Starting from April I had more time (fortunately). By now I had finished the PMBOK once. Solved the Anbari questions twice, read Nielsen Pdf’s and the shameer sam ITTO’s atleast two or three times. Went over Rita’s flash cards twice.
First week of April: I read the PMBOK (3rd ed.) backwards. I do not know about the rest of you but, when I read a book, I concentrate well in the beginning and then less and less towards the end. So reading it both forward and backward helped me retain as much as possible. You may have to figure out your strengths and weaknesses yourself.
By the 5th of April I finished reading (or re-reading ) the PMBOK. On the 6th I took th esi-intl (http://www.esi-intl.com/public/e-training/desc.asp?code=PMC0211) CAPM exam. I did not do well on this one. I got less then 65% and was not very happy. I had been studying on and off since September/October of 2005.
On Friday (4/7) and Saturday(4/
I did not study much. Just went over the ITTO’s again. Also I did not do well on the process areas so I read the PMBOK (chapter 2 and 3). Also on Friday I printed the questions from vl-p.net [http://vl-p.net/free-pmp-self-test/pmp-free-exam-test-questions.htm (thanks to Ganesan)] and took the sample test from test preview [http://www.testprepreview.com/modules/pmp.htm (thanks to Ganesan)]. I did ok on these 13 out of 15 on the test preview questions. I scored around 70% on the vl-p test (note: I took it on paper and this is also a PMP based test).On Sunday the 9th of April I started thinking about the esti-intl exam. I realized that the process groups is my area of weakness, but I needed a way to overcome this. Earlier I tried remembering the processes in process groups by recalling the KA itself. For example I would recall that Scope control is in the monitor and control process group. But I needed a better method. Then I had a my moment of Eureka.
I already knew the KA processes. So if I could map them according to the process area too. Then it would be great. You will have to download the document to understand the process properly. But here is how the processes are distributed.
I-2
P- 1,3,5,2,1,1,1,1,5,2
E- 1,0,0,0,1,2,1,0,2
C- 2,2,1,1,1,1,2,1,1
C- 1,1
So starting from Monday I would practice my method every day. This method also helped me in remembering the ITTO’s too. The esi-intl exam prompted me to take a closer look at the process groups. I should have listened to Julio (aka Razof) earlier.
On Thursday (4/13) : I went over all the exams that I had taken. Reviewed the ITTO’s again. And at night I took the Pm study free exam [http://www.pmstudy.com/practicetestsindex.asp (I knew about this one)]. I did ok on this one. I got 65% and was ok with it because this is a PMP exam, and hopefully I would do better on the CAPM exam.
On Friday (4/14) and Saturday (4/15): I went over the vl-p.net exam, the Anbari questions (just covered about half of it), briefly went over the Nielsen pdf’s, and the incorrect responses from the pm study test. In all I spent 2 hours studying on Friday and 2.5 hours on Saturday.