Self Study Guide

You have made the decision to acquire the PMP and you are wondering how to make it happen. You think to yourself, the material is so bulky, how can I possibly create time to finish these materials and retain the content to pass the examination. I do not have enough time available on my calendar! You are not alone. Read through and apply the recommendations in this guide and you will be better prepared to take on the almighty PMP certification examination.

1. Understand your schedule

By understanding your schedule, you have an understanding of how your time is shared between your daily activities. This will allow you to figure out the free time on your calendar. If you do not have available free time, you may find activities you can reduce their allocated time or suspend till you acquire the certification. 

2. Believe you can do it

You need to convince yourself mentally that you can make this happen. You can get a mentor to guide, coach, and encourage you whenever you need it. You can also join study groups of like-minded aspirants so that you can engage with respect ideas, energy, and drive. You also need to be personally motivated because there may be days when you feel like throwing in the towel when you hit roadblocks that seem insurmountable. Motivating factors like the feeling of satisfaction you will have as a result of passing the test, the better chance of making more money as a professional to better support your family, making family and friends proud  will keep you going

3. Block a period of time at least 5 days of the week to study

Little drops of water, they say make the ocean. You need to create a block of time over multiple days a week (I recommend 5 days) to study the materials. This could be during your commutes, breaks, 1-2 hours early in the morning or late in the evening.

You can listen to audio of the study materials while driving to and/or from work or while exercising for example. You can read the materials during your commutes if you use public transportation.

5. Use materials from reputable PMI REPs

Use materials from reputable, top-notch education providers. This is so that you can increase your odds of passing the examination. I strongly recommend reading the PMBoK guide at least once before sitting for the examination. It is however not enough to pass. You need top quality materials to increase your odds of passing. The materials do not have to be expensive if you do your research and shop around.

6. Use Flashcards

Here is a fact I cannot stress enough, you need to understand the important concepts and terms used throughout the PMBoK guide to be able to pass the examination. This is why using flashcards to aid your understanding of these concepts and terms is imperative. You will come across questions in the examination that will have options that make sense in a lay man’s world but make no sense in the PMP world. These are thrown there to find out if you are truly a professional project manager or not because professional project managers use these project management terms on their jobs regularly. The flashcards help to reinforce your understanding of these concepts.

7. Do a lot of PMP exercises

You need to practice several PMP examination style questions. You can try questions from different sources to ensure that you can tackle questions with varying difficulty levels as it has been stated that some practice questions out there are more difficult than others. You must be able to consistently score between 70-80% to consider yourself ready to sit the PMP exam which in my opinion is a safe place to be.

NOTE: The official passing score for the PMP exam is not known.

8. Brain dumps 

Your brain dumps serve as reference materials during your test. These are materials you have memorized and can be useful during your test. Examples are formulas, the Process Group/Knowledge Areas Chart, and anything you think would be helpful for you during the test.

You must practice writing them down till you are fast enough to complete it  between 10-15 minutes