Last week I obtained the certification for the HP ASE - Project & Portfolio Management v9, all thanks to the great Exam Preparation Guide HP0-M201P, which lets you, know which are the best ways of preparing yourself for getting this certification. This exam is destined to validate your IT professional expertise in managing project and portfolio management, also in planning the software, in implementing and in the configuration of projects. The exam preparation guide I am talking about is contains explanations and indications in order to make your preparation for this exam as good and effective as possible.

There are more possibilities I had to choose among, beside my experience from the job I work and the applicative experience I gained during my 3 years of working, a number of options, mainly offered by HP software education, as there are:

The HP preparation program, which I paid for and which proved to be a very good help as it contains pdf format files which are the best to learn and understand the practice exam you have to go to; I looked at the samples first before buying to make sure is the good product for me; it is really efficient and has a lot of good information, including practical examples, which helps you in giving the right answers to the question of this exam; the full name of this product is HP ASE - Project & Portfolio Management v9 and 2000+ other certification exam preparation program and it costs around 90$.

Another good solution which proved to be great for me is the exam simulator designed for the exams from HP, which is great as it creates questions and answers very similar to the ones from the real exam, this way making it possible for you to train and gain experience in solving the questions in the right way of thinking; it definitely reproduces the conditions of the real exam, and it's a very good way of testing your level of knowledge and knowing on which topics you need to study harder; the full name of this product is HP ASE - Project & Portfolio Management v9 and 2000+ other certification exam preparation program plus exam simulator, it costs around 118$ including the preparation program (the 90$ above) and it is available for lifetime.

I also thought it's good to use other study materials, according to the guide recommendations, and so I used the PPM 9 product documentations for Demand Management, Program Management, Portfolio Management, Resource Management, Time Management and Financial Management, which you can find at http://support.openview.hp.com/selfsolve/manuals, best for understanding better and fixing better all the info, and an extra guarantee you will take the certification with no problem.

These are the three options I did in order to assure myself I will get this certificate and this way validate my experience and knowledge in the HP project & portfolio management, and so I am now a certified expert in this field. This really helped me a lot, and I totally recommend combining more than a single manual or program to study for this exam, as it's not easy to pass; it asks for practical thinking and perception, and the exam simulator is great for this, at least it was amazingly useful for me.

Therefore, you should in case you are thinking to study for the HP ASE - Project & Portfolio Management v9 to use more than a single method of studying, even those you need to pay for, as it's a serious exam and you need to understand and be able to solve the questions with a practical thinking, not only theoretical. You will easily notice that all my choices are Hewlett Packard products, and this is because I thought they are the most recommended to prepare for the exam which involve the work with their programs and software.

Darrin Hanson, Development Master, Digital Masters, Inc