A PMP Plan Also Looks Outside the PMBOK® Guide
Student Success Story
I found the PM PrepCast extremely helpful and an important contributor to my success on the exam. The PrepCast laid the foundation of knowledge I needed before diving into the relevant books and study materials available.
Christopher Hughes, PMP
While the majority of information needed to pass the exam is included in the PMBOK® Guide, the guide often only presents a high-level discussion of each topic.
This means that for a more complete understanding and comfort in addressing these topics, additional supplemental knowledge gathering is required. This can be done by simply picking up an additional PMP exam prep book, or by taking an online PMP exam course that teaches these topics in their completeness.
Two examples of areas mentioned only briefly in the PMBOK® Guide are
- Team building, leadership, organizational dynamics (Maslow vs. McGregor vs. Herzberg) (mentioned in chapter 9)
- Stakeholder analysis and analytical techniques (mentioned in chapter 13)
The PMBOK® Guide's coverage of the topics is just enough to make one curious to understand the "why" behind the need, but for the details, we have to look elsewhere.
These areas of supplemental study are generally covered sufficiently in non-PMBOK® Guide published sources to allow exam candidates to readily find and study this information. These supplemental areas generally only make up a handful of questions on the exam, but the material is straightforward to understand and will make these types of questions “no stress” and easy to answer.
And by the way... if you are having a hard time finding good resources for where to look up obscure information (For example, do you know what a Tornado Diagram is?) then why not try Wikipedia? Wikipedia pages on project management are quite up to date and explain complex concepts in simple terms.