Preparing for the Project Management Pmp (R) Certification Exam

I did a good amount of searching before picking a companion book to the PMBOK guide when I started studying to take the PMP exam. I decided upon Newell's book and found it to be fairly complete in its coverage of all aspects of project management. Where PMBOK laid out the fundamentals, Newell used examples to clarify. The practice exams were extremely helpful in highlighting areas in which to focus my studying. The approach I took was to read/study a chapter out of PMBOK and then read/study the corresponding chapter out of Newell's book. I would take the first practice exam for that chapter, review the missed questions and focus my studying. After completing all of the chapters I took the entire second practice exam in Newell's book and used the results to again focus my studying on specific areas. When I took the PMP exam, there were no major surprises and had no difficulties in passing. I'm sure there are several great books out there to assist in studying for the PMP exam; Newell's book would certainly be one of them and has my full recommendation.

This easy-to-read book is a great addition to my library. I haven't taken the PMP exam as yet but I have found the content of the book to be very beneficial in my business even though my projects are usually very small.

Thanx to the author, I passed with more than 81% in my first attempt!The concepts in this book are neither complete nor concrete about project mgmt. It just looked like, the author is trying to fill the gaps in PMBoK, where ever more detail is needed. One ultimate prep info is the bulk of questions, nowhere else you can find! Even about the questions, take them only for your practice and try to understand the concepts from these questions. Questions in the actual test are much more plain and straight forward than presented here.My last word is, first read PMBoK, then this book and try to consolidate the knowledge. FYI, I've never got a chance to look at Rita's book.

There is no doubt that you need to be thoroughly familiar with the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK) in order to pass the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification exam. I took the test this week and passed on the first try, responding to 85% of the questions correctly. My experienct is that about 70% of all the test questions can be answered correctly using the PMBOK alone. However, a score of 70% is just passing. This means that you have to gain additional insight and knowledge from supplemental materials or attend courses to have a better chance of being certified on the first try. The only learning tool that I used in my two weeks of preparation was Preparing for the Project Management Professional (PMP) Certification Exam by Michael W. Newell. The author's alternative presentation of the core PMBOK material made them much easier to understand. The book is especially useful for its statistics' explanations. Importantly, the book also includes many specific items that were part of the test, which do not appear in the PMBOK. The hundreds of questions contained in the book were excellent preparation for the test. In fact, many of them were actually on the test. You can't beat that!

I have Rita's book which is also very good. But this book supplements her work with more of an emphasis on the quantitative materials which I thought was very helpful in preparing for the upcoming exam. (...) And I purchased MANY books which I did not find useful.