Let me narrate an incident that happened about 3 months back. I was conducting a CBAP certification workshop for a client. As we came closer to the workshop, we were discussing the preparation plan for the examination.
I advise my participants to study for 100 to 150 hours to get ready for the examination. I have heard someone person saying that they could clear CBAP certification exam in 24-hour preparation, which I really wonder. Are they really telling the truth?
BABoK itself is about 500 + pages of documentation and if you just read twice, probably it will need more than 30 hours of time. Most likely, one will also prepare for a good number of questions as well.
When I made this suggestion for 100 hours of study time, one of the participants asked me, “LN, how do we get this kind of hours to study from our daily routine? I travel to my work at morning 7 and I reach home around evening 9 given the fact that travel takes about an hour and a half both ways. I have a family and our job commitment is hard. Getting this kind of time would be really really hard”.
This made me think this is indeed the situation for many professionals, especially if you are going in for CBAP. Most likely one is married, may have a child, have a demanding job as well. So in the midst of all hectic life, how does one really find time to prepare well?
Since one has put in a good amount of money and effort into CBAP preparation, it makes sense to go prepared for the exam than just appearing for it. If one calculates the time value of money, one is spending close to 10K to 15K $ for the exam.
Then the same person suggested me something quite interesting. What she told me is that it’s difficult for her to read or watch a video on the go because she travels on a metro train and where she may not find a place to sit down. (Many of you those who travel by New Jersey Path metro would have seen how crowded are the Path trains.)
What she could always do is to hear BABoK. She is in the metro for more than an hour in the morning and again another hour in the evening if there is something that she can listen to that would make it much easier for her to revise the ideas. Reading requires a lot more concentrated thought than hearing.
Most people listen to music while they travel (which is also quite nice) but they can take some time out from this travel time to make it effective towards their CBAP certification exam preparation process.
This was indeed a wonderful suggestion by the participant. I realized that one can easily take between 1 to 2 hours every day from the commute to learn about BABoK. So if you take two hours daily travel time in a month, you have covered 40 hours because most of us should go to work at least 20 days in a month.
You can take some time on other days when you are going shopping or going for some other work and you are on road, you can utilize that time. So all put together, you can easily pull out 60 hours in a month. When you have your studies done for 60 hours, your regular teaching hours fall to 40 hours. You need to do is to do the question banks which may require you to have access to a computer.
We as an organization we decided to work on it and be released our audio book on CBAP V3 very recently. You can go and buy them at a very special introductory price on our eStore. If you are part of our CBAP workshops, you get access to the audiobooks as well.
So happy learning to all of you and hoping that all of you will do fantastic in your IIBA preparation examination. Browse the site for more details.
