PMP Exam Prep, Fifth Edition: Rita's Course in a Book for Passing the PMP Exam (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

Rita's book is boon to men and women preparing to take PMI's certification examination. -- - J. Davidson Frame, Ph.D., PMP and Past PMI Director of Certification

Rita's book is boon to men and women preparing to take PMI's certification examination. --- J. Davidson Frame, Ph.D., PMP and Past PMI Director of Certification

Product Description

Can you imagine valuing a book so much that you send the author a "Thank You" letter?

Tens of thousands of people understand why PMP Exam Prep by Rita Mulcahy, PMP, is a worldwide best-seller. Is it Rita's years of PMP exam preparation experience? The endless hours of ongoing research? The interviews with project managers who failed the exam, to identify gaps in their knowledge? Or is it the razor-sharp focus on making sure project managers don't waste a single minute of their time studying any more than they absolutely have to? Actually, it's all of the above.

PMP Exam Prep, Fifth Edition by Rita Mulcahy contains hundreds of updates and improvements from previous editions--including new exercises and sample questions never before in print. Offering hundreds of sample questions, critical time-saving tips plus games and activities available nowhere else, this book will help you pass the PMP exam on your FIRST try.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 445 pages
• Publisher: RMC Publications, Inc.; 5th edition (August 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932735003
• ISBN-13: 978-1932735000
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (385 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #36,087 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

226 of 239 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read the book, took the test, and here's my review, March 22, 2000

By	gnomic (Mid-Atlantic US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: PMP Exam Prep (Paperback)

PMP Exam Prep is an invaluable study aid for passing the PMP. Highly recommended.

I've been an IS project manager for over 10 years. I've studied Kerzner's book (good, but tedious) in preparation and the PMBOK, but took no courses or workshops. I studied PMP Exam Prep for 10 days immediately preceeding my exam. Read the book about 3 times. I took the test in 4 hours and got 168 of the 200 question correct. I think that the "study tips" in the book helped me get about 15-20 questions right that I might have otherwise missed. (your milage may vary) However, the book said to expect about 6 "math" questions and I had about 15. (All of which I got right) About half of the questions I missed were due to the test's wording which is tricky.

The book made me a bit more confident than I should have been, but is the best such book that I've come across. Expensive, but worth it especially if you haven't taken a review course. Good focus on PMI-isms (things important to PMI and passing the test that your experience as a PM may not help you) Also recommended: Principles of Project Management. With PMBOK, Principles, PMP Exam Prep, and the requisite 7,500 hours of PM experience you should be able to pass the PMP. Kerzner's book will also help if you have the time to read through it.

Good luck!

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars PMP Exam Prep - Seminal guide to exam success, June 12, 2002

By	Roger K. Hull (Anchorage, AK USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: PMP Exam Prep (Paperback)

I recently passed my PMP exam with this book and related materials as the ONLY exam preparation tools I used. My 20+ years of PM experience would not have been sufficient to score nearly as well because of the fairly narrow interpretations of many terms and concepts that are unique to the PMI context.
I read a variety of texts and web-based resources during my eight months of preparation and study, but relied almost exclusively on Rita's Mulcahy's PMP Exam Prep tools to provide "ground truth" when I encountered conflicting methods or subtle differences in methodology promoted by individual experts in the field.
Of greatest value were tips on the exam itself, suggestions for resolving what appear at first glance to be multiple correct answers, and the emphasis on essential relationships and formulas.
The practice exams were worth every penny of the cost of your entire package. By taking them repeatedly for several weeks, I developed a rhythm of responding to easier questions and deferring successively more difficult questions in a way that carried over to the actual exam and made that 4 hours seem comfortably familiar. Identifying the subject matter of more commonly missed questions also helped focus my final study sessions on specific topics or vernacular that could have been problematic.
This is a well-designed package of materials that Rita supports quite well and obviously works hard to keep current. I applaud Rita's contribution to the PM profession.

92 of 100 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This PMP Is Not At All Fond of the Rita Mulcahy Approach, June 30, 2006

By	southpaw - See all my reviews

I bought Rita Mulcahy's 5th edition PMP Exam Prep book on the advice of a PMP-certified PM who had used her earlier book to pass the previous version of the exam. She spoke highly of Rita. I have no idea why.

Not only did I buy this book, but I also took and completed her online course in order to obtain the 35 credit hours required to sit for the exam. Don't waste your money on the online course. It's nothing but a rehash of the book, word for word, with little "next" and "previous" arrows instead of pages. But just so we're clear, these comments are about the book itself, not the online material. (Reviewing the online "course" would include an entire litany of different complaints!)

How do I hate this book? Let me count the ways. First, the presentation and organization of the material is disorganized and overly complicated. The book includes a LOT of detail, so much that it's hard to discern what's useful and what's extraneous. Yet, in spite of this I still had exam questions (such as PTA calculations) that the Mulcahy book doesn't mention, let alone explain in depth. This book takes the "quantity over quality" approach to PMI material.

Most study aids conveniently arrange the material in a logical format by process groups, knowledge areas, inputs, tools and techniques and outputs. Rita's book doesn't and it's detrimental to learning the material. Instead of telling you what the PMBOK lists as inputs and helping you understand them so you don't have to just memorize them by rote, she instead includes a large number of worthless exercises to have you "guess" what you might need. The same goes for tools and techniques, and outputs. While that's a delightful "pie in the sky" approach to organic project management, I found it a complete waste of time as an exam studying approach. And this from a book that claims to be a "course in a book for passing the PMP exam" no less!

In much the same fashion, Mulcahy proudly touts her "Process Game", an exercise where you cut up a bunch of processes from paper and arrange them into process groups, correctly ordering in the Planning process group. Again Mulcahy overcomplicates and obfuscates the entire process in two ways: 1) Half of the processes in her "game" aren't the same names that the PMBOK uses and 2) She randomly throws in additional "subprocesses"! Here's the thing, if you simply buy a real study book, and you learn that all of the processes occur in the standard PMBOK order (Integration, Scope, Time, Cost, Quality, HR, Risk, Procurement) in each process group where they appear, the rest of it falls into place. I found that this "game" actually confused me more, and made it tougher for me to learn. Once I trashed the pieces and stopped trying to learn it the overly-complicated "Rita way" everything came together for me.

More disturbing than the overwhelming volume of material, some of which I found totally irrelevant and all of which was terribly organized, I found the condescending, snarky, downright rude tone of the book insulting. I've been a professional project manager for many years and I think that the approach that RMC Project Management takes in this book of belittling the student is completely unprofessional. It distracts from the material and served no purpose. I don't understand why a business would insult its customers as routinely as RMC Project Management does in this book.

I studied for the PMP for several months, on the side. I didn't have a chance to take a week off to prepare solidly. About three months into using the Rita Mulcahy book and online system, I was so frustrated that I went out and started looking for other books instead. I found "The PMP Exam: How to Pass on Your First Try" by Andy Crowe of Velociteach and started reading that. VERY quickly I realized that Crowe's book presented the material well, logically, and without all of the extraneous fluff and insults that characterized the RMC book.

Using Crowe's book, I finally was able to pull all of the elements together that I needed for the exam. If I felt I didn't understand an area or feel 100% comfortable with it after reading Crowe's book, I went to the RMC book and researched it further. I found that after reading Crowe's book, I was able to pass the Rita Mulachy book's quizzes with 85%-90% scores. Something I wasn't able to do when I was reading the Rita Mulcahy book!

The ONLY thing that this book does better than the Crowe book is that the Rita questions are confusing, annoying, frustrating and frequently seem contradictory. This makes them very much like the PMP Exam! The questions from this book are tougher and prepare you better for the exam than the Crowe book. It's a shame the trademark snarky Rita Mulcahy tone comes out in so many of the answers. Snide remarks like "Did you forget that...." in lieu of real explanations appear far too frequently in the answers section of this book. I still don't get the point Mulcahy is trying to make while she unprofessionally insults the readers of her book.

In short, I only recommend this book for the exam questions, and even then, only halfheartedly. I passed the exam solidly on my first try just a few days ago, but credit for that rests solely on Andy Crowe's material. I don't think I would have been able to say that if I had just used "PMP Exam Prep" by Rita Mulcahy.