Two of our recent course attendees, Will Rohorua (PMP) and Tom Oosterlinck (CAPM), share the following tips and tricks for others looking to sit these exams. Thanks, Will and Tom!

Some general observations:

My Exam was very Agile heavy, so the clone PMP exam questions (think there’s over 400 questions) provided by Millpond were perfect to study.

I broke this up into blocks of 20 questions at a time, then checked my answers against the answer sheet. This helped to understand where I went wrong or how I could improve on interpreting the question being asked. In my opinion these questions were more difficult than the actual exam ones.

My study plan for the PMP Exam:

3 days working back through the course slides and book that Millpond gave to us

• At the beginning of each lesson review, I practised quickly noting down the formulas I wanted to remember (mainly the earned value formulas)

Then 2 days of exam questions

• Completed Millpond’s mock exams again 1, 2 & 3 (1/2-day total)
• Worked through the clone PMP exam questions in blocks of 20 questions at a time (1.5 days)

NB See the note below about the general strategy used for analysing the information being given in the question.

Day before Exam Day:

Plan and prepare…

• ID you will need to take – has to be original (e.g. driver’s license or passport – I took both)
• Lay your clothes out
• Plan your route to test centre (if going to test centre) and what time you want to get there
  • I planned to arrive 1 hour before I needed to start so I could sort out parking, eat, use the bathroom etc.
  • They also let me start 30mins before the scheduled time because I was ready to go, and they gave me the option
• Your breakfast or coffee, decide if you want to eat or not. You can take a clear water bottle into the exam room with you.
  • I had a light snack for breakfast and a black coffee during one of the breaks. I wanted to limit intake to reduce the need to use the bathroom while the exam is on, and the clock is ticking!

Exam Day:

• Get to centre.
• Sign in.
• Provide ID.
• You get a photo taken on the day.
• I was given a key and a locker and had to put all my stuff in the locker and locked it – incl. phone, laptop, bag pack etc.
  • This is to remain locked until the exam is fully complete, I was asked not to access the locker during my breaks.
• When I sat down in the exam I spent the first couple of minutes scribbling down my formulas, because I had prepared for this via my study days
• You start with a example/demo to get familiar with the software/interface, for 5mins (clock starts as soon as you click and ticks down – top right-hand corner of your screen).
• Then move onto exam, 230mins to complete 3 x 60 questions (with 2 x 10min breaks – if you want to take the break) – again clock is on the top right-hand corner and is always ticking! (stopped during breaks – a separate clock ticks down for your breaks)..

Use a Strategy for each question:

• Establish what phase the project is in
• Establish who is involved (e.g. PM, Key Stakeholder, Product Owner, CEO, Sponsor, Client etc.)
• Establish what type of issue is occurring (e.g. communication issue, stakeholder issue, quality issue etc.)

It would have been helpful, if I had practiced this during my exam prep!

• I used the highlighter tool to highlight each of these aspects (highlight using mouse then keyboard shortcut Alt + j)
• Then read the question and re-read it again
• The usual question format is:
  • Who needs to solve the issue (e.g. most of the time is it you as the PM, project lead, etc.)
  • How urgent (e.g. do first, do in this situation etc.)
• Review the options provided:
  • I quickly struck through the options I wanted to rule out (highlight using mouse then keyboard shortcut Alt + w)
  • Then spent a little bit more time on the remaining options to determine which answer I wanted to submit
• If I took longer than 20secs to decide, I’d pick one of the 2, then clicked the flag icon (middle right-hand side of the screen).
• Once I had worked through all the questions, I quickly reviewed only the flagged questions again.

Pace

Probably the most important info I could give you is in the table below

(This includes 3-5mins to review flagged questions as well.)

Remember that the longer you take per question, per section, or to review flagged questions, then this will only chew into the time you leave for the next sections of the exam.

CAPM-specific advice

• Think of the methodology (Predictive, Adaptive, Iterative,..) if it isn’t already clear from the question, then establish what phase the project is in.
• I think the first + 10 questions were the more difficult ones as they had multiple answers that all could have been right in my opinion and seemed to have placed that way to make you begin to doubt things from the start😄.  Afterwards it seemed to get easier.
• Most of the questions weren’t super long compared to the Millpond mock exams.
• I think I had 6-7 questions about Earned Value Management, but they were rather easy besides one of them.
• I had at least 5 questions asking what the best methodology would be for a given project. Build a good understanding of;
  • Predictive/Traditional/Waterfall
  • Hybrid
  • Agile/Adaptive, as well as Incremental and Iterative,
• There were 10 questions with multiple options to be selected.
• Some questions were repeated, but they changed the Adaptive & Scrum sprint wording.
• Ensure you know what a Requirements Traceability Matrix is as I had about 8 questions related to that.
• There were certain questions relating to the role of a Business Analyst that I didn’t really expect and was unsure about even though Millpond spoke to the role of a BA & associated tasks. I had read through the RMC Learning Solutions text book too.

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