PMP - Lesson Learned - Salman Saeed

With the grace of Almighty Allah, Mr. Salman Saeed passed his PMP Exam with flying Colors on 18th June,2009.

I really like the way Mr. Salman wrote his lesson learned so i decide to publish it on this post .....

Study Material:

I symbolized my study to PMP by five fingers of my hand as follows:

• Thumb --------- (One time read RITA Mulachi & Glossary, Figures of PMBok)
• Index Finger ---------- Notes (DON KIM, Benoit Aumars, Sridhar)
• Middle Finger --------- Online Questions (PM fast track, Crosswind, PM Study)
• Ring Finger ----------ITTO (Understand and use Mnemonics for learnt by heart---really work)
• Little Finger ----------Formulas (Prepcast – One page formulas)

Exam Highlights:

• Exam is very straight forward and I didn't see any questions from online questions /commercial database
• Small Scenario based questions from all Phases
• Two Questions from delegation
• One Critical path Questions & 3 to 4 EVT questions.
• 2 to 3 Question of professional responsibilities

Special Lesson Learnt For Intelligent Persons:

Smart people learn by experience but Intelligent people learn by the experience of smart people.

I also mapped the project management terminologies with my aim of life which should become of every , we can extend the list but the main point is getting SUCCESS.

Project	Whole Life (24*7)
Project Manager	Myself
Strategic Goal	Success in the Life hereafter & seek reward from Allah i.e. Heaven
Sponsor	Allah with all good names.
Stack Holders	All prophets (PBUH), Family, Friends, Relatives etc. Evil ( Negative Stack Holder must consider )
Project Charter	Holy Manuscripts From Allah
Scope Statement	Do the right things and keep away from dreadful & nasty activities
WBS	Break up of daily activities according to priorities reflect our goals
Scope Control & Verification	Close monitoring of every action with the impression of accountability
Budget + Resources	Life span with ability and assets to survive
Vendors/Partners	Pious gatherings
Meetings	Continuous Meeting with Sponsor (Pray & seek guidance) and Close Interaction with Stack holders (fair dealings & good relations)
Status Review Meetings	Daily before sleep with myself and sponsor obviously
Project Closure	End of Life --- Result entirely depends upon my activities during life span.
Project Archive & Lesson Learned	Not for me but for others (If they willing to learnt), No chance to Re-attempt

Written by:
Salman Saeed
PMP,ITIL,VCS, SCTS,HPCP,MCP
MS,MBA,MA,BE

PMP - Lesson Learned

By the Grace of ALLAH and prays of my mother I cleared my PMP exam on 26th of May 2009. I start my preparation in Feb 2009, it was very difficult for us to manage our studies with job because we were doing group studies and we had a Project plan which we are following and every week we update the schedule baselines because we can't meet them. Finally we decide to take a one week vacations from offices and get to gather on a one place to complete our studies and that last one week is the memorable days of live. We only slept 3 or 4 hours in a day and night to meet the schedule.

Preparation Material:
1) Read Head First.
2) Read Rita
3) Gave PM FasTrack after studding each knowledge area from RITA for that knowledge area. It was really use full and I recommend you guys to try it and I saw few questions of FasTrack in exam and FasTrack really helps me to remember and understand thing.
4) Read PMBOK for references only.
5) Gave head first Exam, score 73%.
6) Gave exam on PassPm.com and score 75% and on PMFinal.com take 79%.
7) But on Pmstudy.com I just score 62% just because I haven't read PMBOK properly.
8) And I change my exam date. But please I suggest you guy please please please don’t change your date specially when you are doing group studies.
9) Two days before exam I memorize & understand ITTO's and hear PMBOK line by line. You can use the Acrobat reader "Read out Load" feature to listen PMBOK. Understand & Memorize ITTO's it will really helps you in the exams.
10) After Reading I again appear in the PMStudy Exam and this time I score 78.5%.
11) Also read delegation. Almost 8 9 questions are appeared on this topic.
12) Last but not least, we found a study notes on internet and they are really useful [But we call them stupid notes :)]. All the key points are available in this PDF. I will send the link of these notes in my next email.

ON Exam Day

On exam day I waked up early in the morning. Read ITTO's and Study note.
Complete Exam in 3.5 hours but I only marked 4 questions and I also suggest you guys to avoid marked questions because there are 75% chance that you change the correct choice to wrong.
Exam was not too much difficult; few questions were lengthy.

I suggest you guys to read questions & choices carefully and figure out which process group you are and I bet you got the right answer in a minute. 4 hours are more than enough to complete 200 Question.

Also write all earned value formula's on paper before start of the examination.

After four hours when I press the end exam button and processing start to process my result and I was wait the screen of Congratulations but suddenly prometric survey is appeared on the screen. It was really painful to me to read and fill the survey form. And finally after some processing I saw the congratulation screen.

I special thanks to Faizan Dosani and Shahzad Sarang to help me in my studies motivate me.
If anybody need any help from me feel free to contact.

Bust of luck for your Exam.