PMP Exam 2021 Lessons Learned: More than 50% of Questions about Agile/Hybrid Project Management

As said, the new PMP Exam 2021 is not a beast to be frightened of! We have a piece of good news from Kiran Mudiyam who passed the PMP Exam 2021 recently, below are the lessons learned from the PMP Exam preparation:

Reading books (PMBOK® Guide or Rita 10th edition or any other book and Agile guide) for one time is enough, but one needs to practice a lot of questions.

Have a very good understanding of Project Manager role in Predictive (planning, documentation are critical) and Agile (working as Servant Leader and empowering team is important)

I have followed some youtube videos of Amer Ali (“coaching call” & “journey of” videos) and also Praizion, Andrew Ramdayal & PMPWithRay practice question videos. These helped me a lot to understand gaps, master elimination technique, how to answer situational questions of what PM should do first, do next, do best, etc

I recommend below online free 2021 format practice exams:

• https://lovepmp.com/ They have 2500+ questions with drag & drop, multi response format questions too.
• https://www.project-management-prepcast.com/ 120 questions
• https://www.izenbridge.com/free-resources/pmp-free-quiz 60 free questions
• https://www.izenbridge.com/free-resources/pmi-acp 20 free questions on Agile values & principles
• https://www.eduhubspot.com/question-of-the-day/pmp daily question of the day

I got ~10 drag & drop matching, ~8 select 2 answers, ~2 select 3 answer questions. No hotspot, No True or False, No Fill in the blanks. No formulae based questions and did not use a calculator or whiteboard. There were questions on SPI, CPI but I didn’t need a calculator. No EMV, critical path related calculator questions.

More than 50% from Agile/Hybrid. No specific questions on Kanban, Lean or XP. One straightforward question on usage of Scrum of Scrum. All 180 questions are situational except the ‘drag and drop’ questions.

More questions were on how Project Manager would have avoided a situation; most of the time the answer was ‘planning’ would have been done properly, communication or stakeholder identification/engagement would have been done properly.

No Questions on any Motivational Theory. 1 Question on Tuckman.
1 Question on Benefits Realization Plan

Some situational questions on Project Manager response:

• Your Organization moving from Predictive to Agile.
• A new team member joined the Agile team.
• A scrum team member fell sick in the middle of Sprint.
• A junior team member replaced an experienced critical engineer.

Tips on exam day:

• Drag and drop “recording pane” from top to bottom before you start answering the first question.
• Review your time taken for the first 60Q, then see if it is worth ‘marking’ any question for revisit.
• If you are unable to judge the answer for any question for more than 2 minutes, click on any one answer and move on.
• Utilise the 2 ten minutes breaks to relax, have quick energy bites and/or a coffee.

~ Kiran Mudiyam, PMP

Thanks Kiran Mudiyam for the PMP Exam lessons learned!