PMP Exam Prep Simplified: Based on PMBOK® Guide Sixth Edition

I took the PMP the first time and was a hair away from passing. For my second attempt, I relied solely on this book to fill in the gaps. I did not read the PMBOK, but I work in a project management setting so I got quite a bit of hands on experience. Yes, there are grammar mistakes in this book. BUT this book really knits together a lot of concepts that you'd miss studying on your own. The exam tips are very helpful and it reads SO MUCH BETTER than the PMBOK. The author genuinely knows his stuff. Once you're done studying, get your hands on as many practice questions as you can and answer them. Really take the time to understand why you got something wrong. The PMP's questions are tricky and you can convince yourself quite easily away from the right answer. My tips: 1. Memorize the Process groups and knowledge area table by writing it down every day. In the beginning, you'll have to refer to the book. But by the end of the 2nd week, you'll have the whole thing memorized. After it's memorized, write down the table 3-7 times per week to make sure you don't forget. THIS WILL HELP YOU 2. Read this prep book carefully 3. Make flashcards of all the equations (provided in the last chapter of this book). Do these equations every day until you've memorized them. Keep doing them for maintenance until your test date. 4. Re-read this entire prep book and make short outlines for EACH process 5. Take the practice exam in the book. DONT write on the book, use a separate sheet to write your answers so you can use the test again later. 6. IF this if your first time, find a full practice exam on the internet and take it like it was the real test. The more you can do, the better. 7. Pass this god forsaken test 8. Profit

You have to study for this exam so don't think there are any shortcuts. If you're not committed it's better you wait until you know you're willing to sacrifice your evenings and weekends completely. Know that when you go online to other PMP guide sites and use the phone apps, they are trying to sell you their app and they will make sure you fail their practice tests so you buy their service. I recognized it quickly and need something with a structured approach to learning. This book is enough. I also suffered from falling asleep rather quickly from reading the PMBOK. I naturally gave up and then a few months later a friend recommended this book to me so I made this purchase. 6 months later I was a PMP. I probably could have done it in 4 but life and work can get in the way depending on how much you juggle. I may have over done the studying but I wanted to know this stuff end to end. Yes, if you're looking to pass the PMP, this book is what I would recommend that you only need. It lays the foundation in the first few chapters, tells you exactly what to memorize, what to simply understand and then it starts to drill in each knowledge area. I loved the chapter end questions. SO helpful. It's a great way to quiz yourself, find explanations if you got it wrong and know where you need to study more on. A side note. If you're like me and you don't have a photographic memory, you need to go through the book 2-3 times at minimum. My exact steps to success was....to read and highlight the chapter, go back and make notecards for term/process(I made about 40 per chapter), take another day to memorize the notecards, and then immediately take the chapter exam quiz and move to the next chapter. You'll notice a trend in the learnings as you get further in the book, a bigger picture will start to form and you'll understand how everything is connected. When you read it a second time, you'll comprehend stuff you overlooked the first time, take the quizzes again, finish the end of book practice test, and go take the PMP exam. Done.

I read the PMBOK Guide (6th Edition) approximately 6 times, scribbled down notes, created flash cards and even downloaded an app on my phone to practice answering 10 questions on daily basis. However, and with all of the above written out, the PMBOK Guide (6th Edition) was hard to follow in most cases. Especially after a long, tedious day at work. The LAST thing on my mind were the cost formulas or the different risk analysis methods. This is where PMP Exam Prep Simplified: Based on PMBOK® Guide Sixth Edition came into play! It was extremely easy to read -- the PMBOK Guide was written by a group of intelligent folks, but it didn't have to be written in such a complicated manner! The author of PMP Exam Prep Simplified: Based on PMBOK® Guide Sixth Edition did an excellent job of simplifying complicated terminology and the 'Exam tips' in every chapter were highly valuable. Plus, the book made sure that I understood the difference between certain project documents and management plans. It even reiterated the difference a couple of times across multiple chapters. The quizzes at the end of each chapter were super helpful as well. Some of the questions, however, were poorly written and only made sense after reading the descriptions of the answers. This brings me to the ONLY con I have -- poor grammar. In some cases, the sentence structures didn't make sense. I'm not an English professor by any means, but I had to re-read a couple of sentences a handful of times just to understand what the heck they meant! In other cases, words were misspelled or missing a period, so it'd look like a giant run-on sentence. Overall, the book gets (4) stars, and it helped me pass my PMP Exam! Now, I wish the author would write another book on Program Management.

I have been studying for the PMP for over a year and couldn't make the time to finish all the other study guides I bought (2 of them). Most are very big and will take a lot of time to complete. I didn't have the time to sit for months to complete a 700+ book. This is what really was stopping me from studying. I decided about 6 weeks ago to just study and get this exam over with. I decided to buy Andrew studied guide based on a recommendation from a friend and just use this book and take the exam to see what happens. I read all the chapters twice and took all the questions. After 6 weeks I passed the exam with just this book and reviewing a chapter from PMBOK. My take on this study is, it's right to the point and only teaches what you need to know to pass. It will not explain stuff in detail. If you are new to project management then you might fail the exam with this book. Get the Rita book if you are new to project management. If you have been doing project management for a few years and need to pass your Pmp exam then this book is for you. It is actually very quick to read and questions are just like the exam questions. This book is more of a cram guide. Well written and to the point.

If you serious about passing the pmp exam buy this book!!!I followed the exact instructions in this book. Read the PMBOK once and read this book twice and did the mock exam and PASSED with above target in a few areas. This is such an affordable book and this book is so easy to read and a must buy if you want to pass the exam!!! He break down all the PMBOK areas to what you need to know for the exam and real life. He also has a complimentary book which has another 600 practice questions which I purchased that book too so when I finished reading the chapters in this book I did the end of chapter quiz in this book then quizzed myself with his other book 600 practice questions.

Andrew thank you for putting this book together, I attribute it to my recent pass on the grueling PMP exam (with above average scores in most domains). To all PMP prepper's, in my opinion this book is all you really need to get PMP fit for the exam. The only other resource I really used was PMBOK Guide and Andrews other Exam prep practice questions book. My Approach I read/ studied PMP Exam Prep Simplified a couple times went through the practice questions until I started to hit the 80% - 90% range. Felt very confident Skimmed through PMBOK 6 to mainly review topics I was struggling with. Felt super confident for the exam Decided to do free practice tests by other online PMP prep companies (BIG Mistake) averaged 50% Panicked as I felt I had to do more prepping. Did the exam very anxious as I score low on random online prep tests. Passed the exam well. Conclusion I found the practice questions in Andrews books harder than what’s in the actual exam. If you are getting into the 80-90% range on practice questions and understand how to get answers then you should be good. Goal should really be starting the think the way PMI wants you to think and tackle problems, so don’t just focus on how many you get right or wrong , focus on the correct process and method to deal with a situation. I only came across one exam question that was not covered in Andrews book but in all honesty I didn’t see it in the PMBOK Guide either. I see some folks giving negative feedback about this book because of grammar etc. I agree there are mistakes in that respect but the quality of the questions is far superior than anything else I found online. Biggest mistake I made was trying out free PMP tests after I got a handle on the Andrews material. To me it seemed the free tests were (purposefully) ridiculously hard so you score low, panic and buy their PMP packages. There are good PMP prep companies just not helpful to hop from one to the other.

This book was a great resource in helping me pass the PMP with all ATs, along with Joseph Phillips' PMP Online Course (which gave me the 35 credit hours), the mobile app PMP Pocket Prep (I paid for the $40 version to have access to 800 PMP practice questions), and of course the PMBOK itself. PMP Exam Prep Simplified is perfect supplementary material to the PMBOK or any online lecture because it puts the relationship of all 49 processes into plain English. It does a great job of establishing the relationship between all the processes, but to be fair it does not go into fine detail of very specific items on the PMP (that's where studying the PMBOK itself helps). The best asset of the Exam Prep Simplified book are the questions. The questions were less focused on simple, straight forward definitions like "what is a sole source" and instead offered challenging questions that made you evaluate the entire scenario of the question and your understanding of the material. Not only that but the answers provided to these questions go into a great level of detail to help you understand why the correct answer is true and also why the others are invalid. The practice exams were not just an assessment of your competence but also another opportunity to learn even more. I attribute this book to my success in passing the PMP and I recommend it to all PMP aspirants wholeheartedly

This is a good book to read to not only PASS the exam but to UNDERSTAND the scary PMBOK book. It's easy to read- you HAVE to read it twice and reference the PMBOK while reading this as the author leaves out certain things from certain chapters. I didn't pass the first time as I just forced myself to memorize instead of understanding the concepts of PM since I was in a time crunch for the exam. For my second try, I re-read this book and took the mock exam towards the end of the book which helped TREMENDOUSLY! Give yourself at least 6 weeks to study - 2 weeks to read this monster of a book and 4 weeks to memorize what each process does and when to use a change log vs a risk register (fun times)