Customer Reviews

PgMP: Program Management Professional Exam Study Guide

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I'm a trainer in the fields of project management and program management and have found this book as the best not only for PgMP exam preparation but also for learning the basics of program management.
First, for the PgMP Exam:
The best strength of this book is that it follows and covers the official exam specifications by PMI very closely and thoroughly. Yes, if you have time you can go through different references such as, Program Management Standard (which you should go through any way), and relevant parts of other references such as PMBOK Guide 3rd Edition, OPM3 model doc, and some other references to learn the material covered by the PgMP exam as specified in the exam specifications. You can take the relevant pieces of information from these different resources and references and put them together, but it will take a lot of effort. This book integrates these pieces of information together in a seamless fashion. So, it's a great time saver.
Bottom line: this book gives you the body of knowledge that the exam covers. That siad, no book can be a substitute for your experience. To pass the PgMP exam, you need the body of knowledge presented in this book PLUS your experience.
Second, the program management:
I agree with another reviewer that this is the first real book on program management (other than the program management standard, of course) that clearly distinguishes program management from project management and presents the relationship between them in a clear way. The basic concepts of program management are explained in a very clear way and the author offers comprehensive coverage in a cohesive fashion. I love the author's style of presentation. It makes learning easier and fun.

To me, this book is an order to a perfect chaos of PGMP material. What I mean that the material required for the PgMP exam is scattered in bits and pieces across several references such as Program Management Standard (full), PgMP Exam Specifications (full), PMBOK 3rd Edition (pieces), Maturity models (pieces), and so on. This book integrates all the pieces seamlessly at one place, and by connecting the different concepts to each other creates a beautiful big picture of program management that makes sense. The author adds tons of value to the standard pieces. I commend the author for that. I personally don't care if the questions are easy or difficult (nothing is going to substitute for our experience); but the book presents the material required for the PgMP exam in an excellent way. I have gone through many program management books; none of those even come close to this remarkable book...Books like this one don't come that often...Exam or no Exam this book is a keep; a must have...
Recommended highly.

I find this book as the first real book on program management. I have read several books on program management that actually cover project management under the cover of program management. This book clearly distinguishes program management from project management and also clearly establishes the relationship between them. Then it covers all the program management topics with appropriate depth within the scope set by the PgMP Exam Specifications by PMI. It's written in the standard Sanghera Style (yes, I have read other books by this author), which I love. All concepts clearly defined from scratch, and their connection with each other clearly established. There is a perfect logical flow among the chapters and among the sections within each chapter. This makes the book easy to understand and also enjoyable to read.
Each chapter starts with listing and explaining the PgMP Exam objectives covered in the chapter. Although the book has a very strong focus on the exam and follows the PgMP exam specifications thoroughly, it's not an exam cram. The preseantation style makes it an excellent referecne (text) book for program management as well. I'm planning to use it for my program management course.
Highly recommended for the PgMP exam and also if you just want to learn basics of program management.

I've read this book from cover to cover and the PgMP exam? Tough! Been there, done that. My recommendation: this book is a must to prepare for the exam just like the Program Management Standard is. I'm puzzled at a couple of harshly negative reviews about this book: useless, waste of time, dry? These words do not describe this book....I have read other books from Dr. Paul Sanghera as well, and I love his style that puts life into even dead boring topics and make them interesting. Same is true about this book. All concepts are explained well and woven together, and there is a perfect logical flow...it's almost like reading a story... If the inputs and outputs for a process are re-organized to help you make sense, and explained why they are there, I think it's a feature and not a problem...

I do agree however that the questions in the exam are much more difficult than the one in the book, but the book presents the material that you must know before taking the exam...In the exam, of course, your experience will count..no book can substitute for that...This material can be obtained from different references, scattered around...but the book does an excellent job to put all the pieces together and integrate them seamlessly... The author should be congratulated for that...Another great PLUS of this book is that it"s organized along the official exam specifications.
Actually I would recommend this book even if you are not planning to take the exam; it's a great program management book, too.. All program managers should have it on their desk. Program Management Standard will make much more sense after reading this book.

In considering any of the guides out on the market, you need to account for the fact that the PGMP test has not been around very long. That's why Rita Mulcahey, who guarantees results, hasn't got a PGMP course out yet, which should tell you something right there.

This book actually suffers from an effort to walk the tightrope between being a useful operational program managers' guide and an exam prep book. The author has come down on the side of the exam, but unfortunately the actual exam is not like the PMP exam against which this book is structured.

The text provides a map (at a very high level) to the PMI exam structure specification, but that is more than a bit of a stretch. I spent many hours searching for references to the specified material in the chapters that claim to address them, and in about 50% of the cases there is either nothing there or a sentence that you can twist in that direction if you are trying to do so. More importantly, the examples and sample questions in both the book and the accompanying CD, because they follow the PMP format of "what sub-process belongs to what process", are completely irrelevant to what you will find on the actual exam.

The PGMP exam is not about the PMI standard - it is a whole lot of mini-scenarios, some of which are somewhat realistic and some are very contrived. You'll find questions that are a whole lot more like the exam in the Letavec-Rollins-Altwies book; but that book doesn't provide much of a study framework either, which is presumably what you were hoping for in an exam prep book.

When an exam costs $1500 to take, a couple of hundred on the prep materials is a reasonable risk reduction strategy. I used several books, hoping to mitigate the $1500 risk I was taking, but in fact none of the materials on the market that I found (as of July 2008) have much to do with the exam (including the PMI standard and specification). The grim reality is that if you are even thinking about spending this kind of time and money to take this exam, you can probably pick out enough of the obvious school-solution answers to get to 50% and your experience will take you the rest of the way. If you do not have that experience, or if you do but you're just not a good test-taker, you're not going to enjoy this exam.

I took (and passed) the PgMP exam just yesterday (8/26/08). The exam was absolutely NOTHING like this book. The materials covered in this book were weak at best. I took ESI International's online course, used their practice exams, used Aileen Ellis's online test questions and read through the PgMP Standard & Exam Spec. Each of these items were far more useful than this book. My copy has already been put in the garbage... That's where it belongs.

Being involved in one of the huge program of deploying an unified business model on a global scale, I was looking for a knowledge source to fit in and relate what we do in practice and what is generally accepted practice in the field. That is how I stumbled on this book (basically I decided to buy this after reading the reviews in Amazon). Since I have to agree with most of the reviews already put in there (especially those positive ones), I try to provide my views avoiding the ones already indicated by other reviewers.

1. If you really need to venture into this book, one important aspect is to understand the concept of how it is structured. Probably the author would have treated, creation of this book itself as a program, one can immediately recognise the structured approach, depth of knowledge & experience of author on the subject matter (probably one of the reason why some times the topics appear to be repeated or too detailed), effort to make it easy to understand (repeated definitions instead of cross referencing - this could probably help from exam perspective, only if you understand the structure and not get confused by such repetitions)and so on. Without understanding the basic framework of the book structure, I struggled in the beginning which slowed down my reading pace. But once I discovered it (by plotting the key learnings on a mind map) that most of the repetitions are basically due to spliting each chapter contents into 2 broad (but related) categories namely - 1. Program Phases 2. Process groups with included processes & Knowledge areas supporting those process groups & Program stages, then I could see and link the repetitions easily and logically (and hence realised, many things are repeated since once they are explained under program phases and they are again covered under process / process groups / knowledge areas). In fact, analysing and connecting them using mindmap technique also helped me create a complete summary of the whole program management concept for easy and quick reference (even from exam perspective, such a reference would be very good reference for revision, I believe)

2. On one hand the book extensively covers the conceptual frame work, what it appeared to lack in many places is - examples or illustrations (though there are some real world scenerio's here and there, but not extensive). What I mean here is, while the 39 program management processes covered follows the structured conceptual approach of 1.Inputs, 2.Tools & Techniques & 3.Outputs, if you look for some examples within this framework you may be disappointed (For example: you read the term -detailed program scope statement many times, but if you are looking for a concrete example of a detailed scope statement to understand it better, then you may be disappointed). To be fair, I don't see this as a negative aspect of this book because, having written this book from examination perspective, the 'detailed scope definition of book contents' itself would have been a limiting factor in including such examples (though this could have been an excellent value addition to the CD attached, if not in book pages)

3. Though I could have made a choice of other books on program management, one of the reason I wanted to see the books targted at PgMP exam was: in such books, there is more gurantee that the contents are probably well adhered to the generally accepted body of knowledge (in this case, with the PMI definitions of program management); thus, benchmarking of my own experience would be against such professional body of knowledge. On the other hand, if needed - it also helps to get certified (though,secondary benefit in my case for now). From that perspective, I should say I am extremely satisfied with this book (It did reaffirm many of my beliefs and experiences in one hand, while filling some gaps in understanding and knowledge areas on the other. Not to forget the help it provided in aligning my own knowledge and experience to the professional definitions and body of knowledge).

4. From PgMP certification perspective itself, what I see as limitation in this book is : it only focus on the exam preparation stage of certification (i.e. evaluation level 2). It wont provide guidelines or help in terms of either evaluation level 1(application review) or evaluation level 3 (MRA - multi rater assessment). Once again, this could be due to the scope definition of this book. In that sense, I would say - it is not an one-in-all book for PgMP certification, but a good reference on the PgMP certification exam part.

5. In summary, this is one of the book that I would strongly recommend to be included in your program management refererences (either from exam perspective or from understanding of program management concept perspective). Not,if you are looking for some detailed practical tools & utilities that you could quickly pick and adopt for your usage (anyway, that is not the purpose for which such exam oriented books are written).

Similar to other low comments, this book provides content on PgMP processes and terms but the sample questions only represent less than 10% of the PgMP exam questions. The questions provided by the author is very objective. The majority of the PgMP exam questions are extremely situational. Memorization is minor. A thorough understanding how you apply the PgMP concepts to the situations is highly required.

The content of the book are excellent and well elaborated, but unfortunatly I found after taking the real exam that the simulation test questions provided in the book has nothing to do with the real test questions which are based on real scenario questions rather than a straight forward input output questions.

I suggest to all to buy other books in the market.

Good luck.

I studied this book cover to cover and could not pass the exam. I scored 80-85% in the practise tests. This is a good Program management book. The title of the book is misleading. DO NOT READ this book for the PgMP exam