Saturday, October 6, 2007

Project Management Institute : PMP certification help


I'm affliated w/ PMI and studying for the PMP. My employer, will sponsor this certification.

My study group is looking to exchange study material and support if you're working towards the same.

This certification has become amazingly popular recently; it is a consistent requirement/desirement from HR in any industry and highly sought in government positions where projects (are large and expensive) have been typically high-risk.

In discussing the value of this certification with Brett Seylar, BearingPoint Senior Manager, he presented the pro and con of this certification. While the challenging cert assures teams that the candidate knows of the language and tools of project management, it still does not grade their performance and ability. One cannot 'learn' project management by studying for and passing the exam.

Do you feel that the PMI PMBOK is a project management bible?



http://www.pmexam.com/ has daily PMP review questions. One example follows:
Vocabulary Review: Ishikawa Diagram - (also fishbone diagram or
cause-and-effect diagram) is the brainchild of Kaoru Ishikawa, who pioneered
quality management processes in the Kawasaki shipyards, and in the process
became one of the founding fathers of modern management. It is simply a diagram
that shows the causes of a certain event. It was first used in the 1960s, and is
considered one of the seven basic tools of quality management, along with the
histogram, Pareto chart, check sheet, control chart, flowchart, and scatter
diagram.

Daily QuestionA project manager and his team are trying to determine
how various factors might be linked to potential problems using an Ishikawa
diagram. The project manager would be involved in which step of the quality
management process?
A. Quality planning
B. Quality tools
C. Quality assurance
D. Quality control


For the correct answer and daily questions :
http://www.pmexam.com/0110.html


[update] We have successfully passed our PMP exam using the following aides:
Skillsoft Computer Based Training (provided through our employers for free). It provides multiple choice questions in a study mode or certification mode.

http://www.pmiwdc.org/new-pmps-july-2008

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

checkout the study guide by Rita Mulcahy; she got me through it!

Anonymous said...

Hi Test Pilot,
While the PMP has MARKET VALUE, its value as any kind of benchmark of project management competency is nil. To put it in perspective, how value would you put in a 200 question, multiple choice exam, of which only 175 questions actually count, and the passing score is only 62.5%?

Professionally, the PMP is on the downhill side of it's popularity. If I were in your shoes, I would get ahead of the curve and select a credential which no one else has.

BR,
Dr. PDG, PMP #740

josephkhng said...

I also suggest the training material from Rita. This is the best I have read so far. As for the PMBOK, it is not as easy to understand. Anyway, you do have the read the PMBOK since it is the official PMP training material.

You can also refer to my blog on the PMP:

[url]http://pmp-preparation.blogspot.com[/url]

josephkhng said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

There are too many paper PMPs and this is a worthless rating.

While PMI has 20,000 certified PMPs, this has generated $900 for testing plus $250 per year maintenance.

PMI is in no hurry to interrupt the $7 million per year revenue stream; its a cash cow.

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