PMI is a joke.

Hard to believe no one has replied to your post...?

I feel your pain (leadership), I suck at static written tests and excel at practical exams and in professional life with real people and real challenges (emotional intelligence). You admit that PMI/PMP have created a thoughtful and scalable PM framework acknowledged by most successful companies (business case), proof is in viable hiring credentials and potential raise/bonus (investment justification), or not; nobody ever got picked for the team that didn’t have their toes on the line (risk) and some on the line didn’t get picked (risk response), they need to work smarter and harder, this is life (leadership).

Since you’re somewhat down the PMI/PMP path already it would be wasteful (lean theory) to abandon your efforts. With that in mind, how can you ‘pass the test’ (your charter) in the shortest time (schedule) and the least spend (cost control) with a good study team (resources) engaging the right training vendors and tools (resources and procurements)? It’s no paradox that good PM practices will assure your PMI/PMP success and poor PM practices must be overcome to gain PMI/PMP success!

Stay the course wayward friend, plan your path and walk your plan at a sustainable cadence. There will be roadblocks, distractions and difficulties so add these risks to your plan as you go with a way to overcome them.

Here’s what I did – it wasn’t fun, but the reward was worth it.

• PMI membership - $49
• Projectmanagement.com – free, read the articles & blogs, keep your head in the game, I read about PMI training products/services and simply avoided them, it is unfortunate.
• Udemy - PMP Certification Exam Prep Course 35 PDU Contact Hours/PDU (Andrew Ramdayal’s) - $16
• PM Prepcast – this is the “best” PMI/PMP test prep suite of training services available and the cost reflects it. Thousands of test prep questions (I’m a happy customer with positive results).
• YouTube – pay for a month subscription to avoid the ads then immerse yourself in the cornucopia of channels and approaches to the PM topic.
• Brace yourself for 180 purposely vague scenario based multiple choice questions in 270 minutes. Make a separate plan for preparing for the actual test, not just practice tests, read all PMI material about the test. I took 6 fully timed mock exams and created a positive scoring trend (histogram!) before my test.

At the end of the actual test I wasn’t sure if I had passed or failed, I had prepared my team (family) and was mentally prepared for either outcome.

But alas; pass with AT/AT/AT!

When the horse bucks you off you MUST get back on!

Cheers!

Hard to believe no one has replied to your post...?

I feel your pain (leadership), I suck at static written tests and excel at practical exams and in professional life with real people and real challenges (emotional intelligence). You admit that PMI/PMP have created a thoughtful and scalable PM framework acknowledged by most successful companies (business case), proof is in viable hiring credentials and potential raise/bonus (investment justification), or not; nobody ever got picked for the team that didn’t have their toes on the line (risk) and some on the line didn’t get picked (risk response), they need to work smarter and harder, this is life (leadership).

Since you’re somewhat down the PMI/PMP path already it would be wasteful (lean theory) to abandon your efforts. With that in mind, how can you ‘pass the test’ (your charter) in the shortest time (schedule) and the least spend (cost control) with a good study team (resources) engaging the right training vendors and tools (resources and procurements)? It’s no paradox that good PM practices will assure your PMI/PMP success and poor PM practices must be overcome to gain PMI/PMP success!

Stay the course wayward friend, plan your path and walk your plan at a sustainable cadence. There will be roadblocks, distractions and difficulties so add these risks to your plan as you go with a way to overcome them.

Here’s what I did – it wasn’t fun, but the reward was worth it.

• PMI membership - $49
• Projectmanagement.com – free, read the articles & blogs, keep your head in the game, I read about PMI training products/services and simply avoided them, it is unfortunate.
• Udemy - PMP Certification Exam Prep Course 35 PDU Contact Hours/PDU (Andrew Ramdayal’s) - $16
• PM Prepcast – this is the “best” PMI/PMP test prep suite of training services available and the cost reflects it. Thousands of test prep questions (I’m a happy customer with positive results).
• YouTube – pay for a month subscription to avoid the ads then immerse yourself in the cornucopia of channels and approaches to the PM topic.
• Brace yourself for 180 purposely vague scenario based multiple choice questions in 270 minutes. Make a separate plan for preparing for the actual test, not just practice tests, read all PMI material about the test. I took 6 fully timed mock exams and created a positive scoring trend (histogram!) before my test.

At the end of the actual test I wasn’t sure if I had passed or failed, I had prepared my team (family) and was mentally prepared for either outcome.

But alas; pass with AT/AT/AT!

When the horse bucks you off you MUST get back on!

Cheers!

I believe everyone has a different experience.
I’m still trying to figure out why most of the PM jobs require a college degree 🤷🏽‍♀️ but that’s also debatable.

My Strategy:
- I took a GoSkills On-Demand course.
- Then Subscribed to PMI study hall and used just the Practice Questions portion.
*I did none of the actual full length exams but averaged about 60% on the Practice Questions.
- The week leading up to my exam I watched YouTube videos on PMI Questions & Answers by David McLachlan.

I was able to get “Above Target” in all 3 areas.

I’m sharing this to say that it’s possible but you have to find your rhythm and your “why”. I was determined to pass.

If you need help and would like to reach out to me with your learning style (Visual, Interactive, Auditory etc.) I can recommend some custom options that might help. I have colleagues who had similar frustrations as you.

Hi Stephen,

I agree with you completely.

Do your homework and research thoroughly.

I had to do a lot of reading for more than a year. Failed miserably in my first attempt and felt the same way. But what is required is an exhaustive study with thorough understanding of project management principles.

1. PMOBIK guide latest - for waterfall.
2. Agile practice guide - definitions (green book) and the big green book (forgot the name but given as reference in PMP)
3. Essential Scrum (read this to know different methodologies not very deeply)
3. Udemy - 35 units PDU.
4. I even read Modern Project management - The managerial process, 8th edition.
5. Joined PMP course from Aileen - who gives lot of practice test after each chapter. This was very useful.
6. Finally a must is Andrew Dayal's mock exams which gives situational questions. This I did after practicing a few complete exams.

But when I took it for the second time (after a a year gap almost), I was confident I have passed and I did it, with Above target in all 3 sections.

I always kept 80 percent as bench mark and practiced each section until I got that percentage. I also introspected deeply why I got things incorrect. This is very important especially on the full length exams and practice questions. No point in making same mistake and thinking same way over and over. In the end, I even went to the extent of maintaining a log to see the types of mistakes I made and where I was vulnerable.

Preparing for this exam is like preparing for a marathon. First get each sprint right and think long term to develop that strength and stamina to last that complete 4 hours.

Finally in the end, it was all worth it ! Nothing is impossible.

Good luck !

Hard to believe no one has replied to your post...?

I feel your pain (leadership), I suck at static written tests and excel at practical exams and in professional life with real people and real challenges (emotional intelligence). You admit that PMI/PMP have created a thoughtful and scalable PM framework acknowledged by most successful companies (business case), proof is in viable hiring credentials and potential raise/bonus (investment justification), or not; nobody ever got picked for the team that didn’t have their toes on the line (risk) and some on the line didn’t get picked (risk response), they need to work smarter and harder, this is life (leadership).

Since you’re somewhat down the PMI/PMP path already it would be wasteful (lean theory) to abandon your efforts. With that in mind, how can you ‘pass the test’ (your charter) in the shortest time (schedule) and the least spend (cost control) with a good study team (resources) engaging the right training vendors and tools (resources and procurements)? It’s no paradox that good PM practices will assure your PMI/PMP success and poor PM practices must be overcome to gain PMI/PMP success!

Stay the course wayward friend, plan your path and walk your plan at a sustainable cadence. There will be roadblocks, distractions and difficulties so add these risks to your plan as you go with a way to overcome them.

Here’s what I did – it wasn’t fun, but the reward was worth it.

• PMI membership - $49
• Projectmanagement.com – free, read the articles & blogs, keep your head in the game, I read about PMI training products/services and simply avoided them, it is unfortunate.
• Udemy - PMP Certification Exam Prep Course 35 PDU Contact Hours/PDU (Andrew Ramdayal’s) - $16
• PM Prepcast – this is the “best” PMI/PMP test prep suite of training services available and the cost reflects it. Thousands of test prep questions (I’m a happy customer with positive results).
• YouTube – pay for a month subscription to avoid the ads then immerse yourself in the cornucopia of channels and approaches to the PM topic.
• Brace yourself for 180 purposely vague scenario based multiple choice questions in 270 minutes. Make a separate plan for preparing for the actual test, not just practice tests, read all PMI material about the test. I took 6 fully timed mock exams and created a positive scoring trend (histogram!) before my test.

At the end of the actual test I wasn’t sure if I had passed or failed, I had prepared my team (family) and was mentally prepared for either outcome.

But alas; pass with AT/AT/AT!

When the horse bucks you off you MUST get back on!

Cheers!

Was the membership price $49 in 2023? You might be surprised to learn that as of April 2025, the membership fee for U.S. residents has risen to $164. However, what are the actual benefits of being a member, aside from the discount on exam fees? I genuinely question the purpose of the institute, as it appears to operate more like a for-profit organization.

I've been critical of PMI for many of its leaders' actions over the past few years but one thing I will not question is that there is value for the membership in terms of access to soft copies of their publications, this community, mostly good quality webinars and online events and networking opportunities at the global and local levels.

Memberships with other (non PM) global professional associations are also costly so it really comes down to the question of whether you are getting sufficient value to justify those annual costs.

Kiron