PMP Exam Preparation Guidelines : Pass PMP Exam in a MONTH

In this section we will be providing different online resources for your PMP exam preparation, some slideshows that will provide you with basic know how and why, what regarding PMP and PMI. Practice data bank questions for your exam preparation.

PMP Exam Preparation Guidelines : Pass PMP in a Month

This is a very useful slideshow that describes the very basics of attempting a PMP exam, who should apply and what will be the requirements? how much does it cost to appear for a PMP exam. Go through it and make some notes if you really want to add PMP feather to your crown.

PMP Exam Prep (Pass the Exam in a Month!) - Orientation Seminar from PrudentialSolutions

Managing Contemporary Issues

This slideshow by Craig Brown is based on Gray & Larson, 2006 Edition, Chapter # 16 and it discusses the management of contemporary issues in project management.

Depending upon the project nature, its majorly affected by five forces i.e. global competition, knowledge explosion, innovation, time to market and shortened product life cycles.

Going through these slides will surely help you to prepare for your PMP exam and if you are a certified Project Management Professional it will help you to revive your PM knowledge.

Do share if you like it.

The Project Management Process - Week 11 Contemporary Issues from Craig Brown

Project Performance Management

This slideshow by Craig Brown discusses the importance of performance management after project initiation. How reporting should be done? and why its important.

You need to collect data and perform analysis to measure the project performance as per defined objectives and goals. You will also get insight to earned value management (EVM), how factors of time, cost and scope are to be integrated to get an effective measure of project performance.

The Project Management Process - Week 9 Performance Management from Craig Brown

Project Conflict Management

Conflict Management is a very important aspect of project management irrespective of project scope and team size. Project managers may have a preferred style for resolving conflict.

In this slideshow by Craig Brown we will see how different styles of conflict management i.e. avoiding, compromise, competition, accommodation and collaboration are helpful in resolving various types of conflicts.

"Conflict is a form of relating or interacting where we find ourselves (either as  individuals or groups) under some sort of perceived threat to our personal or collective  goals.

 These goals are usually to do with our interpersonal wants. These perceived threats may  be either real or imagined (Condliffe, 1991, p3)"

The Project Management Process - Week 8 Conflict Management from Craig Brown

PMP Exam Simulators

Done with some preparation of PMP Certification, now its your turn to practice it in a real time scenario. Yes, http://free.pm-exam-simulator.com/ is one such site that offers PMP exam simulation services: it provides you with an opportunity to practice your exam questions in a way they are actually depicted in a real exam.

It feeds you with the similar pattern and style questions with same level of difficulty as per the exam criteria. Moreover, the proportion of questions also follow the correct process group (i.e. initiation : 11%, Planning : 23% etc..). You, will see all types of questions i.e. formula based and interpretational. 

One more plus to this site is that it provides three modes of exam: Real Exam Mode (just like actual exam), Timed Mode (hint based but time limitation applies) and Learning Mode (provides hints but no time limit).

We found it quite useful and recommend you to try, Free 7 Days Trial Available!

Project Management Process : Managing Teams

What is a Team?
A team is a group of individuals who cooperate and work together to achieve a given set of objectives or goals.

What is Team Work?
Teamwork is close cooperation between cross-trained employees who are familiar with a wide range of jobs in their organisation.

What is Team Building?
Team-building is high interaction among team-members to increase trust and openness.

Managing teams in project encompasses many problem as size increases, this slideshow by Craig Brown will help you identify many of these and you will learn how to encounter and overcome those problems.

The Project Management Process - Week 7 Managing Teams from Craig Brown

Project Management : Leadership

Leadership is the process of influencing others, in this slideshow you will learn how to effectively meet the organisational goals through planning, controlling, organising and leading the project.

We hope it will help you to improve your project management capabilities and also its quite useful if you are preparing for PMP exams.

The Project Management Process - Week 6 Leadership from Craig Brown

Process of Marketing & Project Management : Sell To Everyone Once for All

The process of marketing and project management is very clearly and effectively presented by Craig Brown in this slideshow. This will really help you to improve your project management capabilities.

Don't forget to share if you like it!

The Project Management Process - Week 5 from Craig Brown

Project Change Management

This slideshow by Craig Brown covers the change management aspects of a project. We hope it will help you to enhance your project management capabilities.

Remember, knowing alone is not enough : we must APPLY!

The project management process - Week 4 from Craig Brown

Project Plans Management

Project Management Plans by Craig Brown is all about creating project plans. We found this nice slideshow very useful for you, so go through it and it will surely enhance your project management knowledge. But do remember that knowledge alone is not enough, we must APPLY!

The Project Management Process - Week 3 from Craig Brown

Project & Portfolio Management

A discussion about project portfolio management, and how to choose projects for your portfolio.

A good slideshow by Craig Brown. We hope it will be helpful for you to improve your project management skills and knowledge.

The Project Management Process - Week 2 from Craig Brown

What is Project Management?

Below presentation by Craig Brown is good for beginners. It provides the basic concepts of project management in a very detailed manner. Go through it meanwhile we will be posting more good slideshows on project management.

Read it, Love it and Share it.

The Project Management Process - Week 1 de Craig Brown

Project Management Concepts (from PMBOK 5th Ed)

Understanding the project management with the help of case studies is always recommended while you are also preparing for the PMP examination.  

Here we introduce a very comprehensive slideshow on project management prepared by Jeremy Jay V. Lim. He is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt and a certified project management professional. We hope that this slideshow will help you to understand the major concepts of project management; it is based on PMBoK 5th edition.

Lim starts from the basics and than explains the complex concepts in an easy to understand manner. We liked it and shared as follows:

Project Management Concepts (from PMBOK 5th Ed) from Jeremy Jay Lim

Project Management Basics : Good Presentation

Today we come across a very good presentation on understanding Project Management Basics : Knowledge & Functional areas. Go through it you will find it very handy to grasp the important concepts of Project Management. It will also help you in PMP exam training.

Project management

Earned Value Management

Earned value management is a project management technique for measuring project performance and progress. It has the ability to combine measurements of the project management triangle:

• Scope
• Time
• Costs

In a single integrated system, Earned Value Management is able to provide accurate forecasts of project performance problems, which is an important contribution for project management.

Early EVM research showed that the areas of planning and control are significantly impacted by its use; and similarly, using the methodology improves both scope definition as well as the analysis of overall project performance. More recent research studies have shown that the principles of EVM are positive predictors of project success.^[1] Popularity of EVM has grown in recent years beyond government contracting, a sector in which its importance continues to rise^[2] (e.g., recent new DFARS rules^[3]), in part because EVM can also surface in and help substantiate contract disputes.^[4]

Essential features of any EVM implementation include

1. a project plan that identifies work to be accomplished,
2. a valuation of planned work, called Planned Value (PV) or Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled (BCWS), and
3. pre-defined “earning rules” (also called metrics) to quantify the accomplishment of work, called Earned Value (EV) or Budgeted Cost of Work Performed (BCWP).

EVM implementations for large or complex projects include many more features, such as indicators and forecasts of cost performance (over budget or under budget) and schedule performance (behind schedule or ahead of schedule). However, the most basic requirement of an EVM system is that it quantifies progress using PV and EV.

Project Cost Management

Project Cost Management (PCM) is a method that uses technology to measure cost and productivity through the full life cycle of enterprise level projects.^{[citation needed]}

PCM encompasses several specific functions of project management including estimating, job controls, field data collection, scheduling, accounting and design. PCM main goal is to complete a project within an approved budget^[1]

Beginning with estimating, a vital tool in PCM, actual historical data is used to accurately plan all aspects of the project. As the project continues, job control uses data from the estimate with the information reported from the field to measure the cost and production in the project. From project initiation to completion, project cost management has an objective to simplify and cheapen the project experience. ^[2]

This technological approach has been a big challenger to the mainstream estimating software and project management industries.^[3] [4]

Project Cost Management is one of the ten Knowledge Areas outlined in the A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (aka the PMBOK Guide). It is used during the Planning and Monitoring & Controlling Process Groups.

There are 4 processes in this knowledge area including

1. Planning Cost Management
2. Estimating Costs
3. Determining Budget
4. Controlling Cost

A key technique for Project Cost Management is Earned Value Management (EVM).

Project Risk Management

Project risk management is an important aspect of project management. According to the Project Management Institute's PMBOK, Risk management is one of the ten knowledge areas in which a project manager must be competent. Project risk is defined by PMI as, "an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on a project’s objectives."

Project risk management remains a relatively undeveloped discipline, distinct from the risk management used by Operational, Financial and Underwriters' risk management. This gulf is due to several factors: Risk Aversion, especially public understanding and risk in social activities, confusion in the application of risk management to projects, and the additional sophistication of probability mechanics above those of accounting, finance and engineering.

With the above disciplines of Operational, Financial and Underwriting risk management, the concepts of risk, risk management and individual risks are nearly interchangeable; being either personnel or monetary impacts respectively. Impacts in project risk management are more diverse, overlapping monetary, schedule, capability, quality and engineering disciplines. For this reason, in project risk management, it is necessary to specify the differences (paraphrased from the "Department of Defense Risk, Issue, and Opportunity Management Guide for Defense Acquisition Programs"):

• Risk Management: Organizational policy for optimizing investments and (individual) risks to minimize the possibility of failure.
• Risk: The likelihood that a project will fail to meet its objectives.
• A risk: A single action, event or hardware component that contributes to an effort's "Risk."

An improvement on the PMBOK definition of risk management is to add a future date to the definition of a risk.^[2] Mathematically, this is expressed as a probability multiplied by an impact, with the inclusion of a future impact date and critical dates. This addition of future dates allows predictive approaches.^{[citation needed]}

Good Project Risk Management depends on supporting organizational factors, having clear roles and responsibilities, and technical analysis.

Chronologically, Project Risk Management may begin in recognizing a threat, or by examining an opportunity. For example, these may be competitor developments or novel products. Due to lack of definition, this is frequently performed qualitatively, or semi-quantitatively, using product or averaging models. This approach is used to prioritize possible solutions, where necessary.

In some instances it is possible to begin an analysis of alternatives, generating cost and development estimates for potential solutions.

Once an approach is selected, more familiar risk management tools and a general project risk management process may be used for the new projects:

• A Planning risk management
• Risk identification and monetary identification
• Performing qualitative risk analysis
• Communicating the risk to stakeholders and the funders of the project
• Refining or iterating the risk based on research and new information
• Monitoring and controlling risks

Finally, risks must be integrated to provide a complete picture, so projects should be integrated into enterprise wide risk management, to seize opportunities related to the achievement of their objectives.

Excerpt from wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_risk_management

Scope Management

In project management, the term scope has two distinct uses: Project Scope and Product Scope.

Scope involve getting information required to start a project, and the features the product would have that would meet its stakeholders requirements.

• Project Scope: "The work that needs to be accomplished to deliver a product, service, or result with the specified features and functions."^[1]

• Product Scope: "The features and functions that characterize a product, service, or result."^[1]

Notice that Project Scope is more work-oriented (the hows), while Product Scope is more oriented toward functional requirements (the whats).

If requirements aren't completely defined and described and if there is no effective change control in a project, scope or requirement creep may ensue.

When a construction site is being built, the constructor raises a fence on the site defining the boundaries of the construction. This process of building a fence is called scoping. Scope management is the process of defining what work is required and then making sure all of that work – and only that work – is done. Scope management plan should include the detailed process of scope determination, its management and its control. This needs to be planned in advance before the commencement of the project during mobilization phase. Project manager must seek formal approval on a well-defined and clearly articulated scope. To identify scope, requirements must be gathered from all stakeholders. Gathering requirements from only a few stakeholders or only the sponsor might lead to incorrect definition of scope. Large projects require more time, effort and resources to gather requirements and thus defining the scope is important. Scope definition helps us make sure that we are doing all the work but only the work included in the scope management plan. Gold plating a project (adding extras) is not allowed. Changes in scope must be taken into consideration all the knowledge areas of project management such as time, cost, risk, quality, resources and customer satisfaction. Integrated change management process is required to approve changes to scope of a project. Integrated Change Management includes updating of Change Request Form by Change Originator and also tracking the change on Change Control Register.

Excerpt from Wikipidea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_(project_management)

Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK)

The PMBOK Guide is the standard for managing most projects most of the time across many types of industries. This standard describes the project management processes, tools, and techniques used to manage a project toward a successful outcome.

This standard is unique to the project management field and has interrelationships to other project management disciplines such as program management and portfolio management.

Project management standards do not address all details of every topic. This standard is limited to single projects and the project management processes that are generally recognized as good practice.

(Excerpt from PMBOK 4th Edition, PMI USA)

Project Management Processes

Project management process involves a number of activities that contribute to overall project completion; these number of activities can be categorized together to form five main processes of project management.

• Project Initiation
• Project Planning
• Project Execution
• Project Monitoring & Control
• Project Closing

Now we will discuss the five processes of project management in bit detail

Project Initiation

The initiating processes determine the nature and scope of the project, If this stage is not performed well, it is unlikely that the project will be successful in meeting the business’ needs. The key project controls needed here are an understanding of the business environment and making sure that all necessary controls are incorporated into the project. Any deficiencies should be reported and a recommendation should be made to fix them.

Project Planning

After the initiation stage, the project is planned to an appropriate level of detail. The main purpose is to plan time, cost and resources adequately to estimate the work needed and to effectively manage risk during project execution. As with the Initiation process group, a failure to adequately plan greatly reduces the project's chances of successfully accomplishing its goals.

Project planning generally consists of

• determining how to plan
• developing the scope statement
• selecting the planning team
• identifying deliverables and creating the work breakdown structure;
• identifying the activities needed to complete those deliverables and networking the activities in their logical sequence.
• estimating the resource requirements for the activities;
• estimating time and cost for activities;
• developing the schedule;
• developing the budget;
• risk planning;

Project Execution

Executing consists of the processes used to complete the work defined in the project plan to accomplish the project's requirements. Execution process involves coordinating people and resources, as well as integrating and performing the activities of the project in accordance with the project management plan. The deliverables are produced as outputs from the processes performed as defined in the project management plan and other frameworks that might be applicable to the type of project at hand.

Execution process group include:

• Direct and Manage Project execution
• Quality Assurance of deliverables
• Acquire, Develop and Manage Project team
• Distribute Information
• Manage stakeholder expectations
• Conduct Procurement

Project Monitoring & Control

Monitoring and controlling consists of those processes performed to observe project execution so that potential problems can be identified in a timely manner and corrective action can be taken, when necessary, to control the execution of the project. The key benefit is that project performance is observed and measured regularly to identify variances from the project management plan.

Monitoring and controlling includes:

• Measuring the ongoing project activities ('where we are');
• Monitoring the project variables (cost, effort, scope, etc.) against the project management plan and the project performance baseline (where we should be);
• Identify corrective actions to address issues and risks properly (How can we get on track again);
• Influencing the factors that could circumvent integrated change control so only approved changes are implemented.

Project Closing

Closing includes the formal acceptance of the project and the ending thereof. Administrative activities include the archiving of the files and documenting lessons learned.

This phase consists of:

• Project closure: Finalize all activities across all of the process groups to formally close the project or a project phase
• Contract closure: Complete and settle each contract (including the resolution of any open items) and close each contract applicable to the project or project phase