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Tuesday, May 13, 2008

The PMP prep book to get

Quite often, I get asked about whether or not a PMP prep book would be helpful and the answer is an absolute yes! However, there are so many out there, how does one go about choosing?

I have reviewed many PMP prep books and have used several different ones for my classes. Rather than write one on my own, which many of my students are still trying to encourage me to do so (hard to do with a 10 month old at home!), I ended up choosing a new one for my PMP prep classes a few months ago.

Here it is, my choice may surprise you:

PMP Project Management Professional Study Guide, Second Edition (Paperback)
by Joseph Phillips

http://www.amazon.com/Project-Management-Professional-Study-Second/dp/0072262907

I do not get royalties nor do I know Mr. Phillips. What I do know is that it has all the things that I look for in a prep book:
  • Chapters in order of knowledge area, not process group
  • Easy to comprehend
  • Enough depth to understand without having to memorize
  • Practice test simulator CD included (not just written at the end of each chapter)
You'll find that many books meet one or more of the above but not all. Even the most popular authors like Rita Mulcahy (e.g. no CD) or Kim Heldman (e.g. order of process group) miss the mark in my opinion. Although they do a great job of marketing, don't they?

So if you're going to buy only one book, and I recommend you buy only one prep book, this is the one to get!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

:- Yeah its a good article. According to you what we project managers do is communicating. And a lot of this communication is done during project meetings. It can sometimes feel like you are running from one meeting to another and that your time is often wasted. Meetings don’t start on time, the issues aren’t dealt with, there is no agenda, there is no focus, nobody assigns any follow ups or tasks and of course then they also don’t end on time. An efficient project manager is required for the good management of a project. I think a project manager should PMP certified. Looking forwards to apply what I learned in PMP classes in my company.