PMP - A must for Managers


Review By: Vikram Iyer


Certified


Yes

Expiry Month


5

Expiry Year


2023

Time taken to Prepare


120 Days

Resources Used

  • Head First (Very Helpful), PMBOK (Secondary)

Detailed Review Of Preparation

This was my 1st certification in project management area. Started off my career as a developer, realized the joy in analyzing data and before I knew, was promoted to managing projects. Team, Clients, Schedule, Budget, Work Plan - was reliant on my manager for most of these, what defined my success early were my strengths with requirements analysis, solution architecture, business understanding and educated guess :) If you are like me, this certification will be tough to crack. Hopefully by sharing my experience I am able to help a few.

To get things started, I enrolled in a self-study group with my company where I led 2 knowledge areas. From there, I started and stopped my preparation twice going through PMBOK, training materials prepared by my company, online tutorials etc. In Jan 2017 finally decided to complete the exam, cannot really say this was my New Year's Resolution though. My company recommended ordering Head First PMP book, which remain untouched until my colleague mentioned that as a great resource. I recall Head First from Java certifications, and decided to start with that. Was very much able to relate to the tasks I perform, especially with the way they had put together the materials and examples. I started implementing some of the themes in my project - WBS, planning, estimation techniques, risk assessments, control processes like forecasting, reserves, logs etc. I was able to schedule my exam soon, took a couple of weeks off where I breezed through the topics, prepared a cross table of the knowledge areas, process groups, inputs, outputs and tools & techniques. I was doing pretty well, may be 90%, with the mock exams at the end of the book. Online mock exams were not as successful, but I decided to spend the last few days doing a revision. I recall the day before the exam I was watching the IPL final where my hometown boys, Mumbai Indians, won narrowly. I did well in my exam the next day :)


Benefits From Certification

  • Knowledge is Power