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 passed the PMP exam last week (first try) and I don't believe I would have passed if I hadn't used this book. It is very well written and was super helpful.Some background, I have 20+ years of experience managing software development projects of all sizes and complexities and would consider myself a highly experienced project manager. I've learned how to deal with all manner of issues. I wanted to get the PMP credential to add to my resume.The PMP exam does not test you on your real-world experience, however. It tests you on how well you understand the principles and practices that are documented in the PMBOK. This is key to understand. It is a BEAST of an exam. 200 questions in 4 hours with, what felt like, trick questions sprinkled throughout. Each question is multiple choice and many of them have four very valid answers as choices. You need to learn how to answer the questions the way the PMI expects you to answer them. They have a very specific and rather rigid way of expecting project managers to approach the process of managing projects. And, this is where Rita's book came in. She makes it clear what the PMBOK expects a PM to do. She explains the various process groups really well and provides many tips and hints on what to expect on the exam. I had already taken a PMP class and took about 3 months to read the PMBOK, a few hours a week. In the last two weeks before the exam I studied Rita's book, reading a chapter a night. The weekend before the exam I took a full practice test and memorized formulas and definitions. There are a lot of practice questions in the book and these were also really helpful, although, I found her questions to be easier than the exam questions. (Again, this exam is rough.) I would have liked more practice questions but fortunately had some from my PMP class.As for the exam itself, in my case, the majority of the questions were situational ("what should you do next if xxxx has happened"). These are tricky since you need to answer the way the PMP expects which is not necessarily what you would do at your company. There were probably less than 8 questions (out of 200) that required any math or memorization of a formula and NO network diagram questions. I had memorized all the formulas and how to calculate critical path and float, per Rita's guidance, but that didn't turn out to be required, at least on my exam date. That was disappointing since these are the easier questions.However, I passed. Phew! This book really helped.