Project Management Degree Help!

At the risk of sounding confrontational, I'd be very skeptical of anyone who says they didn't study for it and "passed easily." There is just too much content specifically out of the PMBOK that is counter-intuitive to what you would likely do in practice and too much nomenclature that you're simply not likely to encounter outside of it's context. Of course, nothing is impossible... I'd also wonder how long ago you took the test. It is my understanding that it was changed significantly and made more difficult. I remember there being a mad rush at the time for people taking the exam before the new test was implemented.

In any case, suggesting that somebody should not study for the PMP seems like very bad advice to me. Especially considering the cost involved.

Danny

 

Oh no, not confrontational at all. I don't mean to say that people shouldn't study for the exam - if they want to study for it, I would say sure, why not? I'm more expressing a sense of disappointment, I suppose, that the exam wasn't up to a level that I could respect, considering that people use it as a job credential (including me - I know, but there doesn't seem to be any other PM credential that is as recognized).

I would say that a fair amount of the PMP content overlaps management in general, so if you were a business undergrad, you're already quite a bit ahead. In Organizational Behavior, you already learned about Maslow and X/Y theories. In Operations Management, you've already learned about Ishikawa diagrams. Also, certainly there is plenty of project management terminology such as WBS, SPI, and so on, but those aren't terms that are owned by PMI. If you've say, simply used MS Project before, you'd have encountered those terms too. So you can see how someone can easily acquire that knowledge elsewhere.

I took the exam in February 2007, which was after they'd supposedly made the exam harder. I know a lot of PMPs who are good PMs, actually. But it's definitely not due to that stupid, lame excuse for an exam.

 

With over 17 years experience, a significant amount of formal PM education, all the courses you've mentioned, and all the study time I've put in specifically for the exam it would certainly be in my best interest if what you're saying is true. I'll find out one way or another in a couple of weeks.

The statistics I've seen (or my study material) just don't appear to support what you're saying and you're the first person I've ever seen categorize it as a joke. That's a completely different thing from simply stating that you didn't find it to be as difficult as you'd expected. That said, I'm sure you can understand my healthy skepticism of empirical evidence in this situation.

No exam is going to make you better at your job, but if it really is a joke I'm going to be pretty upset after all the money and hassle it's cost me.

Danny

 

Oh yes, certainly, I understand that, and I don't mind your skepticism at all. After all, it was my own healthy skepticism that made me go about taking the exam the way I did.

What happened was that I knew a few people who spoke of taking the PMP exam someday, but were afraid to. Bought books and CDs and did this and that, and never took it - out of fear, I suppose.

Then, there were the people I knew who *had* taken the exam. I know plenty of those, and they all passed on their first try. When I asked them how the exam was, the typical answer was that it was all hard and scary, but how they were special and talented somehow, so managed to pass. And those scare stories would make those who hadn't taken the exam even less likely to do so. But considering the often spotty quality of the PMPs I knew, and the fact none of them ever admitted to failing a PMP exam, you can understand this made me a bit skeptical on my end.

So to my frightened friends, I told them that if they'd really studied all those materials they bought, just stop being scared and give it a shot. And I showed them by taking the exam myself with those handicaps, in order to give them one happy story to counter their scary ones.

The only drawback to this plan was that in the process I lost some respect for the PMP certification. Or maybe it was never really respect, but just fear of the unknown.

 

I just took and passed the PMP exam a week ago. It certainly was not a joke. Experience will definitly NOT get you through the exam alone based on my test. I have over 10 years PM experience and the test still presented me with about 150 out of 200 of very difficult questions. If you don't know how PMI wants you to think you will not pass the test easily. I studied for two months, passed with flying colors, but was still unsure that I had done well due to the diffuciluty of the test.

 

Ah, but you see, this is precisely the kind of anecdote that I had heard a dozen times, and which made me start to feel that there was something fishy about the exam. It's always "The test was really hard! But I passed on the first try. Maybe I was lucky, or maybe it was because I studied so much."

As for how PMI expects you to think, did you check out those obligatory PMI Ethics and Professional Conduct questions? They're all, "You have witnessed questionable conduct X. Do you A. Cover it up; B. Profit from it; C. Ignore it; D. Report it to your manager/customer". Sheesh.

 

This is an easy one. The test was really hard. I studied a lot. I passed. My point is even after studying hard the difficulty was such that I wasn't confident that I passed. The ethics questions are the easiest on the exam and those are about 20 total questions. You may be lucky but every person I know that has taken the exam has said it was the hardest test they have ever taken. Yes, they all passed, but they also studied for months. Correlating people taking the test to people passing is irrelevant when you don't take the time of preparation into consideration.