DRM - Daniel’s Random Mutterings

Last week, I successfully completed my PMP (Project Management Institute — Project Management Professional) certification examination. In the PMI spirit of documenting lessons learned and supporting others on their way to project management certification, I thought I’d do a quick writeup of the experience.

The Journey

I have been active in the PMI community for the last two years or so. Along with a colleague, I have attended the last two PMI EMEA Global Congresses (Budapest and Malta), but kept putting off completing the PMP certification due to work demands. After returning from the Malta Global Congress this year, I decided to finally put in the time and the effort and go through with it. I set a mental deadline of August — about three months after making up my mind to forge ahead.

The Application

The first step, obviously is to put together the Credential Application. Here, you need to document your project management experience, with different requirements depending on your level of education. Check the PMP Credential Handbook for details. In the application, project experience is broken in to hours per project per process and process group. So getting together all the numbers for your past projects can be quite a chore. There are a number of Excel worksheets out there that take the project durations, apply typical distributions of hours across the process group and then give you numbers you can enter. I didn’t use these, I had put together my own worksheet before I even discovered the others.

One tip about filling in the application: You are asked for contact persons who can confirm that you did, indeed, perform the work you are claiming to have performed. You can enter project experience as far back as eight years, so these might be people you’re not working together with on a daily basis any more. You are expected to enter name, email address and phone number for each person. Common courtesy dictates that you contact these people and ask them for permission before putting their details into the application form. You will need to contact them anyway, should PMI decide to audit your application. Thankfully, I was spared this hassle, as my application was not chosen for an audit.

Resources Used

I use the following resources in my certification preparation:

	A Guide To The Project Management Body Of Knowledge, Project Management Institute This is the resource for PMP preparation. The PMBOK (as it is known) provides a guide to what PMI considers to be the essential knowledge and skills of a professional project manager. It is an international standard and the foundation of the internationally accepted project management practices championed by PMI. Over the last couple of years since the last edition of the PMBOK (a new edition is currently being prepared and is scheduled for the end of this year), the PMP examination has evolved and more subjects have been added, meaning that simply learning the PMBOK is not sufficient for achieving PMP certification.
	PMP Exam Prep, Rita Mulcahy Rita’s book is a firm fixture in the PMP preparation universe and has been for a number of years. It explains the details and the nitty-gritty of the PMBOK content. In several areas, the content in Rita’s book also goes well beyond the PMBOK content, providing more in-depth explanations and examples. Each chapter is followed by a test, allowing you to assess how well you have understood the concepts explained in the book. Doing tests and mock exams is a perfect way of preparing for the PMP examination. More on that later, though.
	Rita’s Pocket PMP Exam, Rita Mulcahy This little booklet is really useful. It contains an entire set of 200 mock exam questions, with answers and explanations, in a handy format so it easily fits in your jeans pocket. This allowed me to take it along on walks, etc., taking it out now and then and going through a few of the questions at a time.
	Head First PMP, Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene The Head First series of books is a comparatively new series of learning books, claiming to follow a new approach to learning. The main text body is broken up by icons, graphics, photos, scenarios, small cartoons and material set in a “hand-written” font. The Head First people claim that this triggers left-brain as well as right-brain learning and leads to a better grasp of the material presented as well as better retention. Due to this unusual form of presentation, the general “look-and-feel” of the book may appear confusing and overloaded to some. You’re not reading page upon page upon page of prose or learning the PMI Process Groups off by heart from a set of boring tables. Also, HFPMP appears at first to be a hefty tome and the size of the book might be frightening for some; but due to the layout’s generous use of space, you actually get through it pretty quickly. Overall, I found the experience of reading Head First PMP very enjoyable. I didn’t read it as my first PMP preparation book (more on that later on), so I was already familiar with the material when I started HFPMP. The book’s approach helped give me a different perspective on the material, which in turn helped me remember concepts such as order of processes, inputs, outputs, etc. The Head First series can probably not be recommended for everyone, though (as a review on the German amazon page shows). My recommendation would therefore be to go down to your local bookstore, grab the book and read half a chapter or a chapter. Check out, whether the “feel” of the book suits you.
	Project Management Professional Study Guide, Kim Heldman Another PMP preparation book, focusing on presenting the material from the PMBOK in a comprehensive manner, with lots of examples and real-world scenarios, for easier learning. Unfortunately, Kim Heldman chose to structure the material differently than all the other books I had read. He attempts to follow a “logical” flow of activities through the project and does not present the process groups and processes in the order in which they are presented in the PMBOK, for example. Having read the PMBOK and Rita’s book before reading Kim Heldman’s book, I was already familiar with the PMI material and the order and structure in which it is usually presented. This meant that I was constantly lost while reading Heldman’s book. The order in which the contents were presented made absolutely no sense to me and I never managed to develop a mental map of we had already covered, where we were going and what to expect next. Using this structure for the material also meant that in the individual chapters there were a high number of backward and forward references, leading to even more confusion.
	PMP Exam Practice Questions and Solutions Release, Aileen Ellis This spiral-bound book contains around fifty test questions per knowledge area. What makes it such a good resource is the way it explains the answers to the questions, also explaining why the wrong answers were wrong and why they were put there (e.g. “Distracter answer, but sounds like the correct answer.”) My one main complaint about this book is quality of editing. There a numerous typos, missing words and other grammatical errors which make this book appear to be too quickly thrown together.

Learning

Being an IT guy, I decided to approach the PMP preparation “algorithmically” and systematically. I went about it as follows:

1. Read Rita’s book all the way through, chapter by chapter, highlighting concepts and explanations with a marker pen, but without doing any of the mock exams (saving them for later).
2. Read the PMBOK all the way through, also highlighting with a marker pen. Since I was concentrating my reading in the evenings and the summer weekends on the balcony, these two steps took the better part of three weeks. After this, I was already quite familiar with the material and focussed on broadening my understanding and strengthening my knowledge in all knowledge areas.
3. Take Rita’s mock exam, the exams from the Aileen Ellis book, as well as any other mock exams I could find. Score the exam. Read the explanations for the answers I got wrong.
4. Find the worst-scoring knowledge areas from the exam. Go back to Rita or the PMBOK and re-read the chapters about those knowledge areas where I had scored worst.
5. WHILE (score not sufficient) GOTO 3
6. Read Kim Heldman’s Book.
7. Read Head First PMP.

Well, OK — these last two steps were performed more or less in parallel with the test-taking and rereading.

Taking mock exams

Do not underestimate the importance of taking mock exams. In my approach, after taking twenty or so test questions per knowledge area and scoring the completed exam, I would then re-read those chapter from Rita or PMBOK relating to those knowledge areas where I scored worst on the mock exam, ignoring the areas where I was already good enough. This allowed me to iteratively improve my overall test score on the mock exams. Scoring high on the mock exams gives you some confidence in your grasp of the material. Overall, taking and scoring the mock exams can give you an indication about when you are ready to sit the official exam.

It is important to point out, though, that taking only Rita’s mock exams is not sufficient! There is a wealth of material potentially included in the PMP examination which is covered neither by the PMBOK nor by Rita’s material. This includes such topics as calculating PTA (Point Of Total Assumption), Six Sigma concepts, Critical Chain analysis, or approaches for successful delegation. A good resource for testing your knowledge beyond PMBOK is provided by Oliver Lehmann, a German PMP trainer. Oliver makes available two sets of preparation questions: A 75-question self-assessment test that you can do online as well as a set of 175 test questions and answers which you can print out and take. I highly recommend taking the time to do these exams. After completing and scoring the exams, write down which concepts were new to you and which subjects you need to follow up on. Then search online, go to Wikipedia, etc., and read about all of these concepts.
Do not just take and retake the same exams over and over again, hoping to memorize the questions and answers. This will (probably) not be successful. PMI has a large number of test-writers. So it pays to cast your nets wide, gather test exams from several different sources and take these, again iteratively improving those areas where you have identified deficits in your knowledge.

All in all, I would say I spent about five to ten hours a week on my preparation over the course of two-and-a-half months.

The Exam Experience

The PMI examination has to be taken at a Prometric test center, of which there are four in Germany. Unfortunately, the test center nearest to me (Frankfurt) did not have any slots available for the PMP exam for well into 2009 (somehow I still can’t really believe this, even though it was confirmed by the Prometric phone helpdesk). Since I had set my firm deadline for completing PMP certification for August, I had to go to a different test center. I chose the one in Munich. My exam was scheduled for 8:30h on Monday morning, so I took the train to Munich on Sunday afternoon. Being quite confident about my level of preparation, I spent an enjoyable evening in Munich and didn’t bother too much with last-minute preparation.
I had found several tips online about bringing along food, a calculator, etc, for the exam. Contrary to all information I had found online, the Prometric staff did not allow us to take anything into the test booth with us. No calculator, no muesli bars, nothing. You are given four sheets of Prometric-marked note paper, two pencils and a calculator.

Dumping your brain

One important step in taking the exam, which I strongly recommend to anyone taking the exam, is the idea of a braindump. You are given fifteen minutes of preparation time, during which you can navigate through a brief e-learning program explaining the use of the examination software. Fifteen minutes is more than enough for this, so you can use some of that time your your braindump: On the first page of the note paper, write down all the earned-value formulas, PERT formulas, Sigma values, numbers and other details that you can remember. Doing this is a good exercise to calm the nerves. It also helps you focus on the exam and the exam contents, as well as providing a basis to which you can refer back whenever an EVA or CPM question comes up. Having the numbers and formulas on your braindump can keep you from making mistakes when you’re in the test and are losing focus. When an earned-value question comes up and you’re nervous, maybe you won’t be able to remember the correct formula. So having them written down beforehand can save you in such a situation. Also, there will probably be questions where you’re not given all of the numbers you need for the answer. For example, you’ll be given CPI and AC, but will need EV for the ETC calculation. By referring to your braindump, you can quickly figure out which formula you can use to get the missing number (hint: EV can be calculated from AC and CPI, just by shuffling the formulas around).
I had systematically practiced my braindump beforehand, with a fixed order of elements, contents and a fixed set of formulas. I had all the earned-value formulas, the PERT formulas, the two PTA formulas, the four relevant Sigma levels, memorized and laid out on my sheet. So actually concentrating on this, writing all of it down at the start of the exam was a perfect way of getting into the right mindset.

The questions

No, I’m not going to give you any of the questions from my exam. That would be pretty useless anyway, since PMI has such a large test bank that the chances you’d get the same questions are pretty slim.
I’ll just say that the tips I found online about learning more than just the material in the PMBOK were definitely right. I got questions about delegation, motivation and leadership. I also got several questions about inputs and outputs; so you really need to know how the pieces of the PMI process puzzle fit together so you can identify the logical and correct answer. I got several questions about PMOs. Two of the questions I got still used the old names for earned value parameters (BCWP, BCWS), so make sure you’re familiar with these old names as well (even though they were supposed to have been phased out by now). I only got two CPM questions where I had to draw and calculate a schedule network diagram. One or two questions had answers where two of the answers spanned multiple lines and differed only by a single word.

One of the things I was worried about was something that I had discovered had also negatively influenced my scores on the test exams: I found that I had a tendency to get the answers wrong by not reading the question carefully enough. I kept missing important modifiers such as “not” or “except”. As a result, I would get the question wrong, even though I knew the concept or fact the question was asking about. In order to counteract this, I consciously forced myself to read the question carefully enough and to focus on such key modifiers. This is made easier in the actual exam (as compared to some of the test exams I took) by the fact that most times these modifiers would be in capitals and bold, so they would be harder to miss (even for me). So, the question would usually say “… includes all of the following EXCEPT“. That was very helpful.

The Result

I finished my 200 questions in roughly an hour and a half. During the test, I had marked about twenty questions for later review. After completing the 200 questions, I went to the bathroom and then had a chat (not about PMI or the exam, but about something completely different) with one of the test center administrators, all with the goal of getting my mind off this first answer session and revisiting the marked questions with a fresh view. I went back and reviewed the marked questions, changing my initial answer on two or three of them. I then submitted my test and waited for the result. All in all, I was back out of the Prometric test center within roughly two hours (started at 8:30h with the introductory session and then finally got my signed test result sheet and signed out at 10:45h).

When you complete your exam, you are no longer given a numerical percentage of correct answers. Instead you are scored in six areas (the five process groups, as well as “Professional and Social Responsibility”), and are given proficiency levels of “Below Proficient”, “Moderately Proficient” and “Proficient”, as well as an overall grade of “Pass” or “Fail”.
I passed and scored “Proficient” in all six areas, so I guess all the hard work and systematic preparation payed off.

Technorati Tags: pmi, pmifc, pmp, PMBOK, pmp exam

Note: PMI and PMP are registered trademarks of Project Management Institute, Inc

This article is (c) Daniel Tietze, PMP.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 24th, 2008 and is filed under Industry, Project Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.