Customer Reviews

PMP Exam Prep (4th Edition)

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

If you are prepping for the PMP exam, this book is a must. This self-contained course explains the PMI certification process, offers exam-taking tips and focuses your attention on key project management concepts.

Written to save you preparation time, the book:
* Helps you identify potential problem areas in your knowledge.
* Review topics not covered in the PMBOK.
* Become acquainted with what the author calls "PMI-isms."
* Prepares you for sitting through a four hour exam.
* Acquaints you with the type of questions that appear on the exam.

Make no mistake; the exam is much harder than the questions that appear in this guide. However, the time spent reviewing Mulcahy's material will focus your attention on material appearing on the exam. It will also broaden your approach to project management from your personal, narrow experience to the broad-based approach tested on the exam.

If you are serious about passing, this book is well-worth the money.

I had taken a very reputable classroom style course to help me pass the test and it was definitely very useful in solidifying the Project Management knowledge I had gained over the past 4-6 years. If I had to do things over again, I would still have taken that class. But they had taken the approach of drilling down into each of the 9 Knowledge Areas and neglected to go across the Knowledge Areas by addressing the 5 Process Groups. Even their software was focussed on testing your expertise with the 9 Knowledge Areas.

Guess what? In order to pass the PMP, you need thorough expertise with the 5 Process Groups! Sure, if you understood the 9 Knowledge Areas 100%, you will indirectly have a grip on the 5 Process Groups. The only problem is that it is almost impossible for that information to stick in your head unless you go across and not just drill down! Preparing for the PMP using the Knowledge Area approach is like learning a language by reading a dictionary!

I was wondering why I was scoring so poorly on the practice tests till I decided to check out the PMP Exam Prep and PM FASTrack(the day before the test). When I started using Rita's PM FASTrack which tests your expertise in both Process Groups and Knowledge Areas, I realized what the missing component was. I then spent the next 4-6 hours carefully studying the more difficult chapters from Rita's PMP Exam Prep book and took another practice test. I only spent about an hour per chapter since I had already been exposed to a lot of the Project Management techniques that are tested. Suddenly, my overall score started improving!

I then kicked myself for not opening her CD-ROM and book till the last minute. But I decided not to panic and just study with high concentration. At this point, I reconciled myself to not passing the test this first time and promised myself that I would read her book cover to cover and take 100% of the practice questions in her CD-ROM the next time.

Fortunately, the next day when I took the test, I was able to stay calm and felt a lot more comfortable when I noticed that the questions on the test were VERY similar to the ones in her book and CD-ROM! I could not believe it, but I was glad :-) I was very happy that I used her material at least for that one day. When I got the score at the end of the 4 hours, I had scored 86. Whew!

... If I were to do it again, I would just take her class instead (much cheaper) where you get all this material free on top of the class. More than anything, following the approach in her book will relieve you of all the tension resulting from the unpredictability and difficulty in taking the PMP exam.

The PMP exam's main source of difficulty stems from the seemingly subjective nature of the questions. Only by thoroughly understanding the material in the official 'Guide to the PMBOK' will anyone be able to see that the questions are actually quite objective in nature. But to understand this really dense 'Guide to the PMBOK', there is no substitute to the 'PMP Exam Prep'! Her material also gave me a much better understanding of project management than any of the other material/class. Among a couple of other books, I still use her PMP Exam Prep book whenever I am going through a project life cycle as a reference.

Good luck with the exam and I hope that the information above helps you pass the exam with a lot more ease.

Hi,

This book is good from exam point of view. The cost of others calling this "great" is probably $1000+ for some 3-day classroom courses either with Rita or with cheetahlearning etc. Passing the exam only with the help of this book is impossible.

This book covers the key points for the exam. This book keeps reading more interesting and easier. But number of practice questions are very less (only 30 questions from each chapter. Passing only with this book is impossible. The highlight of Rita's book is the time and cost chapter - she has done a great job in those two topics.

Remember PMBOK IS the bible. Other book that you might want to consider is from ESI. I bought their practice exam guide. When you compare Rita's book with ESI's practice exam guide, ESI has 40 questions on each topic and one set of 200 questions exam as in the real exam. ALL of ESI's questions are directly from PMBOK. Believe me they are hard to answer. If someone scores over 75% in ESI's practice exam, they will score 80% in the actual exam.

From my friends' circle, all who passed the exam - including me - either attended an expensive course or bought an expensive CD for practice exam. I bought Rita's PM Fastrack - very expensive one - VERY USEFUL. Lot of PMBOK study+PM Fastrack = my success.

Hope this helps

This was the only book I used and I passed easily without going to a course (although I've been doing PM for about 10 years). Sometimes the PMBOK is overly theoretical but this book makes the same material more engaging. Well thought out, highly recommended.

I didn't attend any formal training class and I have passed PMP exam recently with the help of this book (plus the use of 3 more other reference books including PMBOK).

I have read both 3th edition and 4th edition (the latest one!). 3rd edition one is a very good exam preparation tool with lots of comprehensive training exercise and guideline for readers. But 4th edition provides much more. Many new exercises and questions are provided to accelerate your learning process. In addition, a new topic on "Professional Responsibility" (which doesn't appear in PMBOK) is added.

I personally found PMP exam is very tricky and there are questions even experienced Project Managers may have difficulties to answer. It is very important to know more about the exam and to have adequate practice beforehand. This book is a very useful reference for anyone preparing PMP exam.

I noticed some disapointing statements in some of the reviews of the pmp prep and they are some negative statements. I'm just writing to state that no one project prep book is gonna get you fully prepared for the pmp exam. You'll need multiple different books. The first one I would start with is the pmp sybex book by Kim Heldman because of it's ease to read along with using the PMBOK as a guide (some people can read the PMBOK straight, frankly I can't. It's like reading a dictionary) Then after reading that use Rita's book. Take lots of prep exams. Look on the net and download any and all free exams out there. If you can definitely buy Rita's CD of questions. Yea it's redicoulusly over price but it serves its purpose well. The main point I want to get across though is no one book will do it.

I used the PMBOK, this book (the "Rita Book"), PMP for Dummies, and some ESI materials. In the end, I would say that it is this book + the PMBOK that helped me pass the exam the most. The Dummies book and the ESI materials were nice to present a couple of different viewpoints, but Rita's book is the best overview of the exam and provides the best description of what to expect in the exam room itself.

I didn't take a prep class. I didn't buy the $250 set of Rita CD's. I read the PMBOK a couple times, read the Rita book twice cover to cover, took a couple of online exams (free ones), went back and reread my weak areas, and went and scored 91% on the test. Don't make a mountain out of a molehill and spend thousands on this exam. Get this book and one or two other materials (just to keep things fresh) and you will be fine.

I bought this thinking that this would help me blaze through the studying. Her approach is based on memorization and, to some, this is all that is needed to help pass the exam.
This did not help me at all as her technique did not suit my way of thinking and learning.

Here is my approach:
a. go over the PMBOK, paraphrase the sections that you learnt in note form.
b. Understand the relations between the processes; connect them together in your mind.
c. Read Kim Heldman's book on the sections you just read.
d. Answer exam questions (available on the web and from PMI) on the sections just read.
e. Feel good about getting it right. If you didn't get it right, go back and redo the whole section again.
f. Go to the next topic/process and iterate from step a.

Remember, the more exam questions you get right in this time, the better your chances.

I used three books for examp prep, this was the least useful of the bunch. I don't believe I could have passed the exam with only this text or that this study guide affected my score. There are better materials on the web that cost about half as much. Go with the Sybex book. I agree with the other reviewer that the reviews here seem staged.

Disclaimer: Before buying the mulcahy book, I also enrolled in and completed a PMP Prep course offered by a University. My rationale for purchasing the Mulcahy book was (a) to get a different prespective on the exam, (b) to gain a bit more confidence prior to taking the exam (personal test anxieties, and (c) to make sure that I'd gotten the major material and brush up on anything else I might have missed. I have since passed the exam decently, but having said all of that, I felt that the Mulcahy book fell rather short in some key areas.

Mulcahy tends to use a "preachy" style of teaching in the book, such that when you reach an answer and have incorrectly responded to a question posed, you often see responses written like "You MUST KNOW THESE CONCEPTS". If you enjoy being preached at, definitely get this book. Otherwise, compared to the full instructional course (and perhaps this isn't a completely fair comparison, thus the disclaimer), the book tends to lack much of the detail you would find in other sources.

Also, after reading it and going through the review questions, I actually found that my confidence level decreased. If I missed one of the concepts, and I didn't find too many of them that were terribly well-explained, I was greeted by those preachy answers again, but more often than not I would see little or no explanation or background that would have been helpful to the student.

So on the points above -- (a) I got a different persepctive. Sort of. I did not get the detail I sought. (b) I lost confidence, and ended up going back to the othher material prior to the exam and quickly regained a lot of what I felt I'd lost by the mulcahy book. (c) I honestly didn't find much new ground that the book covered that wasn't in other, better written texts. Mulcahy's book is, at best, an average study guide, but doesn't draw on much new material or lend any great insight into the exam experience. Mulcahy's CD Courseware (PM FastTrack) is a better investment if you're seeking a good simulator that will provide an accurate barometer of your real-world test experience.