It was a nowadays requirement for any professional to continue study, so, I planned to enhance my project management knowledge which should be useful for my IT management skill. I decided to take a PMP exam and got a PMP certification. PMP stands for Project Management Professional, and it is endorsed by a US’s Project Management Institute (https://www.pmi.org/).
I thought that PMP exam should be easy for me because I had rich experience to handle IT projects. I did not intent to join any course, however, it was a requirement from PMI that a candidate had to register a course, so that I registered a PMP on-line preparing course from https://www.udemy.com/ in Oct 2017. The Udemy PMP course costed only US$10.99, which was a very good price. Although the concept of project management was very generic, I needed to learn many PMP specific terms and definition from Udemy, which were new to me. After I have finished the Udemy on-line course, I could only get 70 marks from its drill test, which I should get 75 marks or above in order to ensure to pass the exam according to the lecturer comment.
After the Udemy course, I borrowed two books from library to self-study: I) “Pass the PMP exam : tools, tips and tricks to succeed” by Sean Whitaker ; ii) “PMP practice makes perfect : over 1000 PMP practice questions and answers” by John Estrella. After I have finished these two books, I still did not comfortable. I searched from web and found a web site https://edward-designer.com/web/pmp/ which Edward shared his experience about PMP exam. It provided me many useful information.
My final preparation work is to read the PMBOKGuide from PMI, and did more free mock exam questions from web, such as from Oliver Lehmann (Online) and Edwel Mock Exam.
Luckily, I passed the PMP exam in my first in-take. I spent totally 6 months to prepare the exam, and I passed it in Mar 2018.
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Additional information about Changing of PMP Exam on or after 26 Mar 2018 as below.
The release of the PMBOK® Guide – Sixth Edition in September 2017, the PMP exam will change 26 March 2018. These updates will ensure the exam content is consistent with the PMBOK® Guide.
Although the PMP is not a test of the PMBOK® Guide, it is one of the primary references for the exam. Some of the updates you can expect to see surround lexicon changes and terminology used within the exam as well as harmonization of process groups, tools, and techniques.
The major updates to the sixth edition are summarized below:
- A new chapter on the role of the project manager has been added to focus on leading projects effectively – competencies, experience, and skills that are all necessary.
- Two Knowledge Areas have been re-named to more accurately reflect which elements can be managed and which cannot:
o Time Management is now Schedule Management
o Human Resource Management is now Resource Management
Every Knowledge Area features four new sections:
- Key Concepts
- Trends and Emerging Practices
- Tailoring Considerations
- Considerations for Agile/Adaptive Environments
The sixth edition will also present new content around considerations for agile/adaptive environments and the PMI Talent Triangle®.
We wish you the best of luck on upcoming exam!