Rating: 
Summary: Beware of multiple errors in sample tests
Review: Apart from the official PMBOK, this is one of the first resources I picked up. I was initially excited about using the book, as I liked the writing style as well as the overall layout of the material. Unfortunately, I quickly became frustrated after performing poorly on a few prep tests in the book. Digging a little deeper, I noticed a number of sample questions where the answers in the book were wrong. Some of the mistakes were obvious, such as an answer that said "...plus the probability of .60 x 50,000 = 18,000". Other mistakes were more subtle, and the last thing you want to do when preparing for an exam is study inaccurate material. I also found the material on the CD difficult and unreliable to use. My recommendation is to avoid this book; the PMP exam prep is challenging enough without having to second-guess your study materials. For an alternative, I recommend the Sybex study guide written by Kim Heldman, "PMP Project Management Professional Study Guide".
Rating: 
Summary: Would Not Recommend It
Review: Bought the book. The concept seemed like what I was looking for. Initially I thought this was going to be really good. After discovering some inaccuracies, mis-spells etc. I lost confidence in the material. Preparing for an exam like this you need to know that your time is well spent. Not trusting your study material is obviously not a good thing. Also, wrote to the author for some clarification. Never heard from him. I would not recommend this book to the prospective PMP.
Rating:
Summary: Confusing book - Problems with this edition
Review: First off, I own about 4 dummies books (Wine, Photoshop, HTML 4, & Italy). I bought this book to use with my PMP study group, and I and my group found it to be one of the more confusing books out there, and certainly the worst Dummies book I have bought. It may be because this is only the first edition, but there are better books out there by far. Here is what I liked and did not like about PMP for Dummies. What the book did well:
1. The sample test questions were really good.
2. I found the accompanying CD to be helpful.
3. The charts in the book were some of the clearest and best-illustrated I have seen. What the book did poorly:
1. It has a bizarre organization to the material. For instance, the staff management plan and procurement plan were organized under the chapter on the WBS, which made no sense to anyone. That kind of organizational philosophy was followed throughout the book. It confused everyone who picked it up. It is set up by process, and that also gets very confusing. The net result is that you read some info about scope in one chapter and some more in another, and it becomes nearly impossible to follow. I would prefer to have a chapter on integration, scope, time, etc like the PMBOK does. 2. There is a whole section starting on page 131 dedicated to calculating future value, present value, and IRR, and according to every other test prep book I have picked up, these calculations were taken off the exam three years ago. 3. I liked the questions but I though the explanations of the answers were not complete enough. 4. Final gripe, the CD that came with this only had 300 questions on it. That is much fewer than the other resources I've seen.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Conceptual Read
Review: From a subject matter perspective the book is well worth reading. It is organized in a fashion that makes sense to the reader and provides great introduction to the PMI thinking. I used this as a primer and then was able to better retain the information in the PMBOK and followed up this book with the must read by Mulcahy.
I did find the most disturbing part of the book was no explanation for practice answers. Also the errors of first edition could be helped by an online errata (one existed and then disappeared).
Rating:
Summary: If your goal is to pass the PMP, this book is terrible
Review: Having taken the PMP this morning and passed, I can frankly say that this book was actually worse than a complete waste of time. I've enjoyed Dummies guides in the past, and hoped to use this as a supplement to Rita Mulcahy's book (which is excellent, and ultimately was all I needed to pass). I found the text in this guide very irritating and distracting for a number of reasons, not the least of which was because it didn't really corelate with the PMBOK. After giving up on the text, I hoped that I could at least use the practice tests on the CDROM that comes with it in order to get some simulated computer testing experience. WRONG! The test had so many typos and contradictions with the PMBOK that I was ready to chuck it in the trash after 30 minutes. I pity the soul that uses this book as their sole study guide for the test -- I don't think it would be possible.
Rating:
Summary: Too many mistakes in the practice exam
Review: I bought this book to help facilitate a review course and found the practice exam at the back was loaded with mistakes on the formula-based questions. Not only typos, but just plain getting the concepts wrong (e.g., trying to calculate based on 1/2 of a standard deviation).
I strongly recommend Rita Mulcahy's PMP Exam Prep instead: More expensive but very readable with good review questions.
Another option is PMP Exam Cram 2, by David Frnacis and Greg Hornie.
Rating: 
Summary: This book shows you how to think like a PMP
Review: I feel so strongly that this is my first Amazon review. Of all the PMP review books, this For Dummies book helps you think like a PMP. It breaks down what's important and shows you how to under patterns in the questions. The sample questions in the Quick Assessment and Prep tests really make you think critically like a PMP. It raises your abiulity to think like a PMI PMP. By the time you finish For Dummies, you'll be ready for passing the exam on your only try. Here's why everyone in my study group thinks this is the best book on the category. Most questions on the CD
Best explainations of questions
Best charts & illustrations
Best insider tips & warnings
Best method of matching up patterns of questions
Best chapter on formulas
Overall best value for your time and money
Rating:
Summary: Not totally worthless -- but close
Review: I had intended to give this book zero stars and a recommendation that you never, ever buy or use it. But as I wrote I decided that it does have some redeeming value as a study aid, although not in ways the authors intended. I bought this book as an additional sample PMP exam. I had just completed an online PMP course and was waiting to take the exam itself. In the terminology of PM, the book is of (somewhat) high grade and (extremely) low quality. It is seriously flawed both technically and literarily but its approach of taking the PM process linearly through making a movie and taking the PMP test is refreshing -- although not totally effective. Many of the movie examples were interesting and vividly demonstrated the PM principle. However, it is riddled with factual errors and is an utter disaster in terms of its editing. As a project, the book demonstrates very bad PM technique -- and should be deemed a failure. The authors obviously failed in the PM Quality and Control processes. Why should anyone take the advice of PM's who fail so badly in THEIR OWN literary work? Is this the PMI way of Project Management? For those who say these errors don't matter, will you accept this level of error in the projects you manage? [Shudder!] I would suggest that if the material which I know about is inaccurate it calls into question the accuracy of the material I don't know! What level of 'error' is acceptible? PM is still more art than science, full of ambiguity, with many techniques extant, but the book often disagrees with other PM training, and not infrequently with the PMBOK 'bible' itself. Typos, misspellings, and serious grammatical errors abound! The editor (if there was one!) really, really blew it! I can't believe anyone checked the proofs! There are many places where a correction was attempted but the 'wrong' text was left intact (like following the period!). There are references to non-existent figures and figures that are never referenced. It is also somewhat 'convoluted' in terms of its organization and logical progression. All of these should certainly have been on the project's 'activity list'. The math is absurd -- and often wrong. Many equations substitute the summation (sigma) symbol for division and a lack of parenthesis or other groupings make the associations incorrect. The book often confuses 'standard deviation' and 'variance'. If you don't know the formulas beforehand, this book won't help you! And if you rely on these, you'll get the answer wrong! I never did find a useful arrangement for the wall chart. It appeared to be organized randomly and there was no good way to tape it together to get other than a 'spaghetti' view of process interactions, although the 'spaghetti' did help clarify some relationships. The sample test/CD -- the real reason I bought the book -- is almost unusable in that many (most!?) of the questions have serious typos, syntax, semantic, or editing errors which renders them ridiculous. Some questions have no answers, or the answer given is incorrect. Some answers make no sense in context, for example, using 'not' in the question when all answers would require 'is'. The auxiliary images and charts could not be displayed. The situation improved slightly with the errata file from the Wiley Website, but that introduced another set of bugs, different typos, and still didn't display the correct auxiliaries. I finally printed the image files! Based on my PMP test (which I passed), the book's sample questions are simply weird and bear little relationship to the test I took. My questions were straight forward and much less subtle than the samples. The book was trying to be 'clever' if not comical with its questions. It was not particularly successful. Since each PMP test is randomly generated from a master set, each test will differ. But I suspect only slightly. So why is there any redeeming value? Reading the book and taking the sample test allowed (encouraged!?) me to review my understanding of PM and PMBOK. Each time I discovered a supposed error, researching it made me dig deeper into the 'truth' and thus reinforced my knowledge. In that sense, the book is useful.... But you have to devote the time! By itself, the book is worthless -- except as a bad example. I assume that subsequent printings of the book will correct many of the most glaring errors, so if you plan to buy this book wait for the second printing.
Rating:
Summary: Horrendous!
Review: I had the misfortune to pick this book off the shelf in my local [bookstore]because it was the only one in stock that claimed to help the reader prepare for the certification exam. I am no expert in project management, but even I can tell that the book is riddled with errors and inconsistencies. Explanations tend to be extremely dry and sometimes confusing, occasionally punctuated by amusing remarks like, "If you're ever forced to spend these funds, your project is in serious trouble, and you're likely to be thrown to some hungry alligators as a snack." I was especially disgusted with the quick assessments and the prep tests that begin and end each chapter. The questions were highly ambiguous - more so than I would expect on the actual test. And instead of clarifying, in many cases the answers appeared to be totally capricious. In some places, the answers were just wrong. For example, in the prep test at the end of chapter 9 the reader is asked to calculate the numbers on a network diagram such as early start, late start, slack, etc. The algorithm given in the text says to start with day 0. But the answers given for the prep test assume that you start with day 1. Furthermore many of the earned value formulas given in the same chapter are truncated and use the symbol for sigma, instead of division 'รท'. I could go on with a littany of errors, but I think I made my point. In my opinion, this book is worse than useless because it may confuse and misinform you. Do not use this book - even if somebody gives it to you for free!
Rating:
Summary: Great waste of Money
Review: I have bought this book while I was getting courses for the PMP certification, I rapidly realized that this book was a total waste of money. When you buy a book on such a tough and sharp subject as PMP certification, you expect something professional with facts and certainly no mistakes. The PMP exam is full of subtle nuances and to get the right word is absolutely necessary. This book is unformtunately full of factual mistakes, even in the definitions that are supposed to be precise and pure exam matter. Moreover, some knowledge areas are totally forgotten, probably because not completely understood by the writer. I have desperately tried to answer the test questions present in the book and basically, I spent time finding errors and trying to correct the book. Actually, it is a great exercise, you get a bad book and you correct it. After this you know the subject.
I have mailed questions to the author, regarding the mistakes in the first chapters. He recognised some mistakes but the anser afterwards was very doubtfull. He also answered 3 weeks after my first e-mail. Considering that a study period is about 3 months, you have time to find the answers yourself. Some areas are cvering an old version of the PMBOK and no information is given about this fact. Finally, the hints the author gives you to help to memorize the inputs and outputs are highly useless. I still try now after the exam to understand the relationship between the hint and the subject. Anyways, this is definitely the last book you should buy not because it contains everything you need but well because you need a very good understanding of the subject to swallow and correct it.
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