PMP - Best Study Guide?

Quantumstate

Hmm. Hmph. When Ordered by your sponsor, your senior management (and your spouse)(on threat of firing) to do the project, and it would have "a negative impact on the economy and society"... well that happens all the time. That's the modus operandi of all the big banks and insurance companies. It IS the environment. I think Crowe's stance is naive, but I'd better adopt it.

...redacted...

erpadmin

Did Southern Methodist not have an ethics course? LOL...(no seriously, I don't like sounding like a boy scout, but you do have to understand the ethics game)

The tool that the customer and project manager are using is:

Inspection.

B and C are processes. UAT is when customers are testing the product to see if they like it before it becomes production (Go/No Go). Since we're talking about a Tool or Technique, then Inspection would be most logical given the scenario.

As for your other question (BTW, you may want to change the questions up...that's also a no-no per the Code of Ethics...at least when I quote PMI, it's freely available...Crowe's questions aren't):

Release criteria is part of the staffing management plan, because the SMP is what describes how human resource requirements are met. Part of the SMP is how staff is acquired and released. (This is per Mr. Flecther's Prepcast and the PMBOK...he discusses it in his "The Project Management Plan" episode.) That just happened to be the last thing I wrote down. But the HRM plan and SMP are not the same, and I was warned that will trip people up.

Quantumstate

OK, message received on the SMP. I'll be deleting the questions shortly, but you and UF don't have any way of looking them up so I have to reprint them temporarily.

...redacted...

I chose A but Crowe claims D. I remember reading a while back that the project manager CAN NOT control communication. He can only hope to influence it. Unfair question.

erpadmin

You know what...you need to just chill...hang out with the wife....something....anything to relax. I know that's D.

Think of it this way...there's two people (you and I) talking. You are the project manager. It's pretty easy to control communication, because it's just us. Now throw UF into the mix. That's three people. So far so good on communication. Now imagine 5 more people show up to the discussion...now it's getting out of hand....now add twenty. Controlling communication now has gotten difficult.

It wouldn't be A, because the development of the communications management plan is a subsidiary plan that's already been written as part of the PM plan. It's not B, because that also would have been done before the project. It won't be C because whether we're dealing with push communication (sending an email) or pull communication (posting it on a web site/intranet site/extranet site) it's gonna happen whether it's just us, or 30 of us. Hence...D is the logical answer.

Seriously, no more of these questions unless you change them up. They're fun and I like that I'm getting these, but it ain't right. There is always PM...

Quantumstate

Well all right, the logical thing is for me to get drunk then.

But no, the PM can not sensibly Control communications. That is definitely an unfair question.

Durnit, I just found out that my Crowe website key is no good. I bought the book used on Amazon, so I guess she's already used it. Looking for other videos for tomorrow.

universalfrost

Quantumstate....

chill out man! you are beyond frazzled from what it sounds... The PMP is all about drinking the PMI cool-aide and doing things their way (or at least for the exam).... The first go round with the code of ethics/professional conduct section of Crowe's book threw me for a spin... i was picking what i thought was the professional and responsible answer, but remember PMI is the GOD for this section and if they say the sky is falling, well you better answer that the sky is falling if asked on the exam.....

best of luck on the exam.... .oh and i only had maybe a handful of ?'s on prof/ethic .... so don't freak out! you wont fail if you miss a few of these... planning and executing are where the bulk of the questions are... know them and you will pass..

Quantumstate

Well if they say 'the sky is falling, what would you do?', I'd say go to the Risk Management Plan to see what to do if the sky is falling.

Two here have said I sound frazzled, so I guess I'm frazzled, I can't tell. Took it easy last night. Can't get into Crowe's website so will look for some of the video training aids today.

timone_g

When you go through the Andy's training the one thing I have found they repeated is the answer to the question in the exams is not" what I would do" but it is" what i should do". Initially all the answer to the Mock question were wrong. After reading the Professionalism Chapter I started thinking what is that PM (who is abiding by the PMI Code) should do.
For the exam as UF mentioned go only with what PMIism's say.

Best of Luck for the Exam

Quantumstate

I did it! I am now a PMP. I scored Moderately Proficient (which PMI describes as "average") in all areas except Executing, in which I got Proficient (described as "above average").

So this means now that I am exempt from speeding tickets, that I can cut in front of the supermarket line, and can leap tall buildings with a single bound, right? That's what I'd understood.

Lessons Learned:
I am very deliberative on exams. I really take my time and make sure it's right. But this approach cost me dearly on the RedHat exam and PMP. I now know the way to take these certification exams is this:

- Make your first pass on the questions, SKIPping all calculative questions and marking them for later.
- Respond to the prose questions as soon as you are pretty sure of the answer and move on, Now.
- Answer but Mark, any prose questions you are unsure of, for review later.
- Go through all 200 questions in this manner, whether you like it or not.
- Then it will ask if you want to go back through the Unanswered, or Marked ones; choose Unanswered.
- Now you have your math and diagram calculations, which take a different part of the brain. One thing that really cost me the first time was switching back and forth between calculative and prose questions.
- Finish all the unanswered calculative problems. I ended up with two left that were just going to take -alot- of time for me to figure out (one on the final Variance Analysis, and the other with a massive diagram to analyze), so I didn't bother with those and just marked those with something that seemed plausible. You DO lose for those you don't answer, but if you guess right you get credit, so it's worth it to mark something if you don't know.
- Then go through and review all the marked ones that you were unsure of. I marked almost a third for review, and I made it all the way to 160 before I ran out of time. I changed about 10% of those.
- I reviewed and reviewed until the little window came up saying "You are now out of time." and I was quite sure I'd made it. To heck with the closing survey, I did it last time, just give me my score.
{blank window}
{blank window}
... for at least thirty minutes ...
*Prometric Logo*
{blank window}
{blank window}
{blank window}
... if I don't get it this time, I quit ...
*Prometric Logo*
{blank window}
{blank window}
{blank window}
DAWWWWW I made it!

So now I have to find a job, and figure out some way to learn M$ Pro-ject. I've run Linux exclusively for 14 years, so I've never used it, but I guess Pro-ject is the most prevalent tool.

erpadmin

Congratulations...you give a guy like me hope.

I guess I'm up to bat, unless PF takes his PMP this month. I decided to forgo tonight's football game and get some more Mulcahy time.

BTW, there is no hyphen in MS Project...it's just Project. I'm going to start with SkillPort to get me started on that WAAAAAAAY after I'm done with PMP. (I'm not starting that immediately, until and unless I have to for work.)

Quantumstate

Well my first task is to figure out whether it's pronounced PrO-ject, or Project, like project.

Nah, I think we/ve lost PF and C. You're next bub. I know you can do it.

I wouldn't have scheduled the exam so far in advance as you. I think you'll be ready sooner, and may forget stuff or get tired of it by the time your exam comes up. If you reschedule sooner I think it costs like $75. But paying that is alot better than forgetting stuff and flunking your first try.

erpadmin

No....I anticipated that. What's gonna happen is a lot of the stuff will get repeated from my PM class. Plus, a lot of it will be put in practice when I have start the group work. Believe me, there will not be a week that goes by where I'm not doing some sort of PMP prep work....I may even read at least one of the books over again. (Maybe both.) I wanted to be safe than sorry.

Quantumstate

PS - Major props to UniversalFrost for getting me on the right track here!! You Rule man. Thank you.

universalfrost

congrats on the pass!

next up for you is to study for MS Project 2010 70-178 certification.. i have been looking at job announcements and more often than not I have seen the requirment for proficency in MS project 2010 (i have only used 2003 and 2007) what better way to show you know how to use project 2010 than with a certification in it (MS is offer a 2nd shot voucher for their certs right now)... i am currently doing the skillport training on it and have already downloaded the 60 day trial of MS proj 2010 pro , now just waiting on my book to arrive from amazon (remember i am deployed to the stan right now so it takes a couple of weeks to get anything)...


here is the book i bought based on some good reviews Project 2010 Project Management: Real World Skills for Certification and Beyond (Exam 70-17: Robert Happy: 9780470561102: Amazon.com: Books

Quantumstate

I am loathe at this point to start a new study program, given that I'll be homeless pretty soon if I don't find a job, but I can see that Project is needed. Little problem though is that I don't run Winduhs on any of my machines, and haven't for 14 years. Maybe Project will work in XP in a VirtualBox VM.

Quantumstate

Borat tries to buy a slave:
Borat in Texas - YouTube

Quantumstate

OK, I'm studying M$ Project now. Since I'm doing this on the cheap and easy, I'll be watching alot of YouTube. So I'll post the video links here as I come across and watch worthy clips, for the benefit of others.

I haven't used M$ products for 14 years, so for the two or three other Linux users who care about security, the way I'm doing it is first I downloaded the 60 day trial of Project from here . Then I installed Wine into Debian, which is a Winduhs emulator that makes Winduhs apps think they are being installed in an actual machine of The Borg. You must download the 32bit Project, as Wine binaries are 32bit only, even though you may be running 64bit Debian (or Ubongo). Do not fail to print the activation key page to M$' flakey proprietary xps format file, so you will be sure to have it later. Then just
# wine ProjectProfessional32.exe
Project will install as if nothing's wrong! And it will install in your pulldown menu under Wine|Programs|M$ Office

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YexOONfGn54

Here's a good one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPwURRG9_Gs

universalfrost

yeah i did the skillport training for ms project 2010 (was a tough time staying awake)... i just got my book from Sybex and installed the 2010 pro version... i am hoping to take the cert by the end of the month (i am deployed over in the stan right now, so that means I have to fly to a different base on the other side of the country just to take the MS cert and so, while i want to take by the end of the month it all depends on when I can catch a mil air going to the base i need to go).....

the sybex book by robert happy (i got mine on amazon) is decent, but the first 4 chapters are worthless for those of us with PMP's and any experience with any project management software. the rest of the book is good though. Project 2010 Project Management: Real World Skills for Certification and Beyond (Exam 70-17: Robert Happy: 9780470561102: Amazon.com: Books

Quantumstate

I'm not going to bother with a cert for Project. I'll just learn it sort of half-assed, and then see about certs for Agile and SCRUM, whatever those are. Agile and SCRUM are required for alot of jobs, and I presume that knowledge of Project will be implicit in these.

Ya working on Project, one thing that no one made clear is why line 0 would not enter data properly. I find that it's intended to be a summary line for the overall project definition. You enter the project name under task, and you're not allowed to change the days because they automatically add all below. For anyone else who's wondering, just put your project name here, and then start tasks on line 1.

Quantumstate

Well I have to say, I am very happy with the free training film I mentioned above: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPwURRG9_Gs

You can download a much higher quality version of this video from his website here: http://msproject2010primer.com/
(Free signup)

I've watched it several times, and think I'm about going to count on that for my M$ Project prep. Now I'm going to move forward and learn Prince2 and Agile, which I suspect are overlays/templates on M$ Project.

In addition to trying to find a job, of course. Got 4 turndown emails today. 'Impressed with my credentials but went with another candidate'. I applied for 43 Program Manager jobs (yes 43, not a typo) at Amazon last week, and haven't heard a word. Of course a couple of those have been open since May, so maybe they're just overwhelmed or unable to deal.

Quantumstate

Starting to think I'm alone now.

Well here's a good start to some of the new methodologies I'll be studying:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_service

universalfrost

some low hanging fruit as far as certifications goes is the ITIL foundations cert... super easy to study for and cheap cert, but lots of folks looking for it on resumes....

i am planning on doing the scrum master cert in the distant future, but right now i plan on taking the MS project 2010 cert in 2-3 weeks and then starting on my CISSP (i am in the government and the CISSP is almost a must have for some of the jobs out there even if they are not IA related)...

best of luck on your studies...

Quantumstate

Well it looks like I'm out of luck with Microsoft.

Two weeks ago I got a call setting up phone interviews for a PM job in hardware security. (Surface, XBox, etc) I passed those two, so they set me up for three days of interviews this week. I got through two days thinking I was fine, until I got the dreaded cancellation. No third day, no job.

To illustrate my mastery of embedded systems I'd brought in to show them my Dish Network box that I use for my home theater. I've installed a video tap that sucks out the pure compressed video stream for recording on my computer. I still need to pay for a Dish account, and I am not bypassing decryption, I am simply bypassing the need to decompress/recompress the video and am recording the stream as compressed on Dish's $50k compressors.

But this was misunderstood by this "XBox security team" as 'hacking'. It is disappointing that they did not understand the meaning of this, and feared me. All the PMs interviewing me had been with Microsoft for more than 15 years, and I guess they are stuck in a certain way of thinking.

Another thing I did wrong was correctly answering the question asked by the 'key master' (in charge of keys), of my experience in penetration testing. He asked how I would go about it, so I explained in depth. Turns out this made him fearful... not impressed. WTF? Aren't they supposed to be hiring me for my security skills?

I really needed this job. I really tried my best. Now they seem to view me as an 'evil hacker'. Well no, I am in fact a Certified ETHICAL Hacker. I am exactly what they need, but they can not see it. I guess I'll take today to grieve and then try and get back to job-hunting.

pedrosp16

Quantumstate wrote: »

Well it looks like I'm out of luck with Microsoft.

Two weeks ago I got a call setting up phone interviews for a PM job in hardware security. (Surface, XBox, etc) I passed those two, so they set me up for three days of interviews this week. I got through two days thinking I was fine, until I got the dreaded cancellation. No third day, no job.

To illustrate my mastery of embedded systems I'd brought in to show them my Dish Network box that I use for my home theater. I've installed a video tap that sucks out the pure compressed video stream for recording on my computer. I still need to pay for a Dish account, and I am not bypassing decryption, I am simply bypassing the need to decompress/recompress the video and am recording the stream as compressed on Dish's $50k compressors.

But this was misunderstood by this "XBox security team" as 'hacking'. It is disappointing that they did not understand the meaning of this, and feared me. All the PMs interviewing me had been with Microsoft for more than 15 years, and I guess they are stuck in a certain way of thinking.

Another thing I did wrong was correctly answering the question asked by the 'key master' (in charge of keys), of my experience in penetration testing. He asked how I would go about it, so I explained in depth. Turns out this made him fearful... not impressed. WTF? Aren't they supposed to be hiring me for my security skills?

I really needed this job. I really tried my best. Now they seem to view me as an 'evil hacker'. Well no, I am in fact a Certified ETHICAL Hacker. I am exactly what they need, but they can not see it. I guess I'll take today to grieve and then try and get back to job-hunting.

I have read all your posts! I loved them, lol. I am starting to study today with Andy's book. Any advice of how to study, hours per day? and how long is it require to study? 1 month? 2?

Thanks

pedrosp16

Hi Everyone. I am starting today studying for the exam. I am using Andy's book and maybe after weeks I'll check Rita's.
Any advices of how to study (any plan or schedule, hours per day), how long did take to study (a month, two?)
I get distracted for anything and want to be completely focus.

Thanks

Quantumstate

I followed universalfrost's suggestions for study. I spent almost two months, first studying Rita and then Andy. I made sure to cover at least one chapter per day, plus the end-of-chapter test. You can't be distracted. You must be left alone during this time of day. Go to the library to work if you have to.

universalfrost is the best source for prep.

pedrosp16

Quantumstate wrote: »

I followed universalfrost's suggestions for study. I spent almost two months, first studying Rita and then Andy. I made sure to cover at least one chapter per day, plus the end-of-chapter test. You can't be distracted. You must be left alone during this time of day. Go to the library to work if you have to.

universalfrost is the best source for prep.

Thank you very much for the precise information. It helped me. I'll keep in touch.

pedrosp16

Do you have a link of those (universalfrost's) suggestions? I see many links and information about it, but not still not sure for PMP exam.
Thanks

Quantumstate

Eh, early in this thread...

Quantumstate

Ya know? I've been looking for a job almost full-time for eight months now, and have had only three interviews. Applying for no less than 100 jobs a week. Astounding.

What could account for my terrible results, even as I have outstanding qualifications, education, and experience? Well today I realized that even when I was interviewing for a job in Microsoft Security, the fact that I am a "Certified Ethical Hacker" bothered them. And when the Key Manager asked me how I would penetrate a system, I explained it to him, and he turned sort of gray. These things strike fear into people. Maybe the fact that I am a Certified Ethical Hacker has been my problem all along.

But I'll be damned if I'm going to throw away that $600 I spent on the cert. So as of today I am instead a "Certified Network Defense Architect", which is the same designation.

We'll see what difference this makes.