Pass the PMP

Eventually, passed my PMP(Project Management Professional) exam on 6 Jan. This is really a good sign for the new year. Hope everything ok in the coming years.

The studying period is really dark for me. Though it is not that "Dark", it made me did not want to do other things. Sounds like my brain is a "Single Thread" processor. :) Actually, it is a kind of psychological matter. Anyway, the exam is passed and this really gave me a great release. And also a good courage sign. The road to Project Manager has just began. I got a token to enter the Project Management area, but not necessarily grant me a Project Manager position.

Here is my Lesson Learnt of the exam.
Actually, I took a training 2 years ago, which is a prerequisite for the PMP exam. The most important is to get a proof certificate from the institute. People wanna take this exam must have known it already. The 35 hours official training is necessary. Similar case like the OCP exam from Oracle, you have to take an official training from an authorized institute before you can take the exam.

For the reading materials, I relied on Rita and Head First. Head First is really a good book for basic understanding of PMP. Rita is a better choice for exam preparation. The reason is, the book is organized in a way that crosses the knowledge areas and process groups. And with many information that did not mentioned in Head First. I did not read PMBOK in a thorough way. I totally relied on Rita. My strategy is
Read Rita once, then
Read Head First once, then
Review Rita once again
After that, try to have more practices on exam questions. There are so much free mock questions on the internet. Like PMStudy, PMHub, even Head First...etc. You can find it easily from Google. Even though the quality of the questions are not the same from different sources, you can taste the questions before entering into the exam center with lots of curiousity and panic. There is one quite simple set with 200 questions in PMI's site. But you have to be a member of PMI before reading it. For me, I collected many questions, and practiced the 4 hours exam as a simulation on Sat or Sun. You know there are not much Sat and Sun in a month. So, you better start the simulation practice a month or more before your exam.
So how about the PMBOK? I am quite a lazy guy (Hmm, maybe that's why my exam result is not good :p). I just used it as a reference. And read the glossary part for twice. It is quite worth to read the glossary as it could remind you some terms that you didn't realize when studying.

I planned for the exam for almost half year. First, prepare the stuff for the application. Then applied the exam 4 months before the exam. Then planned the way on how to study and prepare the exam in that 4 months. At the time applying the exam, I was not confident on the exam. That 4 months also built up confidence during studying.

For the exam application, I made a stupid mistake. I am a Chinese in Hong Kong. Chinese name would not have middle name. I got an English name and almost all people around me would call me that name. At the time I was applying exam, I put my English name as First name, my Chinese First name as Middle name, and my Chinese Last name as Last name. If my English name were displayed on my Identity card, or passport, that would be fine. However, like most Hong Kong citizens, I did not have my English name appeared on any of my identity documents. This created a serious problem: the exam center would refuse me to attend the exam as the application name and the one on identity documents are not the same. That means, I have to use my Chinese First name as First name, Chinese Last name as Last name, and without Middle name. I submitted my correction on the application name to related institutes and this took a month to settle. There are 2 institutes involved, one is Prometric (the exam organization), and PMI. So, at that time, I started communications to Prometric, and PMI, back and forth several times. You know why it took a month to settle the issue.

Of course such issue would not affect the studying. In this 4 months preparation, I realized that the most important thing is passion. Need to keep the internal flame is no easy for a man with that age like me. You know, too much comfy life would make one lazy and lost the battling heart.

So, good luck to all you guys if you are preparing for the exam. One more thing, read more Lesson Learnt from PMHub would do good to you.