Customer Reviews

PMP: Project Management Professional Study Guide

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The PMBOK Guide (by PMI) is essential in preparing for the PMP, but follows the 9 Knowledge Areas approach. The approach necessary to pass the test is the 5 Process Groups (plus Professional Responsibility) approach. This Study Guide takes the 5 Process Groups approach and hence clears the confusion one may experience in reading the PMBOK Guide. They also go into more depth than the PMBOK Guide as can be seen by the fact that the book has more than twice as many pages.

This Study Guide also has a CD-ROM with hundreds of practice questions (you can take 2 practice exams). The entire book is on the CD-ROM too. I have not tried their electronic flashcards for PCs and Palm Handhelds.

Considering everything that the book offers, it is a great buy at [this price]. Other CD-ROM software programs that offer practice tests are over $300. The only other book that will prove very useful on top of this book is Rita Mulcahy's 'PMP Exam Prep'. It is a bit more expensive but is of much higher quality in preparing for the PMP exam. This Study Guide is wonderful as a secondary preparation material to Rita's book. Read my reviews of her book to get more info on preparing for the PMP. I always use multiple study guides to get multiple perspectives when preparing for an exam. So, if you can afford it, I would recommend both books for your PMP preparation. But if you want to invest in only one study guide, I would say get Rita's PMP Exam Prep.

Good luck on the PMP!

This is a good resource for studying for the PMP. I have taken a few courses to prepare for the PMP as well as read PMBOK and Rita Mulchahey's book (her's is the best one available)./ The reason why I picked this book is that it is written in stages of the lifecycle: planning, executing, closure, etc.. while the PMBOK is based on function: HR, Quality etc...

This book is another way to reinforce that you can apply the knowledge in the lifecycle and not just memorize PMBOK. The palm flashcards are cool and help a lot as well as the computer test. The test is the most important since that is what you will go through on the PMP. Also the practice tests give you the answer and the rationale for the answer, a great help.

The only reason it is not five stars is that the book says on the back cover that there is a complete project plan enclosed and it is not there, the publisher said that it was an error. Also the flashcards do not tell you what questions you missed.

I used Kim Heldman's book, the Yahoo group and PMBOK as my prep material. This book is not perfect, but it is more than enough to pass the exam. The author covers about 90% of PMBOK and covers other material (that are not in the PMBOK, but we are tested for) as well. For example, Pert/CPM calculations, Code of Conduct Scenarios, Motivation theories etc..

I studied this book, then the PMBOK once, this book again, PMBOK again. I took some free tests on the Internet, took the tests in this book and in the actual PMP exam. I averaged about 83% in those preparation tests and I got 164/200 (82%) in the actual PMP exam. I spent about 130-140 hours on the subject in total.

The test questions in this book after every chapter and at the end of the book (and cd), are really good. The test exam(s) in the cd almost resembled the real exam. I wished there were more questions in the cd, like 200 questions per test or so. (There are 50 questions per exam now). This is particularly true because PMP exam is a 4 hour long 200 question exam. By about the 160th question, even simple sentences like 'Assume you are a project manager' became a little difficult for me to grasp. I guess I lacked the mental stamina to take the gruelling 4 hour one in one shot. May be this book could have prepared me for that.

Otherwise, this book is great. There were areas this book that went above and beyond the PMBOK. And test questions from these areas were a little difficult for me during practice. And none of the free tests online had any questions on these subjects. To my surprise, I found PMP exam questions from these areas as well.

I originally bought this book over Rita's book because the other one was about 200 dollars. I thought if I am persistent enough to finish this book, I will buy Rita's. However, when I finished this one, I realized that this book covered most of the subject. In essence, this book delivers it's promise. (I have heard from everybody that Rita's book is also 5 star material and is excellent)

Finally, even if the certification is not immediately useful in your career, the PM knowledge you gain through preparing for this exam will be useful. So, if you are thinking of taking the exam, I would like to say, go for it! I wish you all aspiring PMPs good luck.

Karthik

I gone through the book twice over 2 weeks in preparation for my test. Even though I went for a course and study the PMBOK from cover to cover, I'm not sure whether I'm fully prepared or not. Generally speaking, the PMBOK only roughly covers 70% of exam. The others need to be complimented either through one experiences or other materials. Although this book cannot cover all of the remaining 30%, it surely come close with broad PM and General Management coverage.
The book is really complementing the PMBOK by using different approach to the PM process. It also highlights the key points in the PMBOK.
What is best about the book is the sample questions. They really resemble the real one, with lots of scenario types questions. If one is not that familiar of what to expect in the exam, will almost certain have barely enough time to go through all 200. For me, I still have 45 minutes to go through again the marked questions.
I passed the exam with 160/200.

This book is just like the PMBOK, but readable. With its 500 pages it is a lot easier to understand and study it.

The two sample tests included are a great preparation tool, best if taken after you consider yourself ready.

An important note is that this book complements the PMBOK, but does not replace it. If you are going to present the PMP exam, you are going to need to have the PMBOK too, because it covers inputs, tools and techniques and outputs of some processes that are not detailed in the Guide. However, it will be easier by far to read the PMBOK after reading the Guide.

I passed the test, and my only two preparation guides were the two books I mentioned here.

Good luck!

I scored an 170/200 on the PMP exam using this book (and the PMI's Guide to PMBOK) as my information foundation. I read PMI's Guide to PMBOK twice and this book twice. I took all the sample exams from this book twice and followed up my studying by ordering and taking all three PMP sample exams from Boson Software, which I took twice. All in all, I spent two months studying for the exam. The exam itself was extremely challenging. Don't be fooled into thinking you can study for a week or two and pass the exam. This book is a really good starting point but don't rely on it too heavily. You will need to leverage your experience and other sources of information. I found this book useful and so will you.

I have been assigned to several project over the past 14 years, mostly in the support role so I never know what it took to get a project up and running. Recently I was assigned to head a project to re-design the voice and data infrastructure of our office, with book and several hours of reading I now know how work goes into project planning and management.

While this book is use for PMP exam, it would server very nicely for the IT Project+ exam from CompTia as well. In this 500 plus page book you have an assessment test right off the bat, after taking this test I found that there were several areas in which I was unfamiliar with.

From the beginning with initiating a project by setting goals and requirements to setting up the project, creating a scope, planning and control over the project all the way to building the team and working through changes in the project, the book is more than a study guide, it is a Project managers reference manual.

About the only flaw in the book were the review questions for chapters 1 and 2. While the question are numbered correctly from 1 to 20 the answers start at 80 and go to 100 and this may cause confusion on the readers part.

Included in the book is a cdrom with 200 practice questions, flash cards and 2 exams plus the e-book version the study guide. Once the grammar errors and question errors are fixed this book becomes the number 1 guide for PMP.

Read this book early on in your PMP preparation process to lay a strong foundation in understanding the process groups. Although it may not be as exam oriented as the Mulcahy book, I found this to be a much better book for a few of reasons:

1. Follows process groups rather than knowledge areas. If you have any real experience managing projects this is much more intuitive to follow and more closely mirrors real-life. By following the process groups as the book is laid out rather than focusing on the knowledge areas as many other books/courses/aids do you begin to get a much better idea of how the PMI processes inputs/tools&techniques/outputs all fit together.

2. Much easier to read. The Mulcahy book (and many other PMP prep books) focuses on memorization and understanding of individual processes which I don't think is required for the exam. What is required is a thorough understanding of why the processes are sequenced in the manner PMBOK lays them out, which begins to make much more sense after you've read through this.

3. The questions and the sample exam are comparable in difficulty to what you'll find on the PMP exam.

I also recommend the Mulcahy book in preparing for the exam, but I wouldn't have been able to get through it without having read this first.

While no one guide is perfect, this new version of Kim Heldman's PMP Study Guide is extremely good. I looked at many others in selecting her book and the one by Andy Crowe to complement the PMBOK, and I thought she did an excellent job in laying out the details of Project Management. In fact, none of the other books I looked at seemed to have the wealth of detail that I saw here (disregarding Kerzner, of course - the early versions of that book are really great for insomniacs, and it's very expensive). I'm going to be teaching some project management courses next year, and am considering using this book and/or her book called "Jump Start" as texts.

Andy Crowe's book was a good high-level guide, and I thought it complemented the Heldman approach very well by showing a different perspective. With the help of these two guides, plus the barely readable PMBOK, I created some color coded drawings of the set of PM processes so that I could memorize each of the processes, and then try to tie in which inputs, tools/techniques, and outputs apply to which processes.

Please bear in mind that the PMP is a very difficult exam, partly because the questions are so poorly worded, and many are very vague. I have over 20 years experience in managing projects, some quite large, and have taught project management workshops to corporate audiences for the last three years. I took every sample test available, many of them twice, and I particularly liked the CD of tests, quizzes, and flashcards that came with the Heldman book. In fact, the flashcards will download to your Palm so that you can look at them when you get a chance.

My score on the exam was 174 out of 200. If I was to do this over <and there's no way in hell that's gonna happen!>, I would work through the Heldman book twice rather than just once. One minor criticism is that she does not provide a 200 question timed test. There's a lot to be said for forcing yourself to take a 200 question practice test as if it were under the real test's conditions. You'll find it easier when you have to go through the real one.

Good luck! PMI is just now releasing the Third Edition of the PMBOK Guide, and a quick glance at the material looked like it was much improved over the 2000 version. There are a lot of changes, most seemingly for the better.

The information in the book is very useful, but CHECK THE SYBEX SITE!!! There are Errata for this book. Especially wrong answers for the sample exams at the end of each chapter. I thought I was going nuts in Chapter 5 until I realised that many of the questions were worded wrong!