. Therefore, keep those sheets handy and refer to them often. If you take the train or bus to work, study your handout sheets on the way. You might also want to look at them during your lunch break, or other times when you want to study without committing a large block of time.

Pay special attention to the charts, as you likely will see several questions asking you which type of chart will assist you in a given situation. Along with the handouts, there is a helpful summary of each chart (located in Chapter 5) which you should understand thoroughly. In particular, make sure you understand the following items for each chart: 1) the information it contains; 2) what it looks like; 3) the purpose of it, 4) the area(s) in which it is used, and 5) the specific name(s) used to identify the chart.

Let’s use the Cause and Effect Diagram as an example. First of all, we need to know that it shows all factors we believe may be causing a particular outcome or defect, and the factors are lined up along diagonal lines which connect to a horizontal line leading up to the outcome in question (hence the “fishbone” structure). Because we are looking at factors causing certain outcomes, we will use Cause and Effect Diagrams both in Control Quality ("Data Analysis") and Identify Risks (Root Cause Analysis). Finally, we need to know that this chart is also called a “Fishbone Diagram”. Keeping track of synonyms is always important on the exam, because if you see two answer choices that mean the exact same thing, you can eliminate them both, since there is only one correct answer.

You should also understand all of the formulas and when to use each one. The earned value formulas are especially important, and you may see several questions requiring you to perform these types of calculations. In some rare cases, you may simply need to plug the numbers from the question into your formulas and do the math. More likely, however, you will need to determine which formula is appropriate based on the facts provided in the question. For example, if a question is asking about EAC and it states that the project has faced unexpected financial obstacles which are now resolved, we know the variances are atypical and we would therefore use the following formula: AC+(BAC-EV).

Apart from memorizing the formulas, make sure you understand what a particular earned value measurement means to your project. For example, you may be told that your project has a Cost Variance (CV) of $1,000 and a Schedule Performance Index (SPI) of 0.8, and you must identify what that means for your project. In this case, those values show you are under budget (since CV is a positive number) and behind schedule, since SPI is less than 1.

You may also be given an earned value figure and asked what that means for another earned value measurement. For example, if the question states that your Cost Performance Index (CPI) is 0.5, you must know that your Cost Variance (CV) will be negative. Again, remember that simply memorizing the formulas will not help you much if you don’t understand what the values are telling you.

7. Take Practice Exams

In addition to the mock exam from class, you should do at least three (and often more) full-length practice exams online. Since these questions are shorter and more straightforward than those you are likely to see on the real exam, it is imperative that you score above 85% on a full-length, online practice exam before you sit for the real thing. If you happen to score above 85% on your first try, take another one to validate the first score and get more practice.

Of course you need to understand the materials to succeed on the exam, but you also need to get comfortable with taking a long exam. It is not easy to keep focused and alert throughout a 200-question exam, so you should work on conditioning your mind so it will hold up during what is likely to be a long and challenging four hours.

When you are taking the practice questions, especially the online questions, keep in mind that these are not always designed to mimic what you will see on the exam. Instead, many of these questions are designed to help you learn the material as efficiently as possible, and to help you identify gaps in your knowledge. As such, the online practice questions can be a bit shorter and more straightforward. Do not assume the questions on the real exam will be like this. It is a difficult exam, and you should therefore be prepared for longer, and perhaps more confusing questions.

If you want to practice with some of the longer and trickier questions, you should refer back to the in-class practice questions, which are provided in the online training portal. Many of these questions are designed to be trickier and more complex, and the explanations will identify the particular tricks being used so you can be prepared to spot them on the exam. You may also want to re-take your mock exam from class, as this also contains longer and trickier questions.

8. Practice A Brain Dump

By now you are ready to take the exam, and you just need to make sure you can write out some materials to which you will refer during the exam. When you sit down to take the exam, you will be given scratch paper or a dry-erase board. There are two things you will want to write down: 1) all of the formulas and 2) the grid showing the 49 processes. You should practice doing this at least twice before the exam, and time yourself to see how long it takes you. Your brain dump will be an invaluable resource as you go through the exam, so make sure you are in a position to get the maximum possible benefit.

For a complete listing and description of all of the course materials we provide in our PMP course, please click here: http://projectmanagementacademy.net/pmp-certification/

3. Use the PMBOK® Guide Strategically

Some of you may have read the PMBOK® Guide before class and that hopefully helped you better absorb the material. Unfortunately, the PMBOK® Guide can be somewhat confusing to many students because it does not follow any chronological order, and because it uses terminology which may be very different than what is used in your workplace. If you read the PMBOK® Guide before class and found yourself scratching your head, then this would be a good time to go over it again. By now you should have a pretty good sense of the broad concepts, chronology, terminology, etc., so it should make more sense this time around.

For those who did not read the PMBOK® Guide before class, this is the time to do so. Because the PMBOK® Guide is not organized chronologically, you may want to read it in conjunction with your PMA® course book. For each section of the course book you will see a number (i.e. 2.1), which corresponds to a PMBOK® Guide chapter. It may help to read the PMBOK® Guide chapters in the order presented in the PMA® course book, so you get a sense of context and chronology. Just make sure you check off each chapter as you read it, so you can make sure you have covered the whole PMBOK® Guide.

The material in the PMBOK® Guide will form the basis for much of the exam (though the examiners may test on other items they expect you to have learned from your work experience). As such, you should spend a good deal of time reading and understanding the PMBOK® Guide, but you should not spend all your time simply re-reading it. Once you have read and understood the entire book, you should then use it as a reference guide to help reinforce your understanding of key concepts, and to fill gaps in your knowledge. For example, when you miss a practice question and realize you are a little hazy on that topic, go right to that section of the book and read up on it. Then put a flag on that page as a reminder that you had some confusion on that issue, and perhaps keep a separate log showing areas of confusion that you need to clarify before exam day.

4. Identify and Fill Gaps in Your Knowledge

Since this is a pass/fail examination, you will be able to pass without knowing every single detail for every topic in the PMBOK® Guide. It would be great if you did achieve this level of understanding, but we need to be realistic and use our time strategically. Instead, you should make sure there are no significant gaps in your understanding of the material, as these can very easily cause you to fail the exam.

The best way to identify gaps in your knowledge is to do lots of practice questions. Sometimes you will miss the question because you didn’t read it carefully or because it contained a trick. When you miss a question because you don’t understand the material, however, you need to fill that knowledge gap.

Sometimes reading the answer explanation is sufficient, but oftentimes you will need to delve deeper into the material to make sure you really understand the topic in question. There is nothing wrong with missing a lot of practice questions. Indeed, you should view a missed practice question as a good thing, because it identifies gaps in your knowledge which you can now go back and address. Make the mistakes during your preparation, not on the exam. The key here is to review every practice question carefully, whether you got it right or wrong. Sometimes you will get the answer right, but you chose it for the wrong reason, or maybe you just got lucky. Remember, answering the practice questions is only part of the exercise. The learning occurs when you closely review every question and answer.

To help you identify areas of weakness, you should keep a log showing the type of questions you missed. This log will identify trends in your performance, thereby allowing you to focus your study efforts on those areas where you are weakest. Try to be specific when you create this log. For example, instead of simply noting a missed question on risk management, note that you missed a question about the difference between qualitative and quantitative risk analysis.

PMP Strategy Guide

Sometimes students struggle with how to effectively allocate study time between the course completion and exam day. While there is no “one size fits all” approach, the following is a framework that will help ensure you are prepared and confident when you sit for the exam.

1. Allow Sufficient Time to Prepare

Some training providers set an expectation that you should take the exam immediately after completing the course (i.e. pass on the fifth day). That method may have worked many years ago when the PMP® Exam was much easier. Unfortunately, the exam is much more difficult these days and thus you will need extra preparation time. Therefore, we strongly suggest that you take a few weeks to study on your own before taking the exam. There are a few reasons for this.

First, you will likely feel mentally fatigued after the boot camp training, and therefore not in a position to perform your best immediately following the course completion. Second, the exam is difficult, and you will need time to solidify your understanding of the materials. Finally, you will want to take additional practice exams after the class to ensure you are truly prepared to take the exam.

Some students choose to ignore this advice and try to take the exam within a couple days of the course completion. The success rate for these students is dramatically lower than for those who allow at least a week of individual study time. Sometimes students feel constrained by their schedules, and feel they have no choice but to take the exam immediately. However, scheduling concerns should not force you to take the exam prematurely, because if you fail the exam you will have to find time to re-take it anyway. It is much better to put yourself in a strong position to pass on your first attempt.

2. Understand the Big Picture

Our course provides a large amount of information over a fairly short period, so your first step should be to solidify your understanding of the course materials. To do this, we recommend reviewing the in-class course materials, including your handouts and notes to make sure you understand the broader concepts. Make sure you are familiar with each of the 49 processes, and that you can describe in one sentence what each process is meant to achieve. By doing this, you should be able to see how certain processes interrelate with others, and hopefully recognize how each process is used to maximize project success and avoid project failures.

You might begin this process by memorizing each of the 49 processes and the process groups to which they belong. You should refer here to your Process Map sheet showing all of the processes in a grid format.

Along with memorizing the names of the processes and where they fit in, you should also be memorizing the outputs of each. Don’t get hung up on inputs and tools and techniques just yet, as that will come later on. Understanding the outputs of each process will go a long way towards helping you later fill in the inputs and outputs.

As you work towards memorizing each process and its outputs, make sure you understand why that process is important. You will likely be given scenarios on the exam where certain failures have occurred, and the question will then ask you how they may have been avoided. Therefore, think about what types of problems may occur if certain processes are skipped over or performed improperly. For example, if we created a deliverable which functioned properly but did not include all of the functionality the stakeholders were seeking, then we likely had some type of breakdown during the Collect Requirements process, or perhaps we did not properly define or control our scope.

Once you have a basic understanding of the 49 processes, then you can start filling in details.

Remember that you have online access to video lectures covering every topic from the PMBOK® Guide, so you should use these as needed to help clarify your understanding. Sometimes this will be the most efficient way to fill the gaps in your knowledge, as the book often glosses over certain areas or uses confusing language.

5. Understand Inputs, Tools and Techniques and Outputs

You will likely get a handful of questions on the exam requiring you to identify inputs, tools and techniques, or outputs (ITTO’s) for a given process. For many students, these may seem like the hardest questions to answer, because many processes have so many ITTO’s that it is nearly impossible to memorize them all. You should instead consider a more strategic approach to the ITTO questions.

As mentioned earlier, you should start by memorizing the outputs to each process. This is important for other types of questions as well, but it also puts you in a good position to handle questions asking for inputs to a particular process, since we know that outputs to one process nearly always become inputs to later related processes. Memorizing all outputs often allows us to use chronology to help us navigate through these questions. For example, we know that Quality Control Measurements are an output of Control Quality. Since we know we must perform the Plan Quality Management process before we can actually perform the Control Quality process, we can easily eliminate Quality Control Measurements as an answer to a question asking for the inputs to the Plan Quality Management process.

The tools and techniques present a tougher challenge, because some processes employ so many of them, and because some tools and techniques are used in multiple processes. Spend some time understanding each tool and technique you come across, just as a general matter without worrying about the process per se. Take “Make or Buy Analysis” for example, which falls under the "Data Analysis" techniques. We know this is used to determine what we can produce ourselves versus what we need to acquire from outside the organization. We could therefore eliminate Make or Buy Analysis as an answer choice to a question asking for tools used in the Control Procurements process. Naturally, we would have already made our Make or Buy Decisions before we entered into the procurement relationship, so it simply does not fit.

You might grab a notebook and simply jot down in your own words a one sentence summary of each tool and technique you come across, then refer back to these notes frequently during your preparation. Having a basic understanding of what each tool and technique accomplishes will help you effectively navigate through these ITTO questions (and others) without having to memorize every tool and technique used in each of the 49 processes.

6. Study Terminology, Formulas and Charts/Diagrams

By this time you should have a pretty good understanding of the material as a whole, so you should focus now on the more discrete items such as unique terminology, charts, formulas, etc. To do this, you should rely heavily on the course handouts. If something is listed in the handouts, you should understand it. Therefore, keep those sheets handy and refer to them often. If you take the train or bus to work, study your handout sheets on the way. You might also want to look at them during your lunch break, or other times when you want to study without committing a large block of time.

Pay special attention to the charts, as you likely will see several questions asking you which type of chart will assist you in a given situation. Along with the handouts, there is a helpful summary of each chart (located in Chapter 5) which you should understand thoroughly. In particular, make sure you understand the following items for each chart: 1) the information it contains; 2) what it looks like; 3) the purpose of it, 4) the area(s) in which it is used, and 5) the specific name(s) used to identify the chart.

Let’s use the Cause and Effect Diagram as an example. First of all, we need to know that it shows all factors we believe may be causing a particular outcome or defect, and the factors are lined up along diagonal lines which connect to a horizontal line leading up to the outcome in question (hence the “fishbone” structure). Because we are looking at factors causing certain outcomes, we will use Cause and Effect Diagrams both in Control Quality ("Data Analysis") and Identify Risks (Root Cause Analysis). Finally, we need to know that this chart is also called a “Fishbone Diagram”. Keeping track of synonyms is always important on the exam, because if you see two answer choices that mean the exact same thing, you can eliminate them both, since there is only one correct answer.

You should also understand all of the formulas and when to use each one. The earned value formulas are especially important, and you may see several questions requiring you to perform these types of calculations. In some rare cases, you may simply need to plug the numbers from the question into your formulas and do the math. More likely, however, you will need to determine which formula is appropriate based on the facts provided in the question. For example, if a question is asking about EAC and it states that the project has faced unexpected financial obstacles which are now resolved, we know the variances are atypical and we would therefore use the following formula: AC+(BAC-EV).

Apart from memorizing the formulas, make sure you understand what a particular earned value measurement means to your project. For example, you may be told that your project has a Cost Variance (CV) of $1,000 and a Schedule Performance Index (SPI) of 0.8, and you must identify what that means for your project. In this case, those values show you are under budget (since CV is a positive number) and behind schedule, since SPI is less than 1.

You may also be given an earned value figure and asked what that means for another earned value measurement. For example, if the question states that your Cost Performance Index (CPI) is 0.5, you must know that your Cost Variance (CV) will be negative. Again, remember that simply memorizing the formulas will not help you much if you don’t understand what the values are telling you.

7. Take Practice Exams

In addition to the mock exam from class, you should do at least three (and often more) full-length practice exams online. Since these questions are shorter and more straightforward than those you are likely to see on the real exam, it is imperative that you score above 85% on a full-length, online practice exam before you sit for the real thing. If you happen to score above 85% on your first try, take another one to validate the first score and get more practice.

Of course you need to understand the materials to succeed on the exam, but you also need to get comfortable with taking a long exam. It is not easy to keep focused and alert throughout a 200-question exam, so you should work on conditioning your mind so it will hold up during what is likely to be a long and challenging four hours.

When you are taking the practice questions, especially the online questions, keep in mind that these are not always designed to mimic what you will see on the exam. Instead, many of these questions are designed to help you learn the material as efficiently as possible, and to help you identify gaps in your knowledge. As such, the online practice questions can be a bit shorter and more straightforward. Do not assume the questions on the real exam will be like this. It is a difficult exam, and you should therefore be prepared for longer, and perhaps more confusing questions.

If you want to practice with some of the longer and trickier questions, you should refer back to the in-class practice questions, which are provided in the online training portal. Many of these questions are designed to be trickier and more complex, and the explanations will identify the particular tricks being used so you can be prepared to spot them on the exam. You may also want to re-take your mock exam from class, as this also contains longer and trickier questions.

8. Practice A Brain Dump

By now you are ready to take the exam, and you just need to make sure you can write out some materials to which you will refer during the exam. When you sit down to take the exam, you will be given scratch paper or a dry-erase board. There are two things you will want to write down: 1) all of the formulas and 2) the grid showing the 49 processes. You should practice doing this at least twice before the exam, and time yourself to see how long it takes you. Your brain dump will be an invaluable resource as you go through the exam, so make sure you are in a position to get the maximum possible benefit.

For a complete listing and description of all of the course materials we provide in our PMP course, please click here: http://projectmanagementacademy.net/pmp-certification/

3. Use the PMBOK® Guide Strategically

Some of you may have read the PMBOK® Guide before class and that hopefully helped you better absorb the material. Unfortunately, the PMBOK® Guide can be somewhat confusing to many students because it does not follow any chronological order, and because it uses terminology which may be very different than what is used in your workplace. If you read the PMBOK® Guide before class and found yourself scratching your head, then this would be a good time to go over it again. By now you should have a pretty good sense of the broad concepts, chronology, terminology, etc., so it should make more sense this time around.

For those who did not read the PMBOK® Guide before class, this is the time to do so. Because the PMBOK® Guide is not organized chronologically, you may want to read it in conjunction with your PMA® course book. For each section of the course book you will see a number (i.e. 2.1), which corresponds to a PMBOK® Guide chapter. It may help to read the PMBOK® Guide chapters in the order presented in the PMA® course book, so you get a sense of context and chronology. Just make sure you check off each chapter as you read it, so you can make sure you have covered the whole PMBOK® Guide.

The material in the PMBOK® Guide will form the basis for much of the exam (though the examiners may test on other items they expect you to have learned from your work experience). As such, you should spend a good deal of time reading and understanding the PMBOK® Guide, but you should not spend all your time simply re-reading it. Once you have read and understood the entire book, you should then use it as a reference guide to help reinforce your understanding of key concepts, and to fill gaps in your knowledge. For example, when you miss a practice question and realize you are a little hazy on that topic, go right to that section of the book and read up on it. Then put a flag on that page as a reminder that you had some confusion on that issue, and perhaps keep a separate log showing areas of confusion that you need to clarify before exam day.

4. Identify and Fill Gaps in Your Knowledge

Since this is a pass/fail examination, you will be able to pass without knowing every single detail for every topic in the PMBOK® Guide. It would be great if you did achieve this level of understanding, but we need to be realistic and use our time strategically. Instead, you should make sure there are no significant gaps in your understanding of the material, as these can very easily cause you to fail the exam.

The best way to identify gaps in your knowledge is to do lots of practice questions. Sometimes you will miss the question because you didn’t read it carefully or because it contained a trick. When you miss a question because you don’t understand the material, however, you need to fill that knowledge gap.

Sometimes reading the answer explanation is sufficient, but oftentimes you will need to delve deeper into the material to make sure you really understand the topic in question. There is nothing wrong with missing a lot of practice questions. Indeed, you should view a missed practice question as a good thing, because it identifies gaps in your knowledge which you can now go back and address. Make the mistakes during your preparation, not on the exam. The key here is to review every practice question carefully, whether you got it right or wrong. Sometimes you will get the answer right, but you chose it for the wrong reason, or maybe you just got lucky. Remember, answering the practice questions is only part of the exercise. The learning occurs when you closely review every question and answer.

To help you identify areas of weakness, you should keep a log showing the type of questions you missed. This log will identify trends in your performance, thereby allowing you to focus your study efforts on those areas where you are weakest. Try to be specific when you create this log. For example, instead of simply noting a missed question on risk management, note that you missed a question about the difference between qualitative and quantitative risk analysis.

PMP Strategy Guide

Sometimes students struggle with how to effectively allocate study time between the course completion and exam day. While there is no “one size fits all” approach, the following is a framework that will help ensure you are prepared and confident when you sit for the exam.

1. Allow Sufficient Time to Prepare

Some training providers set an expectation that you should take the exam immediately after completing the course (i.e. pass on the fifth day). That method may have worked many years ago when the PMP® Exam was much easier. Unfortunately, the exam is much more difficult these days and thus you will need extra preparation time. Therefore, we strongly suggest that you take a few weeks to study on your own before taking the exam. There are a few reasons for this.

First, you will likely feel mentally fatigued after the boot camp training, and therefore not in a position to perform your best immediately following the course completion. Second, the exam is difficult, and you will need time to solidify your understanding of the materials. Finally, you will want to take additional practice exams after the class to ensure you are truly prepared to take the exam.

Some students choose to ignore this advice and try to take the exam within a couple days of the course completion. The success rate for these students is dramatically lower than for those who allow at least a week of individual study time. Sometimes students feel constrained by their schedules, and feel they have no choice but to take the exam immediately. However, scheduling concerns should not force you to take the exam prematurely, because if you fail the exam you will have to find time to re-take it anyway. It is much better to put yourself in a strong position to pass on your first attempt.

2. Understand the Big Picture

Our course provides a large amount of information over a fairly short period, so your first step should be to solidify your understanding of the course materials. To do this, we recommend reviewing the in-class course materials, including your handouts and notes to make sure you understand the broader concepts. Make sure you are familiar with each of the 49 processes, and that you can describe in one sentence what each process is meant to achieve. By doing this, you should be able to see how certain processes interrelate with others, and hopefully recognize how each process is used to maximize project success and avoid project failures.

You might begin this process by memorizing each of the 49 processes and the process groups to which they belong. You should refer here to your Process Map sheet showing all of the processes in a grid format.

Along with memorizing the names of the processes and where they fit in, you should also be memorizing the outputs of each. Don’t get hung up on inputs and tools and techniques just yet, as that will come later on. Understanding the outputs of each process will go a long way towards helping you later fill in the inputs and outputs.

As you work towards memorizing each process and its outputs, make sure you understand why that process is important. You will likely be given scenarios on the exam where certain failures have occurred, and the question will then ask you how they may have been avoided. Therefore, think about what types of problems may occur if certain processes are skipped over or performed improperly. For example, if we created a deliverable which functioned properly but did not include all of the functionality the stakeholders were seeking, then we likely had some type of breakdown during the Collect Requirements process, or perhaps we did not properly define or control our scope.

Once you have a basic understanding of the 49 processes, then you can start filling in details.

Remember that you have online access to video lectures covering every topic from the PMBOK® Guide, so you should use these as needed to help clarify your understanding. Sometimes this will be the most efficient way to fill the gaps in your knowledge, as the book often glosses over certain areas or uses confusing language.

5. Understand Inputs, Tools and Techniques and Outputs

You will likely get a handful of questions on the exam requiring you to identify inputs, tools and techniques, or outputs (ITTO’s) for a given process. For many students, these may seem like the hardest questions to answer, because many processes have so many ITTO’s that it is nearly impossible to memorize them all. You should instead consider a more strategic approach to the ITTO questions.

As mentioned earlier, you should start by memorizing the outputs to each process. This is important for other types of questions as well, but it also puts you in a good position to handle questions asking for inputs to a particular process, since we know that outputs to one process nearly always become inputs to later related processes. Memorizing all outputs often allows us to use chronology to help us navigate through these questions. For example, we know that Quality Control Measurements are an output of Control Quality. Since we know we must perform the Plan Quality Management process before we can actually perform the Control Quality process, we can easily eliminate Quality Control Measurements as an answer to a question asking for the inputs to the Plan Quality Management process.

The tools and techniques present a tougher challenge, because some processes employ so many of them, and because some tools and techniques are used in multiple processes. Spend some time understanding each tool and technique you come across, just as a general matter without worrying about the process per se. Take “Make or Buy Analysis” for example, which falls under the "Data Analysis" techniques. We know this is used to determine what we can produce ourselves versus what we need to acquire from outside the organization. We could therefore eliminate Make or Buy Analysis as an answer choice to a question asking for tools used in the Control Procurements process. Naturally, we would have already made our Make or Buy Decisions before we entered into the procurement relationship, so it simply does not fit.

You might grab a notebook and simply jot down in your own words a one sentence summary of each tool and technique you come across, then refer back to these notes frequently during your preparation. Having a basic understanding of what each tool and technique accomplishes will help you effectively navigate through these ITTO questions (and others) without having to memorize every tool and technique used in each of the 49 processes.

6. Study Terminology, Formulas and Charts/Diagrams

By this time you should have a pretty good understanding of the material as a whole, so you should focus now on the more discrete items such as unique terminology, charts, formulas, etc. To do this, you should rely heavily on the course handouts. If something is listed in the handouts, you should understand it. Therefore, keep those sheets handy and refer to them often. If you take the train or bus to work, study your handout sheets on the way. You might also want to look at them during your lunch break, or other times when you want to study without committing a large block of time.

Pay special attention to the charts, as you likely will see several questions asking you which type of chart will assist you in a given situation. Along with the handouts, there is a helpful summary of each chart (located in Chapter 5) which you should understand thoroughly. In particular, make sure you understand the following items for each chart: 1) the information it contains; 2) what it looks like; 3) the purpose of it, 4) the area(s) in which it is used, and 5) the specific name(s) used to identify the chart.

Let’s use the Cause and Effect Diagram as an example. First of all, we need to know that it shows all factors we believe may be causing a particular outcome or defect, and the factors are lined up along diagonal lines which connect to a horizontal line leading up to the outcome in question (hence the “fishbone” structure). Because we are looking at factors causing certain outcomes, we will use Cause and Effect Diagrams both in Control Quality ("Data Analysis") and Identify Risks (Root Cause Analysis). Finally, we need to know that this chart is also called a “Fishbone Diagram”. Keeping track of synonyms is always important on the exam, because if you see two answer choices that mean the exact same thing, you can eliminate them both, since there is only one correct answer.

You should also understand all of the formulas and when to use each one. The earned value formulas are especially important, and you may see several questions requiring you to perform these types of calculations. In some rare cases, you may simply need to plug the numbers from the question into your formulas and do the math. More likely, however, you will need to determine which formula is appropriate based on the facts provided in the question. For example, if a question is asking about EAC and it states that the project has faced unexpected financial obstacles which are now resolved, we know the variances are atypical and we would therefore use the following formula: AC+(BAC-EV).

Apart from memorizing the formulas, make sure you understand what a particular earned value measurement means to your project. For example, you may be told that your project has a Cost Variance (CV) of $1,000 and a Schedule Performance Index (SPI) of 0.8, and you must identify what that means for your project. In this case, those values show you are under budget (since CV is a positive number) and behind schedule, since SPI is less than 1.

You may also be given an earned value figure and asked what that means for another earned value measurement. For example, if the question states that your Cost Performance Index (CPI) is 0.5, you must know that your Cost Variance (CV) will be negative. Again, remember that simply memorizing the formulas will not help you much if you don’t understand what the values are telling you.

7. Take Practice Exams

In addition to the mock exam from class, you should do at least three (and often more) full-length practice exams online. Since these questions are shorter and more straightforward than those you are likely to see on the real exam, it is imperative that you score above 85% on a full-length, online practice exam before you sit for the real thing. If you happen to score above 85% on your first try, take another one to validate the first score and get more practice.

Of course you need to understand the materials to succeed on the exam, but you also need to get comfortable with taking a long exam. It is not easy to keep focused and alert throughout a 200-question exam, so you should work on conditioning your mind so it will hold up during what islikely to be a long and challenging four hours.

When you are taking the practice questions, especially the online questions, keep in mind that these are not always designed to mimic what you will see on the exam. Instead, many of these questions are designed to help you learn the material as efficiently as possible, and to help you identify gaps in your knowledge. As such, the online practice questions can be a bit shorter and more straightforward. Do not assume the questions on the real exam will be like this. It is a difficult exam, and you should therefore be prepared for longer, and perhaps more confusing questions.

If you want to practice with some of the longer and trickier questions, you should refer back to the in-class practice questions, which are provided in the online training portal. Many of these questions are designed to be trickier and more complex, and the explanations will identify the particular tricks being used so you can be prepared to spot them on the exam. You may also want to re-take your mock exam from class, as this also contains longer and trickier questions.

8. Practice A Brain Dump

By now you are ready to take the exam, and you just need to make sure you can write out some materials to which you will refer during the exam. When you sit down to take the exam, you will be given scratch paper or a dry-erase board. There are two things you will want to write down: 1) all of the formulas and 2) the grid showing the 49 processes. You should practice doing this at least twice before the exam, and time yourself to see how long it takes you. Your brain dump will be an invaluable resource as you go through the exam, so make sure you are in a position to get the maximum possible benefit.

For a complete listing and description of all of the course materials we provide in our PMP course, please click here: http://projectmanagementacademy.net/pmp-certification/

3. Use the PMBOK® Guide Strategically

Some of you may have read the PMBOK® Guide before class and that hopefully helped you better absorb the material. Unfortunately, the PMBOK® Guide can be somewhat confusing to many students because it does not follow any chronological order, and because it uses terminology which may be very different than what is used in your workplace. If you read the PMBOK® Guide before class and found yourself scratching your head, then this would be a good time to go over it again. By now you should have a pretty good sense of the broad concepts, chronology, terminology, etc., so it should make more sense this time around.

For those who did not read the PMBOK® Guide before class, this is the time to do so. Because the PMBOK® Guide is not organized chronologically, you may want to read it in conjunction with your PMA® course book. For each section of the course book you will see a number (i.e. 2.1), which corresponds to a PMBOK® Guide chapter. It may help to read the PMBOK® Guide chapters in the order presented in the PMA® course book, so you get a sense of context and chronology. Just make sure you check off each chapter as you read it, so you can make sure you have covered the whole PMBOK® Guide.

The material in the PMBOK® Guide will form the basis for much of the exam (though the examiners may test on other items they expect you to have learned from your work experience). As such, you should spend a good deal of time reading and understanding the PMBOK® Guide, but you should not spend all your time simply re-reading it. Once you have read and understood the entire book, you should then use it as a reference guide to help reinforce your understanding of key concepts, and to fill gaps in your knowledge. For example, when you miss a practice question and realize you are a little hazy on that topic, go right to that section of the book and read up on it. Then put a flag on that page as a reminder that you had some confusion on that issue, and perhaps keep a separate log showing areas of confusion that you need to clarify before exam day.

4. Identify and Fill Gaps in Your Knowledge

Since this is a pass/fail examination, you will be able to pass without knowing every single detail for every topic in the PMBOK® Guide. It would be great if you did achieve this level of understanding, but we need to be realistic and use our time strategically. Instead, you should make sure there are no significant gaps in your understanding of the material, as these can very easily cause you to fail the exam.

The best way to identify gaps in your knowledge is to do lots of practice questions. Sometimes you will miss the question because you didn’t read it carefully or because it contained a trick. When you miss a question because you don’t understand the material, however, you need to fill that knowledge gap.

Sometimes reading the answer explanation is sufficient, but oftentimes you will need to delve deeper into the material to make sure you really understand the topic in question. There is nothing wrong with missing a lot of practice questions. Indeed, you should view a missed practice question as a good thing, because it identifies gaps in your knowledge which you can now go back and address. Make the mistakes during your preparation, not on the exam. The key here is to review every practice question carefully, whether you got it right or wrong. Sometimes you will get the answer right, but you chose it for the wrong reason, or maybe you just got lucky. Remember, answering the practice questions is only part of the exercise. The learning occurs when you closely review every question and answer.

To help you identify areas of weakness, you should keep a log showing the type of questions you missed. This log will identify trends in your performance, thereby allowing you to focus your study efforts on those areas where you are weakest. Try to be specific when you create this log. For example, instead of simply noting a missed question on risk management, note that you missed a question about the difference between qualitative and quantitative risk analysis.

PMP Strategy Guide

Sometimes students struggle with how to effectively allocate study time between the course completion and exam day. While there is no “one size fits all” approach, the following is a framework that will help ensure you are prepared and confident when you sit for the exam.

1. Allow Sufficient Time to Prepare

Some training providers set an expectation that you should take the exam immediately after completing the course (i.e. pass on the fifth day). That method may have worked many years ago when the PMP® Exam was much easier. Unfortunately, the exam is much more difficult these days and thus you will need extra preparation time. Therefore, we strongly suggest that you take a few weeks to study on your own before taking the exam. There are a few reasons for this.

First, you will likely feel mentally fatigued after the boot camp training, and therefore not in a position to perform your best immediately following the course completion. Second, the exam is difficult, and you will need time to solidify your understanding of the materials. Finally, you will want to take additional practice exams after the class to ensure you are truly prepared to take the exam.

Some students choose to ignore this advice and try to take the exam within a couple days of the course completion. The success rate for these students is dramatically lower than for those who allow at least a week of individual study time. Sometimes students feel constrained by their schedules, and feel they have no choice but to take the exam immediately. However, scheduling concerns should not force you to take the exam prematurely, because if you fail the exam you will have to find time to re-take it anyway. It is much better to put yourself in a strong position to pass on your first attempt.

2. Understand the Big Picture

Our course provides a large amount of information over a fairly short period, so your first step should be to solidify your understanding of the course materials. To do this, we recommend reviewing the in-class course materials, including your handouts and notes to make sure you understand the broader concepts. Make sure you are familiar with each of the 49 processes, and that you can describe in one sentence what each process is meant to achieve. By doing this, you should be able to see how certain processes interrelate with others, and hopefully recognize how each process is used to maximize project success and avoid project failures.

You might begin this process by memorizing each of the 49 processes and the process groups to which they belong. You should refer here to your Process Map sheet showing all of the processes in a grid format.

Along with memorizing the names of the processes and where they fit in, you should also be memorizing the outputs of each. Don’t get hung up on inputs and tools and techniques just yet, as that will come later on. Understanding the outputs of each process will go a long way towards helping you later fill in the inputs and outputs.

As you work towards memorizing each process and its outputs, make sure you understand why that process is important. You will likely be given scenarios on the exam where certain failures have occurred, and the question will then ask you how they may have been avoided. Therefore, think about what types of problems may occur if certain processes are skipped over or performed improperly. For example, if we created a deliverable which functioned properly but did not include all of the functionality the stakeholders were seeking, then we likely had some type of breakdown during the Collect Requirements process, or perhaps we did not properly define or control our scope.

Once you have a basic understanding of the 49 processes, then you can start filling in details.

Remember that you have online access to video lectures covering every topic from the PMBOK® Guide, so you should use these as needed to help clarify your understanding. Sometimes this will be the most efficient way to fill the gaps in your knowledge, as the book often glosses over certain areas or uses confusing language.

5. Understand Inputs, Tools and Techniques and Outputs

You will likely get a handful of questions on the exam requiring you to identify inputs, tools and techniques, or outputs (ITTO’s) for a given process. For many students, these may seem like the hardest questions to answer, because many processes have so many ITTO’s that it is nearly impossible to memorize them all. You should instead consider a more strategic approach to the ITTO questions.

As mentioned earlier, you should start by memorizing the outputs to each process. This is important for other types of questions as well, but it also puts you in a good position to handle questions asking for inputs to a particular process, since we know that outputs to one process nearly always become inputs to later related processes. Memorizing all outputs often allows us to use chronology to help us navigate through these questions. For example, we know that Quality Control Measurements are an output of Control Quality. Since we know we must perform the Plan Quality Management process before we can actually perform the Control Quality process, we can easily eliminate Quality Control Measurements as an answer to a question asking for the inputs to the Plan Quality Management process.

The tools and techniques present a tougher challenge, because some processes employ so many of them, and because some tools and techniques are used in multiple processes. Spend some time understanding each tool and technique you come across, just as a general matter without worrying about the process per se. Take “Make or Buy Analysis” for example, which falls under the "Data Analysis" techniques. We know this is used to determine what we can produce ourselves versus what we need to acquire from outside the organization. We could therefore eliminate Make or Buy Analysis as an answer choice to a question asking for tools used in the Control Procurements process. Naturally, we would have already made our Make or Buy Decisions before we entered into the procurement relationship, so it simply does not fit.

You might grab a notebook and simply jot down in your own words a one sentence summary of each tool and technique you come across, then refer back to these notes frequently during your preparation. Having a basic understanding of what each tool and technique accomplishes will help you effectively navigate through these ITTO questions (and others) without having to memorize every tool and technique used in each of the 49 processes.

6. Study Terminology, Formulas and Charts/Diagrams

By this time you should have a pretty good understanding of the material as a whole, so you should focus now on the more discrete items such as unique terminology, charts, formulas, etc. To do this, you should rely heavily on the course handouts. If something is listed in the handouts, you should understand it. Therefore, keep those sheets handy and refer to them often. If you take the train or bus to work, study your handout sheets on the way. You might also want to look at them during your lunch break, or other times when you want to study without committing a large block of time.

Pay special attention to the charts, as you likely will see several questions asking you which type of chart will assist you in a given situation. Along with the handouts, there is a helpful summary of each chart (located in Chapter 5) which you should understand thoroughly. In particular, make sure you understand the following items for each chart: 1) the information it contains; 2) what it looks like; 3) the purpose of it, 4) the area(s) in which it is used, and 5) the specific name(s) used to identify the chart.

Let’s use the Cause and Effect Diagram as an example. First of all, we need to know that it shows all factors we believe may be causing a particular outcome or defect, and the factors are lined up along diagonal lines which connect to a horizontal line leading up to the outcome in question (hence the “fishbone” structure). Because we are looking at factors causing certain outcomes, we will use Cause and Effect Diagrams both in Control Quality ("Data Analysis") and Identify Risks (Root Cause Analysis). Finally, we need to know that this chart is also called a “Fishbone Diagram”. Keeping track of synonyms is always important on the exam, because if you see two answer choices that mean the exact same thing, you can eliminate them both, since there is only one correct answer.

You should also understand all of the formulas and when to use each one. The earned value formulas are especially important, and you may see several questions requiring you to perform these types of calculations. In some rare cases, you may simply need to plug the numbers from the question into your formulas and do the math. More likely, however, you will need to determine which formula is appropriate based on the facts provided in the question. For example, if a question is asking about EAC and it states that the project has faced unexpected financial obstacles which are now resolved, we know the variances are atypical and we would therefore use the following formula: AC+(BAC-EV).

Apart from memorizing the formulas, make sure you understand what a particular earned value measurement means to your project. For example, you may be told that your project has a Cost Variance (CV) of $1,000 and a Schedule Performance Index (SPI) of 0.8, and you must identify what that means for your project. In this case, those values show you are under budget (since CV is a positive number) and behind schedule, since SPI is less than 1.

You may also be given an earned value figure and asked what that means for another earned value measurement. For example, if the question states that your Cost Performance Index (CPI) is 0.5, you must know that your Cost Variance (CV) will be negative. Again, remember that simply memorizing the formulas will not help you much if you don’t understand what the values are telling you.

7. Take Practice Exams

In addition to the mock exam from class, you should do at least three (and often more) full-length practice exams online. Since these questions are shorter and more straightforward than those you are likely to see on the real exam, it is imperative that you score above 85% on a full-length, online practice exam before you sit for the real thing. If you happen to score above 85% on your first try, take another one to validate the first score and get more practice.

Of course you need to understand the materials to succeed on the exam, but you also need to get comfortable with taking a long exam. It is not easy to keep focused and alert throughout a 200-question exam, so you should work on conditioning your mind so it will hold up during what is likely to be a long and challenging four hours.

When you are taking the practice questions, especially the online questions, keep in mind that these are not always designed to mimic what you will see on the exam. Instead, many of these questions are designed to help you learn the material as efficiently as possible, and to help you identify gaps in your knowledge. As such, the online practice questions can be a bit shorter and more straightforward. Do not assume the questions on the real exam will be like this. It is a difficult exam, and you should therefore be prepared for longer, and perhaps more confusing questions.

If you want to practice with some of the longer and trickier questions, you should refer back to the in-class practice questions, which are provided in the online training portal. Many of these questions are designed to be trickier and more complex, and the explanations will identify the particular tricks being used so you can be prepared to spot them on the exam. You may also want to re-take your mock exam from class, as this also contains longer and trickier questions.

8. Practice A Brain Dump

By now you are ready to take the exam, and you just need to make sure you can write out some materials to which you will refer during the exam. When you sit down to take the exam, you will be given scratch paper or a dry-erase board. There are two things you will want to write down: 1) all of the formulas and 2) the grid showing the 49 processes. You should practice doing this at least twice before the exam, and time yourself to see how long it takes you. Your brain dump will be an invaluable resource as you go through the exam, so make sure you are in a position to get the maximum possible benefit.

For a complete listing and description of all of the course materials we provide in our PMP course, please click here: http://projectmanagementacademy.net/pmp-certification/

3. Use the PMBOK® Guide Strategically

Some of you may have read the PMBOK® Guide before class and that hopefully helped you better absorb the material. Unfortunately, the PMBOK® Guide can be somewhat confusing to many students because it does not follow any chronological order, and because it uses terminology which may be very different than what is used in your workplace. If you read the PMBOK® Guide before class and found yourself scratching your head, then this would be a good time to go over it again. By now you should have a pretty good sense of the broad concepts, chronology, terminology, etc., so it should make more sense this time around.

For those who did not read the PMBOK® Guide before class, this is the time to do so. Because the PMBOK® Guide is not organized chronologically, you may want to read it in conjunction with your PMA® course book. For each section of the course book you will see a number (i.e. 2.1), which corresponds to a PMBOK® Guide chapter. It may help to read the PMBOK® Guide chapters in the order presented in the PMA® course book, so you get a sense of context and chronology. Just make sure you check off each chapter as you read it, so you can make sure you have covered the whole PMBOK® Guide.

The material in the PMBOK® Guide will form the basis for much of the exam (though the examiners may test on other items they expect you to have learned from your work experience). As such, you should spend a good deal of time reading and understanding the PMBOK® Guide, but you should not spend all your time simply re-reading it. Once you have read and understood the entire book, you should then use it as a reference guide to help reinforce your understanding of key concepts, and to fill gaps in your knowledge. For example, when you miss a practice question and realize you are a little hazy on that topic, go right to that section of the book and read up on it. Then put a flag on that page as a reminder that you had some confusion on that issue, and perhaps keep a separate log showing areas of confusion that you need to clarify before exam day.

4. Identify and Fill Gaps in Your Knowledge

Since this is a pass/fail examination, you will be able to pass without knowing every single detail for every topic in the PMBOK® Guide. It would be great if you did achieve this level of understanding, but we need to be realistic and use our time strategically. Instead, you should make sure there are no significant gaps in your understanding of the material, as these can very easily cause you to fail the exam.

The best way to identify gaps in your knowledge is to do lots of practice questions. Sometimes you will miss the question because you didn’t read it carefully or because it contained a trick. When you miss a question because you don’t understand the material, however, you need to fill that knowledge gap.

Sometimes reading the answer explanation is sufficient, but oftentimes you will need to delve deeper into the material to make sure you really understand the topic in question. There is nothing wrong with missing a lot of practice questions. Indeed, you should view a missed practice question as a good thing, because it identifies gaps in your knowledge which you can now go back and address. Make the mistakes during your preparation, not on the exam. The key here is to review every practice question carefully, whether you got it right or wrong. Sometimes you will get the answer right, but you chose it for the wrong reason, or maybe you just got lucky. Remember, answering the practice questions is only part of the exercise. The learning occurs when you closely review every question and answer.

To help you identify areas of weakness, you should keep a log showing the type of questions you missed. This log will identify trends in your performance, thereby allowing you to focus your study efforts on those areas where you are weakest. Try to be specific when you create this log. For example, instead of simply noting a missed question on risk management, note that you missed a question about the difference between qualitative and quantitative risk analysis.

PMP Strategy Guide

http://projectmanagementacademy.net/pmp-certification/

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