The 7-Day CAPM

Optimizing effort in taking the Certified Associate in Project Management Exam.

The highest degree of risk in the project is found at the start of the project. As the project progresses, the risk decreases. So, get started!

The idea behind this article is to encourage and make it easy and quick for working professionals who want to get CAPM certified with optimum effort.

What is CAPM?

The Certified Associate in Project Management, or CAPM, is the entry-level certificate from the Project Management Institute (PMI) for people wanting to find work as project managers. It’s also seen as a pre-requisite to a bunch of PM roles, especially in the US.

Why CAPM?

The Principles and Methodology: I have been into Project Management for 3 years now and hence I could recognize the areas where these methodologies if I had known before, could have helped me plan and execute the projects much better.

Working Style: When you look at things from the PM perspective, being organized with work becomes easier and it also reflects in your communication and leads to effective team management. Personally, I found a few concepts like optimizing for constraints, managing resource availability, and adhering to project schedules very interesting as these would help me in managing my group assignments and client projects better.

Credibility: You can gain all the knowledge about CAPM without giving the exam too, the reason people give exams is to get certified as that brings credibility. So can’t rule this out yay.

How to prepare for CAPM?

Usually, people estimate a timeline of around one month — three months to prepare for CAPM, which is ideal for beginners in this domain.

But if you have worked and managed projects and the stakeholders before, even a 7 weekender streak (3/4 hours daily) would be sufficient.

I was working full time when I prepared for CAPM and found it hard to find time on the weekdays, so I studied on weekends. (3 Saturdays and 4 Sundays) and here is how the plan looks like:

Day 0: Understanding the exam structure, registering, and scheduling it. Because if you don’t keep an end date in mind, procrastination kicks in.

Here is a brief about the exam structure:

The CAPM itself is a 3-hour exam with 150 multiple-choice questions (four choices per question). It typically only takes 90 minutes or so. There’s no official “passing score”, but some estimates put the minimum score at around 65%, or about 100/150 questions correct to pass.

Day 1: Understanding the Project Phases and Processes. The first video you should look at to get a high-level understanding of the processes involved is: Ricardo Vargas PMBOK Process Flow Video (YouTube)

Day 2–7: Joseph Philip’s CAPM Seminar (Udemy)

This is a ~24-hour course, but I ran it at 1.75x — 2x and noted all the ITTOs (Inputs, Tools, and Technologies and Outputs) of the processes explained.

These notes can then be a good source of revision one night before the exam.

Pro Tip: DO NOT skip the quizzes in this course as they are very similar to the questions asked in the exam.

Practice throughout the month

Since I watched the above videos on the weekends, I utilized 15–20 mins on the weekdays for practicing the MCQs.

For this, I highly recommend a one-month subscription to Professional Prep CAPM by Pocket Prep (App for iOS). There are ~800 questions and you can choose the topics you want to quiz for.

That’s it, once you understand the flow of the project and the key concepts and terminologies through the above 3 sources, you should be good to go!

For me, the goal was to be Above Target and I could achieve it with 7 intensive days of Prep, so you can too!

Final Words Don’t be afraid of CAPM! It’s the basic foundation of Project Management. Ideally, most of the concepts and skills are learned on the job, CAPM is just an academic view on how good Project Management looks like. CAPM was a wonderful learning experience for me and I encourage anyone looking to get into Project Management to give it a shot.

Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn in case of any queries! I’ll be happy to help.