Lessons Learned - PMI Certification with love

Inception: Came across PMI when I was in my PGDM. Always loved the concepts and in depth scrutinizing PMI does about project management.

 

Business Case: Market Demand for the Certified People, Need to enhance my knowledge

 

Scope Baseline: Get the Project management Certification which is renewed around the world and across the industries.

 

Project Charter: My application got accepted on July 23^rd 2010 after going through PMI’s Audit Process

 

Schedule Baseline: Three Months (this got changed due to various approved change requests like Job Change, personal reasons, once I messed up my exam appointment on my Birthday, Settling in new job, got busy with other stuff in life, etc.)

 

Schedule Updates after Approved Changes :) :- My final preparation was for exactly 7 days, started on 15^th July and exam was on 22^nd July. I don’t mean to mislead people by saying that 7 days prep is enough to pass the exam, all that I intend is to “motivate”, “capm is not an impossible thing to crack”.

Due to my Job Constraints and as there was a Business partner visit from Canada, I couldn’t afford to take leave for more than 2 days (exam day and the day before), So I had to allow buffers in those 7 days, to accommodate my preparation hours and job activities

I made a excel sheet schedule for every hour in those 7 days, regarding what should I do so that I cover whole PMBOK.

 

Cost baseline: Only Exam fee, no other training programs which is going to cost me :)

 

Known Negative Risks: I am very bad at sitting with books and studying loads of pages, waking up in early hours to study.

 

Unknown negative Risks: Appointments with girlfriends and others which just come out of blues

 

Risk Management Plan: Use Multiple Alarm Application on my Blackberry and keep alarms for every 15 min starting from 4.30 to 5.30 so that I can at-least wake up by 6 every morning for those 7 days and study till 8.30. Don’t spend much time with friends and girlfriends in the evening :)

 

Positive Risks: Exploit my knowledge on PM as I work day in and day out in the line of project management (had come across considerable no. of concepts in PMBOK, before I touched PMBOK, with job experience and by reading articles on Project Management on net, had attended a Seminar by Mr.To, EVMS professional, as a part of ERP Implementation in my company)

 

Quality management Plan: make sure that I go through all the processes described in PMBOK

 

Risk Response: Risk Sharing ( I mean to say I took help of my Babhi, who had spent Considerable time and had wrote a nice 10 page material on all processes, And my girlfriend who helped in at the last moments by preparing good notes on two of the KA’s)

 

Tools and Techniques: Study and write down own notes. ITTOS are heart and soul. Try to answer more situational questions and do “How-Why” for every answer. Do problems on EVMS.

 

Execution: Finally Schedule my date 22^nd July, one day before my eligibility period expires and gave exam.

 

Work Performance Information: Exam wasn’t too tough to handle.

 

Work Performance Measurements: I finally passed.

  

Validate Deliverables: Got Certified :)

Sorry for the bad picture, my BB couldn’t do any better :)

A note: I came across few people getting excited about this picture. THIS IS NOT A PICTURE OF THE COMPUTER SCREEN! FOR HOLY HEAVENS SAKE THIS IS THE PHOTO OF THE PRINT OUT OF THE PAPER COPY OF EXAM RESULT!  DON'T GET EXCITED AND LEAVE COMMENTS WITHOUT KNOWING THE REALITY!! I STILL HAVE THAT PAPER WITH ME! taking photo of my exam results after getting out of the exam center and uploading it onto my personal blog isn't any offence and there is no question of someone showing mercy about it. uff!! Wonder if people cant make out the difference between a computer screen and a paper !! god!

People I would like to show my gratitude:

My Loving Babhi (bro’s wife), who got certified even before I knew this certification existed, for pulling out time from her busy schedule and making a nice 10 page material from all the processes

My Bosses at job, who gave me an opportunity to be a lead for functional aspects of ERP Implementation, which aligned my job with my preparation

Mr. Tom, EVMS professional, who gave a one hour Webex seminar on EVMS, which sort of acted like a review for Cost management Concepts. This saved me time of reviewing cost management chapter from PMBOK.

My Girlfriend, for making a cut short notes for last minute review , about quality and HR management KA’s

My roommate and old friend Vinay for pushing me to study,who constantly used to

remind the value of fee that I had paid

 

Observations:-

There are Humans and there are Project Managers according to PMBOK . No offence. I mean to say when writing exam, you should be really serious about Org. process assets, Policies, Ethics, behavior, decision making. Choose what you should do according to PMBOK processes, rules and regulations. Don’t act like a human being with kind heart

PMBOK and its terminology is so pretty much important for giving exam, than your practical knowledge and terminology and situation handling in Project Management

 

 

While giving exam, you should be very serious about project management, take it serious than anything else in your life

Edit to the Original Post: As asked by many aspirants, I had uploaded my preparation notes on web.. you are free to download it from here