The Importance of Timing Your PMO Exam

When sitting certification courses, the thought of sitting the exam can be a daunting one – which is why we often see two types of delegates:

The first postpone their exam for as long as possible, receive their reminder about the expiry date of their exam, rush to prepare and have to uproot their course materials, practice exam papers and notes at short notice.
The second book their exam immediately after taking the course, often leaving themselves little time to prepare.

I have recently discovered that I am the former – and why I would advise against it!

I sat my P3O® Foundation course back in 2021, and had every intention of sitting my exam in a timely manner. Unfortunately, I didn’t schedule my exam and nearly a year passed, so when I received my exam deadline reminder, I knew I had to start preparing.

As I had sat the course nearly a year prior, I had a lot of preparation to complete – firstly I had to locate my notes and course materials (which might take longer than you think!)

I then had to begin my revision, which was quite intimidating as so much time had passed since I had initially covered the course content. Luckily, it came back to me fairly quickly – however it would have been great to have access to the exercises that we completed during the course. PMO Learning allows access to the Trello and Miro boards from the course for one month following the course – something I didn’t take advantage of, and would have been fantastic for revision!

Our trainers typically advise you sit your exam within 2 weeks of completing the course – making sure you make the exam booking with plenty of notice and keep it committed in your diary. There are a few reasons for this – firstly, by scheduling your exam following the end of the course, there is plenty of time to rearrange the exam should something unexpected come up – which means you won’t be bitten by late rescheduling fees.

Secondly, having a set deadline forces you to make time for preparation – to make sure there will be no distractions at the time of your exam, to ensure you put the time aside to revise, and to keep the content fresh in your mind. If you’ve completed in-house training, or completed a course with a few members of your team, by booking your exams at similar times, you can work together to prepare. A lot can come out of this shared collaboration, for instance some delegates set up a series of study group sessions to help each other through the trickier content where they review what they learned and what needs to be studied in the coming weeks.

Finally, being proactive about your training is a great incentive to carry on your professional development, and further accreditation is a great way to do this. Once you’ve completed the exam, you can also get started on implementing the teachings of the course into your PMO!

My final tip is sitting the practice exam paper as close as possible to sitting the real thing – this was a gamechanger for not only refreshing my memory of the exam structure and question style, but also get you into the focused mindset you will need

So, what to do if your exam expiration date is looming and you are yet to sit the exam?

For delegates looking to extend the expiration date, for an additional cost we are able to prolong the expiration date – please contact us to find out more.

If you were looking for some more time with the trainer to review any content, again for an additional cost you can schedule a revision session.

You can find out more about online proctored exams here.

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The P3O® courses on this page are offered by PMO Learning. P3O® is a [registered] trade mark of AXELOS Limited. All rights reserved. P3O® is a registered trade mark of AXELOS Limited, used under permission of AXELOS Limited.