Project Management Profesional (PMP)® Journey

I did it finally! I passed the exam on 11/11/22 a perfect date and also a perfect gift for my birthday 😀 after few hours of struggling to do the exam test from 6pm until almost 12pm, almost 6 hours! because some technical issues. And I passed with AT, Allhamdulillah..praise the Lord.

Since so many friends and colleagues asking how I pass my PMP Exam, one of the difficult exam-since the area/domain so wide – you can find the detail here, so I try to write it down here so everyone can get the lesson learned. Moreover, it’s been a while since the last time I wrote here.

Starting at the end of 2019, I knew the first time about PMBOK when we have in house training from Mas Athar, after that session, we became a best friend 🙂 At the time to be honest for me PMBOK is a “Heaven Words” :D, I don’t understand at all. But at that time we have a valuable thing, Mas Athar introduces us the Agile way of working. From that training we implemented daily standup that we called with Morning Ceremony for day-to-day operations, lately this habit help us a lot when the pandemic covid19 challenge comes, IT became the business backbone during WFH. I think will write this in a different section.

At early 2022 I met again with PMBOK, when we want to standardize the documents and procedures of PMO. The unique, we did this project with Agile way of working using Scrum Framework full life-cycle along with other projects, with Mas Athar again as the Agile Coach. During this project, we refresh again with 49 processes in PMBOK 6 also with Agile. To be honest, the PMBOK part is still far from understanding 😀

And, at early of Sept this year I put priority and focus for the PMP exam. Better I write down on bullet points, I this its way better to understand.

• Join another study group with Mas Athar, Mas Resha, Pak Cahyo, and Pak Wawan as a mentor
• We bought exam prepcast
• First try, only got 38% 😀
• Bought Udemy courses by Sabri C, it helped me much for understand the PMBOK detail. I also use the semantic tree (first principle) that also use by Elon Musk, you can dig more here https://youtu.be/9eFRxXgE4nk. So, while I watch the Udemy course I also hold page 25 of PMBOK 6 (49 processes table), so we know where we are in the lecture.
• While following the Udemy lecture, find other sources like Eduhubspot and keep practicing on the exam. This is my full simulation test record:
  • 24 Sept 2022 –> Failed. 4 jam 120 soal. You answered 69 out of 180 questions correctly – that is 38.33 % correct.
  • 26 Sept 2022 –> Failed. You answered 93 out of 180 questions correctly – that is 51.67 % correct.
  • 8 Oct 2022 –> Failed. You answered 105 out of 180 questions correctly – that is 58.33 % correct.
  • 26 Oct 2022 –> Failed. You answered 97 out of 180 questions correctly – that is 53.9 % correct. –> interrupted
  • 29 Oct 2022 –> Failed. You answered 118 out of 180 questions correctly – that is 65.56 % correct.
  • 6 Nov 2022 –> Passed. eduhubspot passed 77% of 180
  • 7 Nov 2022 –> Passed. You answered 133 out of 180 questions correctly – that is 73.89 % correct.
• So totally perhaps I have already done around 1.500 exam tests!
• The more important of doing test exam is the review of the test, so we can understand more clearly.

Summary:

• Need extra effort for the PMP exam preparation, effort only not enough!
• Strengthen the theory while doing the exam test simulation and review.
• Before D-day, enough rest, eat good food.
• Keep practicing for physical exam, and remember this test also test your endurance.
• The real exam test is nothing the same as the 1.500 exam preparation that I’ve done, but the pattern is the same.
• Use your PMI hat instead of your own experience.
• Keep praying, and good luck!