Passing PMP in 20 days of complete commitment

For friends and family who just want to hear the news, I passed :) I'm officially a PMP now…. I caught one of the stars I wanted to catch….. one of the stars I had hanging in my room for a long time now.. Thanks for the great support and words of encouragment.… for PMP aspirants who need to get insight from my experience and lessons learnt please continue reading..

Initiation
My journey towards the PMP started as soon as I started work almost 4 years ago, when I felt attracted to the multidisciplinary aspect of project management profession. My work was and still is directly related to the profession. I took the first training in project management and started keeping track of the projects I work on to make sure that I will be ready to fill the demanding application when I complete the eligibility requirements of work and graduate from my BA. Through my work, I tried as much as possible to practice PMI standards and best practices to keep the knowledge I gained from training fresh and aligned with real life experience.
When I completed 3 years of work on projects, and graduated I decided to take an exam preparation course and take the exam right after it, I was hoping to be one of the youngest having this certification, since I had my work experience parallel to my BA. I took the training last year and couldn’t for various reasons do the exam right after.
After a long road of procrastination, and delays for valid and non valid reason… On my 23rd birthday (May 13th 2008) I scheduled my exam to be on August 3rd 08. I made sure to schedule it in a time where I would be able to take days off from work and MBA.

Planning
Off course I set a very optimistic schedule which required from me a daily study of an hour or 2 since the exam schedule date, I didn’t stick to the schedule set. I wasn’t taking it seriously, and I was too confident that it would be an easy exam and will not require much effort …… I had allot of work to do… and other MBA exams to study…. UNTIL… I called the Prometric testing site in Jordan early July, to check that my schedule is confirmed with them exactly just like I set it online….. and the lady confirmed and asked me to bring the eligibility letter, passport, and schedule notice. Also informed me that the exam is 4 hours, and that the result will be shown immediately!! OMG, are you sure? Immediately? You mean as soon as I finish it? She said yes, and I just felt like telling her, ok thanks I need to go study immediately! It seems more serious than I expected, I wonder why I don’t remember I heard this information earlier!! I guess subconsciously the idea of setting for the exam became more serious when I knew the result is immediate, that I will not wait another month to get a result which I can say I didn’t study well, I had circumstances and do the blame game… I had to be responsible, its immediate!! That call was seriously my first PMP adrenaline rise which caused me to get stressed!! Which is OK, and HEALTHY in my opinion especially when compared to my state of "self confidence" ! :)

So I decided to do more research, ask people who passed the exam, who trained me.. who know more… what is there advice for me… any advice… on exam… on ways of studying … anything…
So I called Ammar Mango… who was the first person to teach me project management skills 3 years ago when I wasn't yet eligible to take the exam…. As much as I was impressed by Ammar as a trainer, who never fails to make you fully grasp the knowledge, the spirit, and application of the project management profession with all his passion for the subject , real life experience examples and sense of humor. Ammar is defiantly a project manager enabler! Ammar gave me allot of time on the phone, and later face to face to answer all my questions and concerns regarding the exam, effective ways of studying, and Ammar's online training which I then considered to make it part of my exam preparation, after I knew from Ammar more about it.

Studying strategy
My studying inspiration was based on what James said in the first class last year in an exam preparation training I took in DC, I AM , I CAN , I WILL! I had to read this sign several times a day to get my thoughts, mind , and heart to full commitment to study hard. As James says, to STAY ON PURPOSE!

I had so much commitment for studying, which I only remember having when I did my O LEVEL GCE exams!! It was very hard to go through the PMBOK , thus I followed Ammar's suggestion of doing the online course then reading the PMBOK.
Online training: the best decision I did this year after the decision of scheduling the exam! Was taking Method online training, which goes by processes, displays information that is in the PMBOK in a form much easier to grasp, in points ,in visual tools, accompanied by the excellent explanation provided by Ammar in his calm clear voice. (which can be in English or Arabic, depending on the chosen language) So Ammar explains while you see the slides, which is a great way of learning, since it involves more than one sense, listening and seeing. It's much easier than holding the book to read and read endlessly not being sure if what you understood is true or not. And with limited time to study, you can take the online training in the middle of the night or early in the morning depending on your biological clock to make sure you have full concentration and understanding.

My method of using the online training was taking the training, while the PMBOK is opened on the related process described, I use highlighters and post it notes on the pages to add the information that Ammar is saying which is not justified or detailed enough in the PMBOK, so that when I read the PMBOK I would refer to these notes to recall what was said in the online training and link ideas. This makes the PMBOK by the time I finish studying, along with several flash cards I prepared the complete studying material which covers almost everything.
Reading the PMBOK after the training was magical, paragraphs which failed to make sense or sink before the training, are completely understood and mentally linked to other parts process or knowledge areas to make complete integrated picture.
The beauty of the online training, is that you feel as if someone is staying up late with you to teach you, and it is not as demanding as reading through a book. It's actually allot of fun, and so effective.

If anyone has taken training long time ago, like I did, last year, I think you need this online training, though my work is directly related as I said, depending on your memory of what you learnt long time ago, and how you manage things is not enough to pass. You need to grasp how PMI wants you to manage projects not how you do it. which is something you can clearly grasp from Ammar's training which concentrates on the spirit of the PMI in a beautiful way through learning… knowing the right answer becomes natural and instinct… It's a course I would recommend as a core source for studying the exam.
I also read through training course materials I had from exam preparation course, specially the stuff that I felt were explained more thoroughly there

QUALITY
PMP preparation for me wasn't a part time activity, I took the time off from work to make sure I put my full commitment and time for this purpose.
My browser home page was the PMHUB, which I would check whenever I open the browser (several times a day) I would check new PMPs lessons learnt, and try to solve some questions from their questions bank ( that's how I spent my break time! ).

RISK
I was very aware of how critical things can get if any negative risk happened in those 20 days, thus I tried my best to take good care of my health, committed to the daily vitamins which I never committed to before. I knew how spoiled I can get when I get ill, and I wanted to try my best to lower the probability of that risk occurring by performing several risk mitigation techniques like staying warm and eating good. My health precautions included drinking much water, to not get dehydrated, stopping any caffeinated drinks ( No coffee no Tea) since I read that it decreases concentration. ( can you imagine? I was that committed , Mais stopped COFFEE!!! )

My recommendations
I recommend Ammar's training, as a first phase of studying since it covers PMBOK and out of PMBOK information that is required in the exam. And you will see it popping up in the exam frequently, where you will feel like "Ammar you are the best!"
Read the PMBOK once
Solve at least 1 complete simulation exam (200 questions). I found PMSTUDY exam very close to real PMP exam, close in terms of difficulty, percentage of easy exams to hard exams, number of questions requiring calculations..etc.. after first exam, my second PMP adrenaline rise happened, since I wasnt satisfied with 66% as result
Read the PMBOK again, you will notice your concentration will drift to areas that exam questions made you aware of its importance or ways it can be questioned.
Solve more and more questions.
Note: Researching any term that you pass by in the PMBOK as a tool, management criteria, delegation, power, and specially quality issues or those which the PMHUB mentions as important in lessons learnt by PMPs is essential, for that I used Google and Wikipedia .
A day before the exam do a revision of your weak areas, important points. One of the great sources of revision I found was for blogger Sridhar from the US.

During the exam
I was very confident, I knew I studied well. I was thinking IAM, I CAN, I WILL
Took first 12 minutes to write down page 70 of PMBOK, and memory dump of all equations that I memorized which can were summed up all in Sridhar's blog . this guy is so smart, he didn’t miss any rule.
I took 2 hours of the exam, questions seemed easy, but I got so bored… and was ahead of time in terms of question solving… took around 7 minutes break, ate KITKAT :) and drank some water!
Got back finished exam 50 minutes early, revised marked questions. Felt very confident that I will pass the exam and thanks God after seconds of waiting for the result which felt like an hour of waiting where my third PMP Adrenaline rise happened to its peak... I did it ... I passed the exam.

Allow me to sign my name like I dreamt to one day 4 years ago
Mais Irqsusi, PMP

Turning 23…. What is true love?

It's been exactly 2 months since I turned 23, and I always wanted to write about how it felt to experience every age…. since whenever I look back, I can't really recall how did it feel when I was 18, what was the most important discovery then… We forget the most important sensations and growth points which developed us the way we are… we forget how important were some questions for us… they get answered through the journey and we ignore the answer… we reach answers yet we never mention it was answered… but this reminded me of sharing one of my answers…

When life was just beginning… Knowing what true love is was an important question for me… today it is in fact one of my major discoveries… among all the interesting questions I have… I have one absolutely fundamental question answered somewhere through the journey of the 23 summers I lived … and the answer is so far convincing to my heart…
What is true love? I've been blessed enough to get this question answered specifically … for now I believe only when you reach that answer do you really experience life differently… this question is one of the questions that certainly exist in our mind, whether we notice its existence or not…. It pops out in relations where we try to figure out the feelings which we truly feel towards the other… is it real? Is it true love?

For the young guys/girls, true love is not perfect, it's not the handsome, sexy, rich, smart, witty package which you feel very excited for and would happily call it true love. Nor is she/he the guy/girl who will know your favorite ice cream flavor!

True love is not a perfect fairy tale, it's real, so real, it tastes just like real life… it's not dreamy, it's not lust, it's allot of imperfections yet enough love to accept a completely different individual . To love that individual unconditionally. True love is when you know you can be yourself in absolutely every moment with this person. Is when you know you don’t have to look in the mirror before seeing the other, yet the other will become a mirror that through it you can know yourself.
When you are capable of breaking all ego, possessiveness, jealousy, all your unreal, pretended selves and be an absolutely naked soul with all your imperfections and yet feel that you are completely accepted and loved and your imperfections are as cherished as your ideal characteristics….. When you are able to Love unconditionally and without expectations. That level of trust, is intimacy. Intimacy brings about growth, which may sometimes be painful. That's why I say, after true love, you experience life differently. You know more about your own self, that you can't settle for less than truth. You have fully integrated your real self, and your realized imperfections, you expose them to the universe and can no longer accept not being accepted fully… or loved true love just like you're finally capable of …... you acknowledge that you are a whole, this whole is not perfect, but it's capable of loving, and being loved. Just like the other is not perfect, but with the imperfections it is whole. You cherish your sincere honest self, and the other's different individuality.
Unfortunately, through our journey we get trapped with how we were conditioned about love. And we mix understandings, we think that we can replace freedom with love, freedom comes first. And it's the highest value, and all our problems arise when we decide we will allow love to kidnap freedom. Our freedom or the other's freedom. Or when we have an ego hiding behind love, or jealousy that wants to speak in the name of love. Or fear comes in to kill love. Or dependance interferes .. love is free and independant...

With love comes allot of Joy, that is silent, it is not excitement.. It is tranquil, calm and cool, yet feels real and we can sense it. And harmony is created, when we don’t try to change each other, when we totally accept the difference in the other, this creates harmony since when there is acceptance there is no disagreement.
True love is more or less like a friendship, no one is superior on the other, each friend totally accepts the other the way he or she is, and knows that his friends way, perspective and thoughts about life is different, but still loves all those differences about the other. Those friends love unconditionally, yet don't expect anything in return. That's how true love is… true love is imperfect and does not have any expectations….. it helps us grow and learn about ourselves.. true love is about relating to the other, not about a relationship… it's allot of exploring of the self and the other through a journey that is not rosy nor perfect but is certainly joyful and worth taking..…

I must point out these are my personal random thoughts on this topic… which may only apply to me… I can't really generalize since I haven't yet met anyone as crazy as I am! And I think Gibran talks about love in a wonderful way…

Nostalgic Summer Night

Nostalgic summer night
Colder than January Snow sight
I miss the tender summer breeze
I miss the public seats
The view of summer houses alive
Curved on hills and mountains
I miss the open door
Old windows
The secrets being told
Words and loud laughter

I miss the rhythm of hesitant footsteps
And the beat of silence between words
The echo of cars between shadows of stone homes

I miss the scattered clouds
The clear sky
Sunset

Truth is hidden behind tears
On such summer nights
What are we most nostalgic for?

Rami Left the Hospital on a Wheal chair!

Reading this with the morning coffee doesn't make the day start smoothly! Rami, a 17 year old young man , who was part of the bus accident that took place five months ago, just left the hospital on a wheal chair!
The writer of the article Suhair Jaradat calls the bus, the death bus , which is a very accurate description on what that accident did! The accident not only killed Rami's friends, it also killed parts of his body, his dream, his opportunity to finish his Tawjehi and enroll at the university , the bus killed Rami's dependence on his legs, the bus kidnapped that families' happiness with Rami's first semester great Tawjehe results. Rami now can't walk, nothing in his body can move except his hands and head.
Though the death bus was able to kill all of the above, one thing it failed to kill, is the hope of Rami's father… Rami's father faith is something no bus was able to kill… he sold his share in the water tank he works on as a driver, and left to pursue medical treatment outside the country for his son who he hopes will be able to walk again…
While this article reminds me of a post Naseem wrote few months ago. Specially that Rami's parents were not paid any compensation for this accident. His majesty gave Rami a scholarship to study communications like he dreamt, but Rami now can't do that since he couldn’t attend the Tawjehi second semester exams, so that hope was killed or probably postponed too.
Nothing can be more painful than a dream's death! I thought maybe Hikmat institute can help Rami through his tough journey . I hope they have a plan to contribute in making Rami's journey easier in a way or another.

Guess who's coming to Jordan?

After few days of delay on my schedule to start studying for my PMP exam, which is only 3 weeks away, I studied for an hour, which only enabled me to read few pages with so much concentration, and analysis, I almost forgot how much effort and energy it takes to study something , you will be examined for by a non Jordanian learning institute! It takes so much effort and I can't anymore procrastinate and leave going through the topic for the very last day, few hours before the exam and still get mad when I can only get B+ ! though sometimes, through the same strategy I easily get an A. this time is a different story and I need to make a real effort….. yet keep my fingers crossed to pass...

Anyway, yesterday's newspaper grabbed my attention, I tend to get distracted so quickly when I'm studying! Like all humans I guess! And guess who's coming to Jordan? Noor, Mohanad and Dana! I can't wait for my dad to get back home to tell him, he likes Dana so much, he thinks she's the most beautiful in the series, and off course I agree with him, at the end she's the only artist in the series… she will not only come… she will sing as well…
That's it… back to my studying…

Strengths Finder 2.0

Since I did this online test "strengths finder" I really wanted to blog about it. I don’t like online tests, but when someone I trust his/her opinions suggests something for me , I do it! I take advice, which is not common for someone who combines an OX Chinese sign with a Taurus horoscope!! Which makes stubbornness level usually rise as a combination! But I guess I'm a unique combination of those two, I take advice! :)
The way I did the test? I bought the book "Strengths finder 2.0" for Tom Rath, and inside the book you get a free pass key to do one exam, and find your strengths online. I think there's a way to do just pay for the exam online without buying the book and get the same result!
The idea of the strength finder which is based on allots of research and surveys with people, is to focus on our strengths instead of our weaknesses. The equation that Tom Rath puts in his book is :
Talent * Investment= Strength

While talent is the natural way of thinking, feeling or behaving
Investment is the time spent practicing, developing your skills, and building your knowledge base .And Strength is the ability to consistently provide near- perfect performance.

By using this equation, he empowers the idea that allot of investment on poor talent will never make this aspect your strength. Thus you need to know your real talents (through strength finder probably) and invest on those, since those are what can make you excel if you invested the time to develop this talent into a real strength.

Tom Rath doesn't believe that " You can be anythimg you want to be, if you just try hard enough" he rather believes " you cannot be anything you want to be- but you CAN be a lot more of who you already are."
The exam is basically several questions that takes around 30 minutes to answer, you see two statements on the screen, one the extreme left side and one on the extreme right side, and you have several circles on a line between those 2 statements, you must answer quickly, which statement feels like its describing you, you check the circle closer to it, if you feel that you feel both statements resemble you equally you pick the circle in the middle between both statements. Your instinct guides blindly to certain statements that you instantly feel that's me… and away from other statements that you feel like… it may sound good but its not me… you must do it so quickly or the question will fly…
After you finish the test your 5 most important strengths, are identified in the sequence of their strength or relevance to you, the first is the strongest you have…etc.. you will also get a brief description about each theme, a description on what makes you stand out, and ideas for action.. the report you will receive will give you insights on what kind of career path best suits you.. and you might accordingly decide to quit your job! LOL! Or ask for different things from you boss based on your strengths, start the business idea you had in mind few years ago and ignored for a good while etc..
There are 34 themes that your 5 will be from which are in alphabetical sequence: Achiever, Activator, Adaptability, Analytical , Arranger, Belief, Command, Communication, Competition, Connectedness, Consistency, Context, Deliberative, Developer, Discipline, Empathy, Focus, Futuristic, Harmony, Ideation, includer, Individualization, Input, Intellection, Learner, Maximizer, Positivity, Relator, Responsibility, Restorative, Self-Assurance, Significance, Strategic, Woo (winning others over)

though the 34 are strengths ( All positve), even if the ego is sky high , you can easily say this isn't me or this is mroe like me... the name alone doesnt explain, the description of each theme best explains what Tom meant by that strength, or what qualiteis /charecteristics did he combine under that theme.. but no matter what guesses you try to make before you do the test, you might get 2 out of 5 right, if you are someone who know yourself well, and have worked enough to experience your strengths at diffeerent points... but certainly the test is worth taking...

The book describes each theme in detail, and even identifies ways to overcome this strength being a negative thing in your life… if not managed probably… which happens…
The reason I'm impressed with this test, is that I really got 5 themes that absolutely describe me! And the ideas for action and everything is very interesting and I can easily relate to it! and the test seemed to be very creative in its structure yet simple and apperently done with so much intellegence to reveal the right result. anyway, if you are curious, my themes in the correct sequence are :
1. Ideation : People who are especially talented in the ideation theme are fascinated by ideas. They are able to find connections between seemingly disparate phenomena.
2. Responsibility : People who are especially talented in the responsibility theme take psychological ownership of what they say they will do. They are committed to stable values such as honesty and loyalty. ( I found that i suffer as well from this strength, by overcommiting myself sometimes & taking initiataive of taking responsiblity coz its my talent!)
3. Empathy : (I still can't understand this being a strength! I wish I can let go of it 80% of the time, my life would've been…. How?! I wonder) it means sense the feelings of other people, by imagining themselves in others' lives or others situations. (I found that i can be in a different career path that can make use of this talent, not sure if i'll go for that though)
4. Achiever: achievers have a great deal of stamina and work hard. They take great satisfaction from being busy and productive! ( I think that’s me too)
5. Adaptability: adaptable people prefer to go with the flow, they tend to be "now" people who take things as they come and discover the future one day at a time. ( People who know me well, know that's certainly me)

So do the test if you have the time.... and share your results :)

Read and become speechless : I love the King

عاجل .. جلالة الملك : الاولوية بالنسبة لي هي حماية وصيانة الدستور ولا تصدقوا الإشاعات، وخاصة عندما يقول لكم أحدهم إنها من مصادر موثوقة