PMP Exam Prep, Eighth Edition - Updated: Rita's Course in a Book for Passing the PMP Exam Eighth Edition

This is hands-down the best book on the market for PMP exam prep. I've gone through SEVEN exam prep books (I have 5 of them on my desk right now...) and this is the only one I recommend. Andy Crowe's book is great and so is Kim Heldman's prep guide. Head-First PMP is great (and very visual) and PMP for Dummies is surprisingly well written. I still recommend Rita's over all of them.**Exam Prep Recommendations**This assumes you have already gone to PMI.org and verified you meet the criteria. You need to document and submit all of your PM experience/hours/info on their website before you can even pay for the exam. You may also be randomly selected for an audit RIGHT after you pay! Before you can submit your experience, you also need to obtain 35 hrs of formal PM education (aka a Boot Camp or an online class) at some point. I recommend taking a 35 hr online or in-person "PMP Boot Camp" session RIGHT before you take the test and after all of your own self-study. If you take a live boot camp class first, it will be VERY overwhelming (think: drinking water from a fire hose) and you will NOT retain a lot of what the instructor is saying!Read Rita's PMP Exam Prep! Take each of the chapter tests (on separate paper!), review your answers and figure out why you got the answer wrong AND right (you may average in the 50s-70s score-wise the first time). Download the PMP Examination Content Guide (google it - its on PMI.org) and understand the different tasks and ORDER of those tasks for each of the Process Groups. Then read the entire PMBOK. Yes, you need to read it! This is expensive and time-consuming exam. Don't mess up being lazy, even if you know a guy who knows a guy who said they didn't read the PMBOK! Once you finish the PMBOK (or you can do this part chapter by chapter as well), take all of the chapters tests again (you should now be in the high 80s to 100% range now).Go online and use good quality free mock 4-hour PMP exam resources, like PM Study, SimpliLearn, Edwel HeadFirstLabs and (if you want to cry...) Oliver Lehmann. Study each question you get wrong (or accidentally right!) through the PMBOK (and Rita it you'd like) before you take a different test. Don't bother re-taking these mock exams. If you can score 80%+ on the mock exams (the first time - repeats don't count!) then you are good (Olivers Lehmann test? 70% is good as his test may be slightly harder than the real one).You can easily memorize the Knowledge Areas, Process Groups and processes. You definitely do NOT need to memorize the ITTOs (unless your just wired for memorization) but you should UNDERSTAND them. It you understand each process, you can recall what Input/Tool/Technique/Output would be used. I could 'logic' my way into 75% of the ITTOs when I took my test but I never practiced rote memorization of them. You also want to understand them well enough that if a technique is 'described' you can identify it and possible understand what process you are in, thus answer what your next step should be. Oh, and you definitely need to know the formulas! All the Earned Value and Forecasting formulas, Communication Channels, Expected Monetary Value, etc.Be careful if you have a decade or more of PM experience. You'll need to LET IT GO in most cases to accept and absorb the PMBOK's best practices. Don't argue with the source materials! The exam is based off of the PMBOK NOT your experience at your companies! If you have little to no project management experience, please move along! This is for those that already have experience and want to certify it. Not only do you not qualify for the exam without quite a few years/hours of verifiable PM experience, you will have serious struggles even grasping the context of the materials! Most of my students with a good mid-range of experience (5-10 years professional PM) took 2-4 months to study for, take and successfully pass the exam.These tips from someone with 15 years PM experience and 5 years of PMP Boot Camp/Exam Prep Instructing experience and a high student passing percentage. Oh, and when I had to prep for and take the test in 4 weeks due to our original instructor bailing on us (and I didn't have a the cert yet) I developed method. Then I had my students apply it with great success over the years. All you need is PMBOK, 4-5 quality free online mock exams and RITA'S PMP PREP!Good Luck and Happy Studying! :)

I purchased Rita Mulcahy's PMP Exam Prep, Eighth Edition to prepare for the PMP exam back in March. I wanted to wait until I actually took the exam before I posted a review since, after all, I couldn’t really tell how well the book served its purpose without taking the exam. Let me start with a little background. I bought the hardcopy of the book back in March along with ‘A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge: PMBOK(R) Guide by Project Management Institute’. Later I also purchased the audio version of Rita’s book as well as her PM Fastrack Exam Simulation software. I began by reading the PMBOK cover to cover. Then I read the hardcopy of PMP Exam Prep cover to cover. With that completed, I took a practice PMP exam from Rita’s Fastrack exam simulator. I scored 68%, not great but not bad for a first try. The detailed results indicated that was lacking specifically in the Execution Process Group. That’s where I ran into my first surprise. The book is organized according to Knowledge Areas rather than Process Groups like the exam so you can’t just go to the book and re-read the section on Execution. Instead, I had to look up the individual processes that made up the Execution process group and re-read those sections. I then listened to the audio book so that I had reviewed all of the material two times in addition to reviewing specific areas as needed. In fact I made extensive use of the practice exams to identify my weak points and went back to the book (both hardcopy and audio versions) to review those areas. I only worked maybe half of the exercises in the book. Specifically I worked the ones that involved calculations for costs and scheduling. There were a lot of exercises that involved asking you to reproduce a list of items from memory and as the exam is always multiple choice I didn’t spend a lot of time trying to memorize stuff like that. I also didn’t memorize inputs/outputs in exacting detail though I had a pretty good command of them just from my reading and the practice test questions. When I was able to score in the 80s on the practice PMP tests I scheduled my exam. I passed on the first try with “Proficient” (the highest score) in three areas and “Moderately Proficient” (considered an average level of knowledge) in two areas. So there you have it. Using no other materials besides the PMBOK (which I only read once), this book (in hardcopy and audio versions) and Rita’s exam simulation software I passed the test. Of course, 35 hours of project management training is required to be eligible to sit for the exam but my training was a general IT project management course that I took 3 years ago and I did not take a specific exam prep course before sitting for the exam so I believe that Rita's book contained everything that I needed to pass the test. I highly recommend getting the PM Fastrack exam simulator along with the book. A large part of passing the exam is understanding how to interpret the questions pick the "PMI" answer as this may be different from how you do project management on a daily basis where you work.