Studying PMP Cert For Dummies will help you pass the exam.
My study group purchased all the books in the category that we can find. None of the books alone will guarantee that you pass the PMP exam. You need to purchase several books. All have gaps and omissions - especially Rita's. All have errors, both in grammar, spelling, and in the technical subject matter. Our ranking from worse to best: ESI's has the most amount of errors (worst), Newell's has next to worst, Kim's is next (her errata list is very long), For Dummies comes in the middle, Rita is better, and Crowe's has the least errors (best, but there are plenty of errors & omissions). Get over the errors and omissions; all have them. In all books, you should easily spot an error. If you cannot spot an error, or are bothered about them, you are not ready to take the exam. Remember these books are review guides, not intro books! You should already know project management.
PM is a young discipline and even the best authorities have conflicting notions about some definitions. Last fall in the official PMI magazine, the cover article was on a billion dollar construction project where the PM flubbed the formulas for EV. He switched numerator and denominator and got all the EV formulas wrong. He would have missed all test questions on EV. No one at PMI Publications caught the error either! Get over error issues. Be able to spot them without being an indignant whiner or you are not ready to take the exam. Enough said here.
None of my study group felt that Rita's book was suitable to self-study. Rita's is a re-cycled workbook taken from her $1,100 training class. If you want to use her book, take her class instead and you get her $ 90 workbook and the $300 Question CD included. Most of the reviews comments are from people who have taken her course, where the omissions can be corrected. Rita's quality section is pretty skimpy and doesn't use charts well. She omits time value of money (PV, IRR) which are still on the exam (I check with PMI). (Kim includes these too; but Dummies explains it better.) For example, Rita and Kim mistakenly refer to process groups as phases of a project. Controlling is a phase? Nope, as Dummies points out, it's a `process'. That why PMBOK Guide calls them "Process Groups".
Kim's CD has 200 questions; For Dummies CD has 300 questions. Rita has no CD in her book, her question CD is $300 extra. Newell and Crowe don't even include a CD. For Dummies is the best value just for the questions alone!
All other PM books are very dry and hard to read. For Dummies is the friendliest and the easiest to spot what is important and where you need to pay attention. They spoon feed you the formulas - ones other books omit. I have several other Dummies Cert books and they are different from the general interest Dummies books. They are only interested in how to pass the exam.
