Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I passed the PMP test today achieving my 11th certification, the most of them are IT related but PMP is a great knowledge asset for any professional, IT or not. Now that I have everything fresh in my mind, I want to share my experience with you: As a general rule for certifications, I always get two books, I fully study one, complete all the questions and then I take all the questions on the second book. In that way, I know the first book gave me all the necessary knowledge. For this journey I got "PMP In Depth: Project Management Professional Study Guide for PMP and CAPM Exams - In Depth" (Paul Sanghera) as my 'primary book' and "PMP Exam Prep, Fifth Edition: Rita's Course in a Book for Passing the PMP Exam" (Rita Mulcahy) as my 'questions book'. If you don't know it yet, the whole PMP certification is organized around 9 knowledge areas (scope, time, cost, hr, procurement, risk, quality, integration and communication management. Each one has multiple related processes that are applied at different stages of the 5 phases of the project lifecycle (initiation, planning, execution, monitoring/controlling and closing). For example, you plan your costs during the planning phase and you control your costs during the monitoring and controlling phase of the project. Both cost processes belong to the cost management area of knowledge. So Rita's book is organized around this 9 knowledge areas while Paul's book is organize around the 5 phases of a project lifecycle. I started with Paul's book four months ago (4hs every weekday, 11hs each weekend day). This book is fascinating! (please keep reading), because its organization follows the natural life of projects facilitating the learning process, it clearly shows inputs, processes and outputs for each project task, but it doesn't give you always a clear idea of where you are in reference to the knowledge areas. If the other hand, Rita's book is a complex reference to previous and subsequent page numbers, getting you to jump back and forth to understand how a project actually occurs. I carefully studied Paul's book, I review every single detail on it, memorized every process (inputs, tools/techniques and outputs) and completed every question as well the 175 questions of his final test. I was confident of my knowledge, so I moved on to complete the questions in Rita's book. Misery! Rita destroyed every single hope I had of passing the test successfully! She made me feel that I have been wasting my time with Paul's book: I failed almost all her questions! It was probably the biggest book-related disappointment in my life, although Paul's book is easy to read, and well organized, it doesn't cover significant areas of the certification that are again and again presented in the test! While going thru Rita's questions I discovered that Paul has missed 2 absolutely essential areas required by the test. Let me tell you which ones: Cost management and communication management. The test has multiple questions related to these areas; if you don't know then you will certainly fail! I can't believe that Paul missed them, I consider that very irresponsible and not fair for students trusting his book. With this fiasco, I went thru Rita's book and learned the remaining knowledge so my advice to you is: Study from Rita's book! Although it is organized around the 9 knowledge areas and they don't really follow the project lifecycle, but it is the way the test is organized and she covers all the topics of the test. To prove it to you (if you are skeptical and confused with so many light or emotional book reviews) I carefully took notes of the areas that Paul missed (I hope he reads this): Problem solving techniques (expectancy theory, motivation theory, McGregor's XY theory, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Herzberg's theory and motivation agents), communication channels and formulas, PERT and PERT related calculations, cost estimation (can you imagine running a project without cost estimation?), project manager powers (formal, reward, penalty/coercive, expert and referent), outputs of contract administration, administrative close procedure applicability to each project phase. Besides this Paul's questions are extremely easy, the test questions are an extremely hard compared to them, therefore Paul's give you an inaccurate sense of test preparation level. I have also documented multiple important errata in his book and spent significant amounts of time verifying that they are actual errata. For instance: Paul's makes references to the cost baseline countless times in his book, but cost baseline is nowhere to be found (it is not even in the index), work performance is missed as an output of the directing and managing the project execution in the process chart, but is it cited two pages later; the administrative close procedure is an output of the close project process, he points out what the procedure should contain, but it never says when to execute it as he does it with the contract closure procedure. It is just a very unreliable book for the test. So my advice to you, PMP student is, start with Rita's book and complete every single one of their questions, they look "too demanding, I can't believe the test is that hard" but the test is hard! Then if you have time and can buy Paul's book go directly to his questions and final test. But please, don't do it the other way around.