We Failed You, Sorry [PMP Exam 2011]

John visited a doctor for a regular health checkup. After examining him, the doctor asked him to go for a medical test. John took the test next morning, and the report was delivered to him in the evening. As he was reading the report, his body started trembling, heart started pounding and senses went numb. He had tested positive for a dreaded disease. He called the doctor, but the doctor wasn't available. After spending a long night in agony and distress, he got a call from the lab next morning. They told him that the report he received actually belonged to another patient!

Imagine if this had happened to you. What would be your reaction? It would not be an exaggeration to say that something similar happened to dozens of PMP® aspirants last week.

Review of PM Exam Simulator

So you have been looking for a good PMP exam simulator and haven't been able to decide which one to buy. I can understand your dilemma. There are just too many of them out there and each claims to be the best and the most realistic PMP exam simulator. It's certainly not an easy choice.

Today I had a chance to test drive a new PMP exam simulator - PM Exam Simulator - from the publisher of the ground-breaking PM Prepcast. I spent the most part of the day testing the tool. In this post, I'm going to share my experience and views about this new tool, and hopefully help to confuse you more, oops, I mean help you make an informed decision.

80+ Commonly Confused Concepts for the PMP and CAPM Certification Exams

Recently I started a discussion in PMP Cert Online Study Group on the topic - Commonly Confused Concepts (for the PMP and CAPM Certification Exams). The topic resonated really well with forum members and within couple days, we had 75 items on the list. In this post, I'm sharing that list with you. The list is meant to serve as a "checklist" for PMP and CAPM aspirants.

I realize that not every item on the list would be confusing to every one. Therefore, I have set up a survey for you to vote for the items that you find most confusing. The result of the survey would serve as a guideline for those preparing for the exam.

Many of the concepts have been explained on this blog previously and I've linked the items to the respective posts. Answers to many others can be found in the PMBOK Guide itself. Regarding the remaining items, I'll address the ones which receive a significant number of votes. You can also expect to see many of these items on brainBOK in the form of sample questions and flashcards.

If you are preparing for the PMP or CAPM exam, my humble advice to you is to make sure that you understand these concepts well, before you go for the exam.

Changes to the PMP Exam in 2011

The PMP exam is changing in 2011. Even if this is BREAKING NEWS for you, do “not” panic. I have been receiving lots of queries about the upcoming changes in the PMP exam. In this post, I’ve tried to capture everything that you need to know about the changes to the PMP exam which will be effective from Aug 31, 2011.

The Powers of the Project Manager

One of the important topics for the PMP exam is "The Powers of the Project Manager". There's quite a bit of confusion on this topic specially because some of the powers are referred to by more than one name. And then the question - Which is the best form of power for a project manager? - comes up quite frequently.

Last week I uploaded 25 new flashcards on this topic to BrainBOK. During the course of developing the flashcards, I compiled some notes on the topic that I'm sharing with you in this post. I believe that all you need to know about this topic for the PMP exam is available in this short article.

BrainBOK ITTO Explorer is even better now

One of the things, which you might have noticed about BrainBOK is that it’s developed from the perspective of a PMP aspirant. Many of the frustrations that I had as a PMP aspirant and as someone who still breathes the subject everyday, are being addressed with BrainBOK. The heart of BrainBOK is the ITTO Explorer. It all started with it and the rest just spawned from there.

BrainBOK - PMP and CAPM Certification Prep for Geeks

BrainBOK is an application designed to help project managers achieve PMP®­ and CAPM­® certification. It integrates a variety of tools such as exam simulators, flashcards, and quizzes, and can be called the swiss-army knife of PMP®­ and CAPM­® exam preparation. It aims to transform the way people prepare for these certifications.

BrainBOK introduces some unique features such as the ITTO Explorer, which render hundreds of online PMP®­ and CAPM­® resources, and gazillion spreadsheets, obsolete. It has a minimalistic, intuitive and user-friendly interface. Though it's not a mobile application, many of the features are designed with mobile devices (such as iPhone and iPad) in mind. Above all, it's free and virtually ad-free. Let’s take a quick tour of the features of BrainBOK.

Product & Project - Life Cycles, Phases, and PM Process Groups

Recently a reader, Imran, posted a comment asking for clarification on concepts such as project life cycle, project phases and project management process groups. After reading his comments, I realized that many others might be having similar doubts and it would be more appropriate to address his questions through a separate blog post rather than responding through comments. In this article, I’m trying to explain these concepts by drawing an analogy between products and human beings. I hope you’ll find it interesting and useful.

Turning a Dream into Reality

During the days of my PMP exam preparation, I wanted to have a tool (set) that would help me master certain aspects of the exam. It wasn't necessarily your usual exam simulator or a flashcard set. However, development of such a tool was clearly "out of scope" for the project at hand, which was PMP Certification. I passed the exam in reasonably good time, but thought that the process could have been more efficient had I got some simple tools. I moved on to other things and the idea didn’t take off. The tool remained a dream. A year and a half later, when I started this blog, the need to have that tool became stronger. This time we were talking about thousands of people who could benefit from it. I spent weeks searching for “free” tools that would allow me to do what I thought would be useful for PMP aspirants. I inquired with several companies in the field about features, license, cost, and other terms and conditions of their applications. In one way or the other, none of the applications met my requirements. So, the quest continued ...

Deep Fried Brain is Alive Again :)

I’m finally back after a good 11 week break. I cannot believe that I spent nearly 3 months away from my baby (Deep Fried Brain), whom you could not separate from me for more than 3 hours. Did you think that I dropped my baby and walked away? Well if you did, you couldn’t be blamed because I neglected my beloved baby so badly. Neither did I feed it nor did I tuck it into the blanket and kiss it good night everyday, like I used to do earlier. I haven’t published a new blog post since Sep 3. On top of that, I wasn’t keeping up with the comments and emails. So why such apathy toward something I'm so passionate about?