How to crack CAPM certification easily?

CAPM (Certified Associate in Project Management), is a valuable industry-recognized certification which is designed for both the entry-level project managers and project manager wannabes which demonstrates theirunderstanding ofthe fundamental knowledge, terminology and processes of effective project management. The CAPM exam is the path to lead you to get your career on the next level, whether you’re already serving the project management or are new to this field.

CAPM exam consists of 150 questions that are to be answered within 3 hours. Such questions are monitored through psychometric analysis and are solely based on latest PMBOK guide. Everyone concerns about the preparation and essential contents required to crack the CAPM certification easily. Well, here are some ways you can use to crack CAPM certification easily.

  1. The PMBOK guide

The PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) is a guide given to every exam giver for free while applying for the exam. It is a reference book that can be very helpful for both new and old comers of project management. It provides guidelines, characteristics and rules for program, project and portfolio management.

There are nine knowledge areas suggested in the book based on PMBOK. Among all the results of theIntegration management process, we can develop three of them; project charter, project management and closure of project. It provides a wide scope of the project. The results later can be improved using tools such as EVA, NPV and IRR.

Scope Management focuses on broadening the work that is essential to successfully make a project among the results of this process. We should be focused on the breaking down of the work structure and accepting the deliverables. It is one of the most essential ones in any project as it creates the baseline to which we compare the ongoing project. Accompanying the WBS with a WBS dictionary is can be a really good idea to facilitate the scope verification of each work packages.

Time Management is the process where we have to person all six processes: activity definition, sequencing, resource estimating, duration estimating, schedule development and schedule control. The use of precedent’s diagram method or arrow diagramming method is a nice practice for the improvement of activity sequencing.

Human resource management has three major outputs that are human resource planning, acquiring project ream, developing project team and managing the project team. As known, Human resources are the biggest assets in any project and its incorrect management can be harming.

Communication Management is another area. Performance reporting is the process that gives more value to the project. A well managed meeting is a tool that enhances the project and can create a very good starting point environment to the project.

As project managers, we need to mitigate many risks. Risk identification, quantitative risk analysis and risk monitor are the processes that need more practice. Decision tree analysis, tornado diagrams and SWOT analysis are some of the tools that can play an important role.

The areas that need less exposure areCost Management, Quality Management and Procurement Management.

  1. Identifying the key points

Cost Management . is another important topic that helps to achieve the stakeholders expectations relating to cost. Measures that can be used are cost variance, schedule variance, cost performance index, cumulative CPI, schedule performance index, estimate at completion, estimate to completion and variance at completion. The analysis of all the values helps for a more effective measure of the project cost.

Quality Management include the processes that are quality planning, perform quality assurance and perform quality control. Quality is the attribute one sacrifices for everything else including time, cost, etc. This process is as important as other processes. Flow charting, Pareto charts, scatter diagrams and use of popular six-sigma is some ideas that can be useful to measure quality.

Procurement Management is handled by the sales department and needs least exposure. It is useful to understand the nature of different types of contracts and roles of buyers and sellers to assist in better management of the project.

  1. Omitting the useless topics and processes .

It is very important for the exam giver to understand the important topics and omit the useless ones. Wasting time on useless topics can harm a lot during the exam. The numerical examples presented on the topics of time management and cost management are very simple comparing to other sources which are more complex and realistic. Other topics that are felt easy or less useful should not be time wasting as one has to learn as much as possible with concerned topics.

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