Is it worth it to do a "Brain Dump" for the PMP exam?

Hello, I did not do a brain dump - mainly because of the time factor. I barely had enough time to check my marked questions at the end of the exam. I feel its better to use the brain dump time towards reviewing marked questions.

Shayla

Risk is all around. Perhaps, examiners won’t even have a chance to dump the brain into a piece of paper or w/b.
However, once they understand the 49 processes and realise how to use those formulas, they don’t need to dump any thing.

I would recommend any examiner to keep in mind that “what things need to do” and “when need to do that things” is very necessary and “how to do” (for both calculations and perform each process”

When the examiners understood that, they would have a lot of brain space to analyse those 200 questions.

P.s. I did’t have a chance to dump any thing.

I just took (and thankfully passed) the PMP. I didn't create a brain dump, I can tell you that I cannot imagine how a 'brain dump" could have helped me. I'm terrible at memorization so I focused on studying understanding the logically how the processes flow.

Hey Shayla, I very (very) recently wrote the PMP exam, and would say this - it's all personal preference.

If a "brain dump" is how you learn best - do it. For me, it definitely isn't.

The book and majority of the training out there tends to focus on a section-by-section breakdown of the work. So, when you learn about Stakeholders, you learn about EVERYTHING to do with stakeholders from start to finish.

Since this segmentation isn't how it works in the real world implementation, and because my brain much prefers seeing the processes as they occur, this really didn't work for me even after doing a few brain dumps to see where i was at.

What really clicked everything together for me, and helped visualize every element (and subsequently, focus on the areas i needed the most help) was a video and pdf of the process flow by Ricardo Vargas. Huge help - but again, that could just be because that's my brain, but i really wish i had seen his stuff earlier in my journey (even before i started my PDUs). It brought everything together.

I hope that's at least mildly helpful. At the end of the day, it will come down to knowing the relationships and understanding the framework overall -- and the best thing you can do for that (imo) is to do as many sample questions as you can, and learn from the feedback to address your weak spots.

Formulas - also important, as others have said. Doing more and more questions will help there too (though writing out all the formulas a few times - also great!)

However you learn best + questions (because that's ultimately what you have to do on the exam) is your best bet. You'll do great - and good luck! :)

Hmm... I think its a 2-way street answer. Formulas are great for applying the brain bump and sometimes ITTO's but there is no point in applying the brain dump for definitions as the PMP exam is situational based questions.

Thank you Josh! I appreciate you providing perspective on the "for" side of the question. I could see how writing the formulas could be beneficial. I will certainly leverage multiple ways to make the information stick as you suggested. Thanks again!

Hello Shayla. Since PMP questions are extremely situational, a braindump of processes, process groups, and knowledge areas isn't useful. Maybe, if you like to take advantage of the free time you have before the test, you can write in your sheet the main formulas of EVM, so you can consult them for any exercise that requires calculations.