PMP: Passed (Finally)
Date: November 22, 2025
Status: Passed: T/AT/AT
I’m officially a Project Management Professional. After 20 years of thinking about this certification, it’s finally finished.
If you look at my original plan, I missed my completion date by about 8 months. I’d love to say it was all part of the strategy, but the truth is simpler: the material was harder to absorb than I expected, and the government shutdown threw a massive wrench in my schedule. The extra workload from the shutdown meant studying took a back seat to actual work for a while.
But, I kept chipping away at it. Here is the actual process I followed to get it done.
The Study Phase
- ✅ 35 hours of education: Completed Andrew Ramdayal’s course.
- âś… PMBOK Guide: Read through the 7th Edition.
- âś… Practice Exams: Took tests on Percipio.
- âś… Study Groups: Dabbled in this, mostly just conversations with other PMPs.
- âś… Notes: Bought a flashcard set, but realized writing my own notes worked better.
- âś… Agile: Reviewed the Agile Practice Guide.
The Application (The First Nervewracking Part)
- âś… Education: Verified my degree (the easy part).
- âś… Experience: Documented 36 months and 4,500 hours of leading projects.
- Note: This was much harder than I thought. Digging through work history to write specific project descriptions that fit PMI’s criteria took a lot of time.
- âś… Submission: Submitted and passed the review.
The Exam
- ✅ Mock Exams: Didn’t schedule the real thing until I was scoring >80%.
- ✅ Initial Plan: I planned to take the test in March… then August… finally November…
- âś… The Result: Passed on Nov 22, 2025!
What Actually Helped Me Pass While the courses provided the foundation, two things pushed me over the finish line.
1. David McLachlan’s Videos These helped me tremendously. Specifically, his 150 PMBOK 7 Scenario-Based Questions video.
The PMP exam isn’t just about memorizing definitions; it’s about knowing how PMI wants you to answer. David walks through questions, highlights the keywords, and explains exactly why the right answer is right and why the other three are wrong. Watching him break down the logic helped me understand the “PMP Mindset” in a way reading the book never did. Complete lifesaver.
2. Notebook LM I added this tool to my study plan recently. I uploaded my notes and resources, and it created “podcasts” for me to listen to. It was a great way to study when I couldn’t stare at a screen anymore.
Work in Public I originally planned to blog through this whole process in real-time. That obviously didn’t happen (see: government shutdown). But the infrastructure is here now, for the most part.
- Content Outline: Created.
- Application Process: Writing this up now.
- Study Strategies: Sharing what I learned.
- Study Site: Another story to be told…
- Next: Adding tips and lessons learned.
It took patience and persistence, but I got this.
And so do you.
- Jeff