…the method to my madness!

As a life long technology practitioner I am often asked what training I did to gain my PMP in 2017. While I “only studied for 3 weeks” before taking the exam, I had a lot of experience that really made that possible. I thought I would write all of my notes here so I have an easy point of reference and maybe it will help someone on their journey.

First, I have been participating in and directing projects for almost 20 years. And more than just technology projects! I have worked on construction projects, research and development projects, automotive projects, all sorts of things. Although I had no “formal” project management education during a majority of that time, a lot of the methods are natural and you just have to learn the language and official name for the thing you are already doing.

I am also a “nontraditional” university student. I went back to the University of Southern Mississippi and finished my BS in Applied Technology back in 2016. During my undergraduate coursework I had a 400 level class on project management that was based on the PMBOK. Then I started my graduate work at Louisiana Tech in Engineering and Technology Management. During my coursework there I have a 500 level class in project management which required a research piece on the entire Project lifecycle for a sample construction project. This added to my recent formal project management education.

Once I got serious about getting my PMP I went through quite a few study materials before I found two that worked very well for me:

The way I approached this was that I first listen to the intro episode for every area of the PMBOK in the PM Prepcast. Then I started taking practice exams. The PMTraining material has a great method of guiding you through varying levels of questions and showing you where you need to focus. I took this feedback and dove into more focused areas of the Prepcast. Boom, 3 solid weeks of this and I passed first shot.

Hope this helps and thanks for reading. If you have any questions comment below.