Comments from recent exam-writers (Oct 2007)

Hello to all our PMP and CAPM exam-writers. I try to send a message each month. Here are comments from one of our recent successful PMP candidate. I have removed comments on specific question content, as we should not reveal that information.

Hi Keith, I was a student in your Project Risk and Filling in the Gaps courses in Vancouver this May. I'm just writing to say thanks for the courses and that I found both the Gaps binder and Keith's PMP Preparation Guide very useful in helping to prepare for taking the PMP test (which I took and passed today). In my opinion the guide and the practice quizzes in the binder were more useful, challenging and consistent than the PMP test - I learnt much more reviewing the questions I had missed in taking your material than I did in taking the actual PMP test.

I found the certification test rather wonky - many of the questions were not necessarily difficult, but they were frequently poorly worded and sometimes used terminology that was very similar the terminology used in the PMBOK Guide, but was not the same, so I was often uncertain whether the term had been put in to be deliberately misleading or not. When I first started the test, I assumed that if the terms were not exactly the same as the PMBOK, they were deliberate errors that had been introduced to catch candidates. However, I came to a question that had terms that were analogous to but not the same as the PMBOK process group titles (e.g. "termination" instead of "closing") in all four choices for the answer so I started choosing answers that seemed logical, even if the terms used were not precisely what I expected - I don't know if that strategy helped or hurt me.

Generally the PMP test was more difficult than the test that completed the certificate in project management course, but less difficult than the questions in Keith's guide. I did very well on questions regarding Professional and Social Responsibility and Closing the Project, pretty well on questions regarding Monitoring and Controlling the Project, Executing the Project and Planning the Project and absolutely pathetically on questions regarding Initiating the Project (which I found surprising as tend to review material from beginning to end, so I've reviewed more material about initiation than any other process). There was also more non-PMBOK related material than I had expected.

Be sure to view the new 2007 editions of the PMP (and CAPM and PgMP) credential handbooks at http://www.pmi.org/CareerDevelopment/Pages/Obtaining-Credential.aspx