10 Steps to Passing PMP Certification Exam

The following road-map for successful passing of the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification exam is written for those, who are ready to dedicate their time and efforts to confirm their Project Management skills and knowledge.

1. Plan to complete your certification within certain period of time; for example, one year or less – at least within the life of then current edition of PMBOK. Get membership with PMI and obtain a hard copy of PMBOK (discounted price for PMI members); download a soft copy (available for PMI members only, for free). Use your soft copy of PMBOK for finding references in the content, this is extremely handful. Read the PMBOK, ask questions from the community if something is not clear. It is absolutely OK having many questions after reading the PMBOK for three times.

Taking courses online or in-person without prior reading of PMBOK is wasting your time and money.

2. There are many very good e-books and other resources are available for FREE to PMI members ONLY at www.pmi.org, and printed books with discount. Acquire your own book(s) that is most tasteful to you. I am usually studying using two-tree books, no singly book covers all the material in the way that I would left completely satisfied. In different books you may find different approaches to solving the same problems and different styles of writing. Do not buy a book that is "first in line", but chose what is best for you. Besides the other benefits of being the PMI member, you will save on your PMI Certification exam too.

3. Take the mandatory course (35 in contact hours) within five years to the planned (not scheduled yet) date of certification exam.

4. There are many of very effective FREE or really Low Cost resources on the Internet to help you understand the insight of PMBOK and questions to practice for the exam.

5. Test yourself on reading speed. If you are reading less than 200 words per minute (wpm), take a reading course, first. To get a complete confidence in balancing the time of reading and understanding questions during the exam, your reading speed should be about 400 wpm. Take a speed-reading course, if your current speed is more than 200 wpm, but much less than 400 wpm. I am absolutely serious about this reading skill; it will help you to improve your real life too.

6. Take whatever additional courses you think (verify with PM community, when you are ready!) are good for you to polish your knowledge and obtain very specific skills for passing exam.

7. Share your knowledge with others in the professional forums, by discussing, consulting, etc. This adds you more confidence and understanding, and can significantly extend your knowledge.

8. Make sure that you are qualified for certification. Prepare a list of projects that you have managed and go throughout the registration form that requires such details as description of the work and hour spent for particular process groups on each project.

9. Schedule your exam ONLY, when you are sure that you are ready to set a date for the exam.

10. Continue practicing on exam simulators and verifying your knowledge with theory, but take a good rest before the exam. There are also some special materials and techniques to significantly increase your chance to passing the exam, ask the details if needed.

Very important tip

Do not try answering all questions. Spend first 10 seconds to qualifying whether you are going to work on the question further. If you feel that you cannot afford the question within one minute (unknown area, takes too long to read, too much calculations, etc), just Pick Any Answer and Move On (you can also mark this question and get back to it at the end of the exam) – this will save your time significantly – you also won't get tired and upset.

Although, do not "skip" questions during the preparation; opposite, do not give up on every, question, especially on wordy ones and those required many calculations – as harder in learning easier on the exam.

I do not consider this tip as cheating, but using your time optimally in stressful situation.

I hope this will help; if not, contact me for support.

Ramiz Aliev, PMP