PMP — Blog — Engineer Dreams

Today I would like to share with you exactly what I did to score above target and pass the pmp exam on my first attempt. Let’s engineer dreams!

Apply! The first step to passing the PMP is to make an account with PMI and start your PMP application. This is an easy process but the most tedious part is documenting all of the required project experience. Below is a worksheet that I used to organize my projects.

Commit to a study schedule. I dedicated 4-6 hours a day to studying. You’re probably telling yourself that you don’t have that much free time. I initially said the same thing but this is how I did it. I woke up at 5am and read until 6am. I listened to practice questions on YouTube while I ironed my clothes for work and cooked breakfast. I continued to listen to questions in the car during my commute. The first thing I did when getting to my desk was a quick 15 minute brain dump (more on this later on). During my lunch break I did another brain dump then read the pmbok for 45 minutes. At 5pm before leaving work i completed my 3rd brain dump of the day. On the drive back from work I listened to more practice questions. Once arriving back home I ate dinner and relaxed a bit before reading for another hour. I ended my day of studying by completing a practice quiz on whichever topic I read about that day. I followed this study routine Monday through Friday.

Read the PMBOK Guide. This might seem like a no brainer but there is no better way to learn the material than by actually reading the guide. For me, this proved my effective than taking a prep course.
Perfect your brain dump. One of the quickest ways to learn the concepts of the PMBOK is to memorize the the Project Management Process Group and Knowledge Area Mapping table. I wrote down this table 3 times per day. For the first week, I merely copied down the whole table because I didn’t have it memorized. After that first week I starting brain dumping as much of the table as I could remember. Each time, I tried to remember another row of the table and even expanded the brain dump to include all the earned value formulas. Once I was able to brain dump the full table, my next objective was speed. When I first started timing myself the brain dump took roughly 15 minutes. However, after increasing the number of brain dumps to a minimum of 3 times per day I was able to shave my time down to 10 minutes. The time savings were crucial on test day because I needed every second of the 4 hour test duration to answer questions and effectively double check my work.
Practice answering questions. This is by far the most important part of my study plan. Merely just reading the PMBOK and listening to questions wasn’t enough to perform well on the test. The confidence needed to pass the exam is gained by taking practice quizzes and full exams. I purchased a 6 month subscription to the Rita Mulcahy’s PMP Exam Simulator and took at least one quiz a day and completed a full 4 hour practice exam every Saturday morning.