Though I am late in publishing the lessons learned but I think it is better late than never. I am sharing the lesson learned as part of my PMP preparations and passing the exam. Hope it will be helpful to future aspirants.
so here you go ...
1. If you want to pass the exam first submit your application and make fee the payment. This one good thing which I did and it brought lot of focus to the studies. Once the money is spent by human nature we try to make sure it is not wasted and are not bogged down by student syndrome.
2. Limit your resources of study to 2 or 3 with lots of practice questions. I limited my books to PMBOK 4, Andy's & Rita's book. Studying from too many resources one may find difficulty to adapt to writer's style. Good idea would be to limit your resources, do the revision (according to me)
3. Skip the concepts which you find difficult in first reading. Mark the imp terms or make small notes, is is helpful during revision and you do not have to read whole book again.
4. Try to practice as many questions from multiple sources and if possible keep a track of your performance so that you know which are the areas you have to work on.
5. Practice and try to understand PMBOK Page 43, during my 35 contact hours training my Teacher told me that if someone wakes you up from the sleep and you cannot spell the process means you are not ready for the exam ... this benchmark really helped me to know my preparations. ( i used to recall the processes on my way to office, or during breaks) There is no need to memorize it just logically understand it and it will be easy and moreover as pm professionals we would already be practicing them in our professional env.
6. During the exam just think about the question you are answering do not think of the Exam outcome and remain focused to steadily answer all questions.
7. There are no extra marks to complete the exam early so take your time. Your timing of questions completed during practice sessions will help you during the exam. You just need to make sure you are in limit of the time when you practiced. ( sample - For me when I used to practice questions with the timer, i used complete 100 questions in 70 minutes,for 200 questions it was between 168 to 190 mins with avg accuracy of 78%. During the exam also i took 100 minutes for 120 questions and 200 were completed in 160 mins. Person can develop individual style during practice session.
8. Try to practice the questions or reading when there is disturbance. For me i used to do practice test or read when television was on. This little risk mitigation helped during the exam as one hour after the exam the AC in the center started making strange loud noise which was irritating which kept on for half an hour, but as i was accustomed and prepared to handle this noisy surrounding this made no difference. (it's just personal opinion and shall be practiced at your own risk)
9. Reach the center well in advance to acclimatize to the environment and if the center is in High traffic jam zone
10. Last but not least, if you yourself will not belief on yourself how will you make others believe. So Have FAITH in yourself and you will make it.
All the Best !!
Disclaimer : All the Lesson learned mentioned above are as per the project (read prepare and pass pmp exam) which I managed and learning's if any to be imbibed in future similar projects shall be at your own risk :)
