{"id":1692,"date":"2019-09-23T22:37:16","date_gmt":"2019-09-24T02:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/?p=1692"},"modified":"2022-01-10T19:14:57","modified_gmt":"2022-01-11T00:14:57","slug":"im-a-pmp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/2019\/09\/23\/im-a-pmp\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m a PMP"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a Project Management Professional<\/a>!<\/h3>\n

\"My<\/a>Today in an exam centre in Mississauga Ontario I completed and passed my 4-hour exam to become a PMP<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a long road, but mostly because I took my time. I first want to give my thanks to the people and employers that supported me through the process: Thanks University of Toronto and Brock University!<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the story, working backwards<\/h3>\n

Today I wrote the exam at a Pearson VUE exam centre.<\/p>\n

The wait time between submission and confirmation was less than 3 seconds, but felt like 10 seconds or more because I really had to pee! That was one of a few things that didn\u2019t quite go to plan (though, that was an identified risk, I just could only come up with a mitigation contingency plan, not avoidance). I also found myself pressed for time throughout, which was not the case when I practiced. I had hoped to review questions I had flagged, but ultimately did not have time, though I did more on from those questions thinking I gave my best answer.<\/p>\n

It was the culmination of a lot work (see below) but rather anti-climatic as I got the news in the exam room, while responsibly being quite for other exam writers\u2026 then I got my print out\u2026signed out and unlocked my stuff\u2026 peed\u2026 and headed to my car and texted the good news and my thanks.<\/p>\n

\"My<\/a>Interesting, I was expecting to be given paper to make notes with, but that\u2019s not how it worked at this location. Instead, they gave me a laminated notepad and a blue fine-tip Sharpie to make notes with. My hands are now marked in blue as if with indelible ink after I voted in a developing-world election.<\/p>\n

Qualifying to Write<\/h3>\n

I have my 4-year degree: Honours in Communications Policy.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got my experience hours – actually, that was subject to an audit when I applied. They say it\u2019s random, but I think when I Ieft a pre-populated zero in a few of the forms for hours spent I triggered the audit because all the proportions were way off. I noticed it in the confirmation, was allowed to re-submit, but still subject to an audit. Thanks to those that helped with that.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the requirement for 35 hours of instruction. I got mine through an online course at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies<\/a>, it also happened to be good follow-up quality control on the Toolbox Renewal\/Quercus project<\/a>. I did well in the course and on the progress and final exams, but they were open-book and I attribute my success to my open-book exam strategy more than my internalization of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) etc.<\/p>\n

My Study Plan<\/h3>\n

I appreciated many of the “I Passed” descriptions on reddit<\/a>, but many of those descriptions are of 2~3 month experience, it\u2019s a proven model.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019m currently a part-time Masters of Education grad student, in\u00a0this last year\u00a0I’ve\u00a0transitioned jobs, and my wife and I have a pair of active kids; my study plan needed to fit around all of those activities.<\/p>\n

Here’s My slow-burn Study Plan<\/h3>\n
    \n
  1. Practice questions<\/strong>
    \nI bought the     Pocket Prep’s 800 question PMP exam prep<\/a>. Doing at least<\/em> 10 questions a day helped me learn AND helped me understand, I needed to commit more to memory, so…<\/li>\n
  2. More instruction<\/strong>
    \nI completed     Linked Learning\u2019s Cert Prep: Project Management Professional (PMP)<\/a>.
    \nI did this over some evenings, lunch hours and flights. The handouts, quizzes and practice exam were great. I\u2019d recommend the course, especially because many employers, local library systems, and all Ontario publicly-funded post-secondary institutions currently offer free access to LinkedIn Learning (Credit to Lynda.com\/LinkedIn Learning\u2019s salespeople!).<\/li>\n
  3. Squeezing in more studying<\/strong>
    \nAudiobook.\u00a0\u00a0I bought the audiobook     Phil Martin\u2019s Simple PMP Exam Guide<\/a>
    \nIt\u2019s dry! But, I listened to it when I\u2019d go for a run, and occasionally when I\u2019d drive (but I realized it took a little too much of my cognition while driving). Also,     Tarek Yehia PowerBI dashboard on all the ITTOs<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  4. Iterate<\/strong>
    \nI kept doing Pocket Prep quizzes. Grew my own notes, and adapted some of     Edward Chung’s notes<\/a>\u00a0(thanks!). I practiced writing out formula\u2019s and the 49 PMBoK Processes, and I also built a 446 question quiz in Sakai matching all of the PMBoK\u2019s terms to their definitions and practiced that.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    And that\u2019s how I passed and became a PMP<\/h4>\n

    I recommend project management as a discipline to anyone else who might have graduated with a not-so business-ie degree. Project management is a transferable framework for management itself and is also contained within a temporary endeavour. If you\u2019re interested in becoming a PMP, go for it! There\u2019s also the CAPM credential, or other project management courses and certificates offer this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I\u2019m a Project Management Professional! Today in an exam centre in Mississauga Ontario I completed and passed my 4-hour exam to become a PMP. It\u2019s been a long road, but mostly because I took my time. I first want to give my thanks to the people and employers that supported me through the process: Thanks… Continue Reading I’m a PMP<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[47,1,55,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1692"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1692"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1742,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1692\/revisions\/1742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}