PMP Preparation – Pathway to Success Begins Here!

I have been in the Project Sector for the last 29 years. I have handled many Mega Electrical projects but did not have any formal Project Management Education.

I have been in touch with many PMP-certified professionals mostly from the IT sector. I was having the impression for many years that this PMP certification is limited to the IT Sector only.

In 2016,  when I joined an overseas company in Ghana West Africa, there I came across many Construction Managers having PMP certification from PMI. I got very good exposure to the best Project Management Practices in Ghana and during this stay, I realized that I should have this PMP certification.

I attended 4 days of Project Management Training conducted by my mentor Mr. Ashish Sadekar in February 2018.

It was a very exhaustive session and came to know about Project Management Basics in detail and could correlate with what I used to follow in Ghana. Having 27 years of experience in Project Management, which was supposed to be my strength, at the same time came to know how I lacked systematic knowledge in Project Management.

Mr. Ashish Sir explained step by step the basics of Project Management and it was a very interactive session. We were taught as per the Sixth edition of PMBOK which was recently updated.

I started the studies with the handouts given to us as Rita Mulcahy’s book Eleventh Edition was not available. It took me 2-3 weeks to go through the handouts.

After this, I got the RMC book and started studying the book. RMC is a very good book for preparing for the PMP exams. I went through the entire book 3 times until my concepts were clear. One thing I liked about the book was the Question Bank given at the end of each chapter and then the Answers with reasoning for selecting the particular options. Here we have to maintain an Excel sheet with Question numbers on one side and various options we are answering in various tests. This gives me a clear-cut understanding of my progress in my studies.

First Mock test I got 99 marks which was very low. With the completion of the RMC book every time, I use to appear for the Mock test. In 2^nd Mock test, I got 109 marks, in 3^rd Mock test, I  got 135 marks and 4^th mock test I got 112 marks.

After every Mock test, I used to Analyse the results and copy the entire Question and Answers in an Excel sheet and make the study of results Knowledge area-wise. With this, I came to know my gaps. Then I did my revision according to the weakest one first.

I appeared for a refreshing classroom session of Mr. Saurabh Parikh before appearing for my first attempt on 26^th December 2018. But somehow could not clear the exam. Mr. Ashish Sir explained to me the probable reason. The main reason was understanding of questions. He suggested that I read the questions thoroughly and concentrate on comprehension. He also suggested to send him my doubts which were explained nicely by him.

He always uses to tell us that our PMP study should be separate and we should not relate to our professional work. This was my biggest mistake and I quickly corrected the same. My weakest Knowledge area was Integration Management which I studied 2-3 times.

Lastly just when I was appearing, ProThoughts came up with a new method of  Online Webinar for PMP preparation exams. This was conducted by Mr. Arvind Nahata who further clarified my remaining doubts. This session was interactive and many doubts I could clear while listening to the webinar.

I also practiced various sub-activities of all the processes through card games given on the RMC website. It gave me a good understanding of the sequencing of various activities.

Finally, I appeared for my PMP re-exam on 10^th April 2019 and cleared the Project Management Certifications.

I give the credit to the entire team of ProThoughts for this success as it was a very tough task to clear the exams at of 50.