CAPM Exam Prep Seminar - PMBOK Guide, Sixth Edition
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- 23.5 hours on-demand video
- 1 article
- 17 downloadable resources
- 2 Practice Tests
- Full lifetime access
- Access on mobile and TV
- Assignments
- Certificate of Completion
Get your team access to 4,000+ top Udemy courses anytime, anywhere.
Try Udemy for Business- You will get all the resources you need to pass the PMI CAPM certification exam.
- You will earn 25 exam contact hours from a PMI Registered Education Provider.
- You will be able to discuss the PMBOK Guide 6th edition with confidence.
- Explain the project management processes
- Discuss the project management knowledge areas
- Demonstrate the formulas, charts, and theories of project management
- Calculate float for complex project network diagrams
- Memorize the formulas for earned value management
- Compare and contrast processes, knowledge areas, theories, and project management best practices
- Complete hands-on assignments and exercises
- Understand fundamentals of project management
- Dedicated to completing this CAPM Exam Prep Seminar
- Have a deep desire to pass the CAPM exam
This course is taught by a PMI Registered Education Provider:
- Instructingcom, LLC #4082
- CAPM® Exam Prep Seminar
- 25 contact hours for the CAPM exam application
Not all courses on Udemy are part of the PMI REP program – this one is! This course has passed a quality audit and a business review, and it completely abides by the PMI REP program.
You need to pass the CAPM exam and you need quality training that'll help you in your role as a project manager. You also want to learn from an authority in project management, in an online environment with plenty of assignments, videos, and concise explanations. This course provides 25 contact hours and is taught by project management author and expert Joseph Phillips. Joseph is the author of several project management books from McGraw-Hill, the American Management Association, and Dummies Press. He is certified as a PMP, PMI-ACP, ITIL, Project+, and is a Certified Technical Trainer.
The 25 hours of project management education are earned by completing all of the course, the assignments, exercises, and quizzes. The Learning Management System tracks your completion of the course; if you complete all the videos and interactive sessions, you can claim these hours for your CAPM exam application.
NOTICE: This course is designed for the CAPM exam based on PMBOK Guide, sixth edition.
- Project managers who are preparing to PASS their PMI CAPM examination
- Project managers who want to pass their CAPM exam on the first try
- People who want 25 contact hours from a PMI Registered Education Provider
| Let's begin by talking about this course as a whole. We'll discuss what you can expect in this course, how the class operates, and how to use this course to pass your CAPM. You need to pass the CAPM® exam and you need quality training that'll help you in your role as a project manager. You also want to learn from an authority in project management, in an online environment with plenty of exercises, videos, and concise explanations. This course provides 35-contact hours of project management education and is taught by project management author and expert Joseph Phillips. |
| It's possible that your CAPM exam application will be audited. This means you will:
Verify project management experience
Mail all documents back to PMI Headquarters |
People have lots and lots of questions about completing the CAPM exam application. While I cannot review CAPM exam applications, I can take you through the whole process and show you how it currently works on PMI’s website. Let’s check out this lecture for a complete understanding of what’s needed for the exam application.
Sometimes the hardest part of an endeavor is just getting started. You have done that part – taking those crucial first steps, but now you need to build momentum, keep going. I’m going to coach you throughout this course and help you achieve your goal, our goal, of you earning the CAPM.
Great job finishing this first section in the CAPM Exam Prep Seminar. You’ve done more than others have to begin the process of earning your CAPM, now let’s keep going. We’ve discussed the CAPM exam, PMI, and what it takes to clear an audit – if you’re selected. Keep going!
People ask if they need to read the PMBOK Guide for their exam. Or should they add other resources to their study efforts? Or can they pass with just this course. Those are all tough questions, as I don’t know you, your background, or project management experience. I can say, however, that having too many resources crowds your concentration. You need laser-focus and I believe this course is the best method to get you there.
Thousands and thousands of people have completed earlier versions of this course both online and in my live CAPM Exam Prep seminars. I’ve kept records of trending questions that people have and created this Frequently Asked Questions documentation. Please check out this FAQ – your question may be herein. If not, ask a question through the Q&A interface.
I'm often asked how long should it take to pass the CAPM? Well, technically you only have four hours to pass the test, but you can prepare to pass the CAPM in four weeks. Four weeks?! Absolutely! In this lecture I'll walk through a sample four-week strategy and a six-week strategy that you can adapt to pass the CAPM
| The PMBOK Guide is not necessarily needed for this course, but it's a good idea. The PMBOK is:
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| In this section, we talked about your study efforts, the frequently asked questions, and how you can earn Professional Development Units after the CAPM and Contact Hours before you are a CAPM. We also talked about the certificate of completion and how to create a study strategy. Of course, one of the most important topics was exploring the PMBOK Guide and how it relates to the CAPM exam. Finally, we looked at the course resources and you completed an assignment to download the course resources for future use. Keep going! |
Here's something lots of people don't get: the CAPM exam has a list of tasks that you need to know how to perform. That's right - it's activity based, not only process-based. Yes, you can study from the PMBOK, but you had actually better know what tasks will happen in each of the five process groups.
This section explores these project management tasks that you can expect to be tested on.
If you’re aiming to pass the CAPM exam you’re obviously already serving in the role of a project manager. So often with CAPM candidates, however, they’ll try to answer the CAPM exam questions based on how they manage projects in their environment, rather than how the PMBOK Guide suggests as best practices. I’m not saying that you aren’t effectively managing projects where you work, but I am saying that you need to answer exam questions according to the PMBOK Guide rather than solely on your project management experience.
In the PMBOK Guide, there is a clear profile of the ideal project manager and an ideal environment. Part of the profile, is the ability to be flexible, to adapt, and to follow best practices. That’s really what you’ll be tested on: what’s the next best thing to do in any given scenario. It all begins, really, with a clear understanding of what the project manager does and what the PMBOK Guide expectations of a project manager is. That’s the goal of this chapter; let’s build a solid foundation of the project manager role that you’ll be tested on so you can clear the exam and continue on with your life and career.
| The environment where a project exists can influence how you manage the project, expectations of the project manager, how stakeholders contribute to the project, and a myriad of other concerns. Understanding the environment and what’s expected of the project manager as far as formalities, processes, rules and regulations, and even simpler things like templates and forms are all part of the project environment. |
The project manager’s role is to get things done by leading the project team through the challenges of the project to achieve the project goals and objective. Most often, project managers get involved with a project after the vision of the project has been created. Consider a project to build a house, design some software, or to move employees from one building to another. All of these projects and their objectives can be defined well before the project manager is involved.
However, it’s not unusual at all for project managers to be involved in the project formulation before the project is initiated. A project manager could consult with the portfolio review board, customers, and management to offer input before a project is selected, funded, and then initiated. Project managers may work with business analysts (or take on the role of a business analyst) to gather requirements, create high-level estimates, and develop business cases and feasibility studies – all work that precedes project initiation.
Project integration management is the only knowledge area that has a process in every process group. Project integration management is the knowledge area that ties all of the project together, it integrates the processes, and ushers the project through all process groups from initiation to closing. This is also the knowledge area where you’ll find integrated change control – an important process throughout the project.
| Schedule management is crucial to project success. This knowledge area covers activities, their characteristics, and how they fit into the project schedule. This is where you and the project team will define the activities, plot out their sequence, and calculate how long the project will actually take. |
| his knowledge area focuses on organizational planning, staff acquisition, and team development. You have to acquire your project team, develop this team, and then lead them to the project results. This knowledge area deals with both physical resources, like materials and equipment, and human resources. |
Projects often need to procure products, services, and results purchased from outside vendors in order to reach closing. This knowledge area covers the business of project procurement, the processes to acquire and select vendors, and contract negotiation. The contract between the vendor and the project manager’s organization will guide all interaction between the project manager and the vendor.
Stakeholders are the all people who are affected positively or negatively, or perceived to be, by your project. They can influence your project’s success as a subset of them defines the projects goals. Project stakeholder management is also about engaging and maintaining the stakeholder engagement.
| The sixth edition of the PMBOK Guide will be referenced throughout this book. Why? Well, your CAPM exam is largely based on the facts, figures, and subtleties of the current PMBOK Guide. The good news is that unlike the PMBOK Guide—fine book that it is—this course you are completing is in plain language. This course, unlike the PMBOK Guide, focuses on how to pass the CAPM exam. It will also help you be a better project manager and explain some mysterious formulas and concepts, but its main goal is to get you over the hump toward those four glorious letters: CAPM. |
| We all have to start somewhere and in the PMBOK Guide it's all about defining the project and the project manager. In this section we'll explore:
Projects can involve:
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| Regardless of what some projects may seem like, they must be temporary. If the work is not temporary, it is operations. Like a good story, projects have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Projects end when the scope of the project has been met—usually. Sometimes projects end when the project runs out of time or cash or when it becomes clear that the project won’t be able to complete the project objectives, so it’s scrapped. You might also experience the end of the project when it becomes clear that the project is no longer needed, such as when a new technology supersedes the project you’re managing. |
This one isn’t tough to figure out. Projects have to create a thing, invent a service, or change an environment. The deliverable of the project—a successful project, that is—satisfies the scope that was created way, way back when the project got started. Projects are unique. This means that every project you ever do is different from all the other projects you’ve done in the past. Even if it’s the same basic approach to get to the same end result, there are unique factors within each project, such as the time it takes, the stakeholders involved, the environment in which the project takes place, and on and on. All projects are unique, even if your company does the same type of project repeatedly. Lucky you.
Projects need to provide business value. Business value is the sum of the benefits that an organization can quantify. Benefits can usually be defined in financial terms, but they may also be intangible benefits, such as goodwill, brand recognition, benefits to the public, strategic alignment, and even your organization’s reputation. Time savings, a common business value, can be quantified. You’re looking for benefits for stakeholders in the form of monetary assets, equity, utility, fixtures, tools, and market share. Business value is almost always quantified in financial terms—something that helps set the objectives of the project. You might be asked to predict the profitability of a project to justify the organization’s investment in the project. As you know, projects cost money and time, and you’ll have to justify that investment of resources up front. This is where we’ll get into project selection, return on investment, and whether your project—or any project—should move forward or not
Project management is the supervision and control of the work required to complete the project vision. The project team carries out the work needed to complete the project, while the project manager schedules, monitors, and controls the various project tasks. Project management requires that you apply your knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques, and do whatever it takes, generally speaking, to achieve the project objectives. Project management is about getting things done. Projects, being the temporary and unique things that they are, require the project manager to be actively involved with the project implementation. Projects are not self-propelled. Project management is accomplished by using the correct project management processes at the right time, to the correct depth, and with the correct technique.
| Application areas of discipline that a project may be based on. Consider technology, law, sales, marketing, and construction, among many others. The application area, or discipline, you work in is likely different than other project managers in this course. The application area affects how the project is managed, not the other way around. |
| Consider any project, and you’ll also have to consider any phases within the project. Construction projects have definite phases. IT projects have definite phases. Marketing, sales, and internal projects all have definite phases. Projects—all projects—comprise phases. Phases make up the project life cycle, and they are unique to each project. Furthermore, organizations, project managers, and even project frameworks such as Agile or Scrum can define phases within a project life cycle. Just know this: The sum of a project’s phases equates to the project’s life cycle. In regard to the CAPM exam, it’s rather tough for the PMI to ask questions about specific project life cycles. Why? Because every organization may identify different phases within all the different projects that exist. Bob may come from a construction background and Susan from IT, each one being familiar with totally different disciplines and totally different life cycles within their projects. However, all CAPM candidates should recognize that every project has a life cycle—and all life cycles comprise phases. |
We talked about projects, project management, organizational structures, and much more in this section. Some important topics we covered included:
- Application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to meet the project requirements
- 49 project management processes
- Five project management process groups
- Initiating
- Planning
- Executing
- Monitoring and Controlling
- Closing
A project manager will deal with governance on several different levels. Portfolios are the collection of projects and programs that the organization invests in. Programs are a collection of projects working toward a common goal. In a program, projects are managed uniformly to achieve benefits that you likely wouldn’t get if each project were managed independently of the others. And projects, of course, are the temporary endeavors to create a unique product, service, condition, and result. For each of these items, a project governance defines the rules and policies that affect the project manager.
| Program management is the management of multiple projects all working in unison toward a common goal. Programs achieve benefits by managing projects collectively, rather than independently. Projects within a program can better share resources, improve communications, manage interdependencies, resolve issues quickly, leverage resources, and provide more benefits for the organization than they would if each project were not managed collectively under a program. Projects within a program still have project managers, but the project managers work with, and often report to, the program manager. |
| Portfolios include projects, programs, and even operations that are managed and coordinated and should link to the strategic objectives for the organization, as demonstrated in Figure 1-2. Portfolios are created and controlled by upper-level management and executives and include financial considerations of the investment, return on investment, and distribution of risks for the programs, projects, and operations included in the portfolio. A portfolio describes the collection of investments in the form of projects and programs in which the organization invests capital. Project managers and, if applicable, program managers report to a portfolio review board on the performance of the projects and programs. The portfolio review board may also direct the selection of projects and programs. |
A project management office (PMO) organizes and manages control over all projects within an organization. A PMO is also known as a program management office, project office, or sometimes, the program office. (And I’m sure some project managers have other names for them that won’t be on the CAPM exam.) PMOs usually coordinate all aspects, methodology, and nomenclature for project processes, templates, software, and resource assignment. Ideally, a PMO creates a uniform approach within an organization so that all projects, regardless of their discipline, technology, or purpose, are managed with the same approach. The PMO can help project managers share resources (people, facilities, and equipment) across projects, offer coaching and communication, help with change control and stakeholder management, and help resolve issues
In some organizations, everything is a project. In other organizations, projects are rare exercises in change. There’s a fine line between projects and operations, and often these separate entities overlap in function. Consider the following points shared by projects and operations:
• Both involve employees.
• Both typically have limited resources: people, money, or both. • Both are hopefully designed, executed, and managed by someone in charge.
| Organizational project management (OPM) is an organizational approach to coordinate, manage, and control projects, programs, and portfolio management in a uniform, consistent effort. The philosophy of OPM is that by doing all work within projects, programs, and portfolio management with the same type of processes, actions, and techniques, the organization will consistently deliver better results than it would if the processes and approach were independent of one another. While project, program, and portfolio each have different skill sets, there is overlap in their approach, and these endeavors may utilize the same resources—including you, the project manager—to accomplish their objectives. |
When you think about a project—any project—it’s all about change. Any project you’ve ever worked on changed something. You added a server to your work environment? Change. You created a new product for your customers? Change. You led a project to develop a new product? Change again. All projects drive change. In the business world, your projects move the organization from its current state to a desired future state, and projects facilitate that change from now to then.
The investments the company makes in projects and programs should have, of course, a positive return. These investments are monitored by the portfolio review board and portfolio manager through communications with the program managers and the project managers. The organization wants to see a return on investment through profits, social or performance improvements, reduction in waste, or other key performance indicators established at the selection of the projects and program investment
You’ll need to understand the differences between a process, a process group, and a knowledge area – and that’s just the framework of the PMBOK Guide. You’ll also need to understand how processes exist in both knowledge areas and in process groups… but once you’ve these basic mechanics down, you’re ready to start applying the processes to answer questions correctly.
Projects, being the temporary and unique things that they are, require the project manager to be actively involved with the project implementation. Projects are not self-propelled. Project management is accomplished by using the correct project management processes at the right time, to the correct depth, and with the correct technique. These processes, which you’ll learn throughout this course, are logically organized in five process groups:
• Initiating
• Planning
• Executing
• Monitoring and controlling
• Closing
Before we get too deep into documentation, however, let’s nail down some terms that relate to project management data and information. In a project, lots of data and information will be created, added to your project management information system (PMIS), compiled into reports, distributed, communicated, and sometimes even ignored. You’ll need to have good project knowledge to access the needed data and information quickly to communicate what’s happening in your project and determine why things are going the way they are. You need to know three specific concepts that you’ll see throughout this course: data, information, and reports.
Chances are that you follow a prescribed methodology to manage projects where you work. Your work environment uses names for some of these processes that differ slightly from those presented here and in the PMBOK Guide, and that’s perfectly fine. The methodology that your organization uses to manage projects is just that—a method. The PMBOK Guide is not a methodology, but a guide to the best practices of project management. The flexibility of the PMBOK Guide and project management is beautiful, when you think about it. Okay, maybe “beautiful” isn’t the best word, but the flexibility works. The processes and approaches that you utilize in your project management approach involves tailoring of the processes, and that’s what’s needed in every project. Tailoring enables you to choose what processes should be used on a project and to what depth the processes should be used.
Adaptive life cycles can be either agile, iterative or incremental. Change is highly probable, and the project team will work closely with the stakeholders regarding any changes in the project. You might also know this approach as agile or change-driven. This is new information to the PMBOK Guide, but the amount of information is somewhat light. You should be topically familiar with adaptive projects for your exam.
| Projects that are large in scope will likely be preceded by a business case, an analysis of the financial feasibility and validity of the proposed project. The business case will walk through the proposed project, include a sense of how much the project will likely cost, calculate the return on investment for the project, and offer reasons why the project should, or should not, be initiated. The business case can help decision-makers (the project sponsors or the project steering committee) make a go/no-go decision to proceed with the project. |
When a project is initiated, it sets about to accomplish something, to create something, and, most importantly, to achieve business value for the organization. The project will create a result, and that result is all about benefits. Benefits are the results and outcomes of project actions. Consider a construction company, for example: when it constructs a building for a client, there are obvious benefits to the client and community, but there are also benefits for the construction company. The company will generate income, create opportunities to market itself based on the project success, maintain employees, provide educational opportunities with the team, and obtain other benefits as a result of the project work.
Why are you pursuing the CAPM? Is it for a better opportunity? To advance your career? To become a better project manager? Whatever the reason why your goal of passing the CAPM, you should examine your benefits of earning the CAPM. Make it personal – when it’s personal, it’s more valuable to you.
This section covered the fundamentals of project management and the expectations for the CAPM examination. The PMBOK Guide is an excellent book that documents the ideal processes and procedures for project management. The CAPM exam is based on the PMBOK Guide, and this book (the one you’re reading now) focuses on the key exam essentials to help you pass your CAPM exam. We discussed what a project is and is not. Projects are temporary endeavors to create a unique thing, product, or service. An operation, on the other hand, is a series of activities that go on and on, such as manufacturing a car, writing a newspaper column, or running a business. Many businesses have a business model of completing projects for other people or organizations.
The environment in which a project exists can influence the expectations of the project manager, how you manage the project, how stakeholders contribute to the project, and a myriad of other concerns. Understanding the environment and what’s expected of the project manager as far as formalities, processes, rules, and regulations—and even simpler things like templates and forms—are all part of the project environment. Often when we discuss the project environment, we think of things like the tangible attributes of where the project takes place: construction sites, offices, hospital settings, and more. Although these are certainly part of the environment, there’s also the political landscape, the reputation of the project manager and stakeholders, and the industry influence in which the project is operating. The environment includes all characteristics of where the project exists—all the moving parts, the seen and unseen, and the expectations of management regarding the project manager; these are all parts of the project environment
Enterprise environmental factors are the elements that directly or indirectly influence the management of the project, but the project manager has no direct control over these elements. For example, your organization may have particular rules for bringing a project team member onto your project. This rule is outside of your control, and you must abide by it. This rule might sometimes hinder you from zipping along in project execution, but it also helps bring order and control to the projects within the organization. Just as organizational process assets are inputs to many project management processes, so, too, are enterprise environmental factors.
| “Organizational process assets” is a nice way of referring to all the resources within an organization that can be used, leveraged, researched, or interviewed to make a project successful. This means past projects, subject matter experts within your organization, risk databases, procedures, plans, processes, stakeholder knowledge, and methods of operations. As a project manager, your goal is to get things done—that’s what project management is all about. Too many project managers get stuck in planning for too long and don’t get into execution. I’m not saying you don’t need to plan—you do, but you don’t need to start from zero every time. When you consider the projects that you manage, chances are there’s some similarity between the projects. You’re doing the same type of projects over and over, because you’re working in a specific industry where the nature of the projects you manage all support the organizational vision and strategies. |
Ideally, your organization has a method for cataloging, archiving, and retrieving information from past projects and work. The PMBOK calls these the “knowledge repositories.” This is most likely an electronic data storage and retrieval system, or it might just be a hallway closet full of past project files.
A system is a way of doing things. When I wash the dishes, I have a system for how I load the dishwasher that’s completely different from my wife’s approach. Or when I make purchases, track receipts, and do my company’s bookkeeping, I have a system that’s orderly and reasonable. Organizations, big and small, need a system that provides structure for how projects and operations complete the assigned work, strategies, and vision of the organization. The organizational system is unique to that company and may have been planned from the start or evolved over time through trial and error.
Governance defines what you can and cannot do within an organization. It includes the rules, policies, procedures, and boundaries that you and your colleagues operate within. Governance describes how you operate within a system: the cultural norms, relationships, and organizational processes used to get things done. Consider purchasing, for example: your organization likely has a process regarding how you contact vendors, move through contracting, sign off on the contracted work, and pay the vendor. This process is all part of the organizational governance framework specifically for your organization. Your framework is likely completely different from that of your competitors, a company in a different industry, and other businesses.
Management elements are the functions of a manager, including to some extent project managers. Through the governance framework, managers are expected to utilize varying levels of management skills. As a project manager, you’ll likely have some, if not all, of the following management elements as part of your role of a project manager:
- Delegation of project work to the project team
- Authority to assign resources to project work
- Expectations of respect for others, authority, and organizational rules
- Unity of command (one person is in charge)
- Unity of direction (one plan driven by one person)
- Clear communication channels
- Provision of materials to people as needed
- Fair and equal treatment of people on the project team and stakeholders Positive, optimistic personality
Organizations are structured into one of ten models, each with an organizational structure that will affect the project in some aspect. The organizational structure will set the level of authority, the level of autonomy, and the reporting structure that the project manager can expect to have within the project. In this lecture we’ll explore the level of authority in each of the organizational structures for the project manager and the functional manager
A project management office (PMO) organizes and manages control over all projects within an organization. A PMO is also known as a program management office, project office, or sometimes, the program office. (And I’m sure some project managers have other names for them that won’t be on the CAPM exam.) PMOs usually coordinate all aspects, methodology, and nomenclature for project processes, templates, software, and resource assignment. Ideally, a PMO creates a uniform approach within an organization so that all projects, regardless of their discipline, technology, or purpose, are managed with the same approach. The PMO can help project managers share resources (people, facilities, and equipment) across projects, offer coaching and communication, help with change control and stakeholder management, and help resolve issues
| These first several sections have all been about the foundation of the CAPM. Some of this, if not all of this, may have been a review of things you’ve already learned as a project manager. Now, moving forward, we’re going to be diving into some very specific, very important project management terms and concepts. Keep going! |
| Section Summary: Project Environments | Enterprise environmental factors are the rules that you must work with and abide by on your project in your organization. The industry that you operate in, from construction to healthcare, will have its own set of enterprise environmental factors. Internal environmental factors describe the governance framework and the common approach for getting things done in an organization. External enterprise environmental factors describe the things outside of the organization’s control, such as laws and regulations, that also affect how the project manager leads the project. Projects don’t last forever. Though projects may sometimes seem to last forever, they fortunately do not. Operations, however, go on and on. Projects pass through logical phases to reach their completion, while operations may be influenced, or even created, by the outcome of a project. |
| If you’re aiming to pass the CAPM exam, you’re obviously already working as a project manager. So often, CAPM candidates will try to answer the CAPM exam questions based on how they manage projects in their environment, rather than how the PMBOK Guide suggests as best practices. I’m not saying that you aren’t effectively managing projects where you work, but I am saying that you need to answer exam questions according to the PMBOK Guide rather than basing your answers solely on your project management experience. Where you work as a project manager is likely different from where any other reader of this book works as a project manager. Just as every project is unique, so is the environment in which a project exists. Consider software development projects, construction projects, IT infrastructure projects, learning and development projects, and various other types of projects. Each of these different projects operates in a distinct environment. The environment is a factor of influence in these projects and in your projects. |
| The project manager’s role is to get things done by leading the project team through the challenges of the project to achieve the project goals and objectives. Most often, project managers get involved with a project after the vision of the project has been created. Consider a project to build a house, design some software, or move employees from one building to another. Each of these projects and its objectives can be defined well before the project manager is involved. It’s not unusual, however, for project managers to be involved in the project formulation before the project is initiated. A project manager could consult with the portfolio review board, customers, and management to offer input before a project is selected, funded, and initiated. Project managers may work with business analysts (or take on the role of a business analyst) to gather requirements, create high-level estimates, and develop business cases and feasibility studies—all work that precedes project initiation. |
As a project manager, you have tremendous influence on the project’s success, the people on the project team, the management of your organization, and stakeholders that can span your organization, region, or even the entire globe. The project’s sphere of influence describes the parties affected by the role of the project manager. Your project can send ripples into all areas of your organization: resources, monetary constraints, politics, and many other factors can all be influenced by you, the project manager, and the project you lead. Influence isn’t something we often think of as project managers, but it’s a factor that should be considered when we plan, execute the project, and certainly when we communicate with stakeholders. Not that the project manager must play politics, but the project manager must consider the implications of the project’s success, the communication between the project manager and project team, and the perceptions of the stakeholders regarding the project and its leadership.
Technical project management skills are the core skills you apply in your role as a project manager. You’ll focus on what it’ll take to get the project done: planning the project work, executing the plan, monitoring and controlling the project, and closing out phases and eventually the entire project. Within these process groups is where you’ll choose and apply the needed processes to keep the project moving toward the goals and objectives. You’ll also communicate the project status, keep stakeholders involved and informed, track finances, control changes, and manage issues. We’ll spend the bulk of our time in the balance of this book in the technical project management arena.
| The PMI Talent Triangle also includes strategic and business management skills. As a project manager, you’re not only working on the project, but you also must look at the organization’s bigger picture of why the project is important and has been initiated and funded in the first place. The goal is to understand and communicate the business strategy, effectively plan and deliver the project for the organization, and maximize the business value of the project. You’ll need to understand how your project fits into the organization’s strategy, mission, tactics, and overall prioritization of projects. You’ll do this in the project by managing the following: • Risks and issues • Finances • Costs and benefits • Business value • Benefits realized by delivering the project • Balance of competing objectives, such as time, cost, and quality |
| Without a doubt, politics in an organization can affect project management. Unfortunately, project managers often get mired in between stakeholders’ competing objectives and succumb to office politics that can affect the project for the worse. Politics are really a way of describing how organizations operate—the undocumented, but present, undercurrent of how decisions are made within the organization. Project managers have to understand how organizations work and who wields authority, and navigate through the politics, good or bad, to keep the project moving toward a successful conclusion. |
Leadership in a project manager means you’ll have
• Respect for others
• Integrity and cultural sensitivity
• Problem-solving abilities
• Ability to give others credit
• Desire to learn and improve Leadership in project management is about helping the team and business succeed. It’s about doing what’s right for the project, for the project team, and for the stakeholders. You’ll focus on what’s most important by prioritizing work, needs, and wants. Leaders take action, make decisions, are flexible and courageous, and can go directly to problems to rectify issues and keep the project moving forward.
Chances are you’ve worked for people you’ve admired. Think of how they led the organization or project. Their characteristics, such as their temperaments and their values, made you admire them. And project team members often reflect their moods, values, and ethics. What the team sees in management, including project managers, is how they’ll tend to act as team members. Leadership styles are the methods you, and others, can take to offer leadership within the project. That’s an important concept: it’s not just the project manager that can offer leadership, because the team, stakeholders, and even vendors can offer leadership at different times throughout the project.
Integration, in this context, differs from project integration management. Instead of addressing the interrelationship among the project processes, project integration in this context addresses how the project is integrated with the goals, tactics, and vision of the organization, not just the project scope and knowledge areas. Integration at this level means that you’re working with the project sponsor to ensure that the goals and objectives of the project mesh with the goals and objectives of the organization. Projects must support the broader vision and purpose of the organization or the project likely isn’t contributing to business value and may have challenges garnering support within the organization.
One of the attributes of a good project manager is the ability to problem solve. This means you can ponder situations, work with experts to help you make decisions, and then make effective decisions quickly. The CAPM exam is proof of this crucial project management ability: problem solving.
The role of the project manager is to manage the project work, lead the project team, and get things done. The project manager works with the project team to achieve the project objectives, contribute to business value, and coordinate the activities, communications, and events that happen within a project. Project managers facilitate processes to reach predefined expectations and usher the project through initiating, planning, execution, monitoring, and controlling—and, ultimately, to project closing. Through experience and training, the project manager’s competency increases. The project manager should ascertain his level of skill in management and leadership areas; identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; and then decide to improve upon his management prowess. The PMI Talent Triangle aims to address the three common areas of education for project managers: technical project management, leadership, and strategic and business management.
| Within any project are many moving parts: schedule management, cost management, schedule conflicts, human resource issues, iterative planning, alternative methods to doing the project work, and much, much more. Project integration management is the art and science of ensuring that your project moves forward and that your plan is fully developed and properly implemented. Project integration management requires that your project—regardless of its size and impact—meshes with the existing operations of your organization. This knowledge area encompasses integrated change control, too; you’ll need to manage changes that are bound to happen within your project. Project integration management requires finesse. As the project manager, you will have to negotiate with stakeholders to resolve competing project objectives. This requires organization, since you’ll have to develop, coordinate, and record your project plan. It requires the ability to accomplish your project plan. It requires leadership, record keeping, and political savvy, given you’ll have to deal with potential changes throughout your project implementation. And, perhaps most importantly, it requires flexibility and adaptability throughout the project plan execution. |
| One of the nice things about project management is that it’s not concrete – it’s fluid, evolving, developing from year-to-year and between organizations. Project management can be adapted, twisted, pared down or sized up – there’s no law or regulations from stopping you from managing a project however you best see fit. There are some trends that have found success and favor in the project management community when it comes to project integration management. Because project integration management is all about coordinating the other knowledge areas there is lots information to gather, store, process, and share. The emerging trends in project integration management that you should explore are detailed in this lecture. |
| Of all the project management knowledge areas, project integration management is the one that’s totally managed by the project manager. Cost management, schedule management, risk management, and other knowledge areas can be managed within the project by specialists from your organization. But project integration management is totally led by the project manager – it’s the day-to-day work of the project manager. And like most things in project management, the larger and more complex the project, the more detail, organization, and sophistication is needed within project integration management. |
| While project integration management is the focal point of work for project managers in a predictive approach, it’s a bit different in an Agile or Adaptive environments. In an Agile environment, the project team members have much more control over the integration of project management plans and project components. Agile isn’t more fluid than the predictive environment, so documentation isn’t a value-added component to the project. While the project manager still oversees the coordination of the project management knowledge areas, the Agile and Adaptive approaches rely more on the project team defining what needs to be done at the current point of the project and the team plans and does the work accordingly. The project manager doesn’t necessarily control and direct the project work, but ensures that the project team has what they need to be get the work done. |
| You know what the project charter is and what it does: It authorizes the project and allows the project manager to assign resources to the project work. It’s all about power. The project manager is officially identified in the project charter, though the project manager should be selected as early as possible during the project—hopefully while the charter is being developed, but must be identified before project planning commences. The project charter also demonstrates the organization’s commitment to the project and the investment in the endeavor. The project manager, however, doesn’t issue the project charter. Nope. The project charter comes from outside of the project. The project manager may help develop the project charter, but it’s not signed or issued by the project manager; the charter needs the authority of someone in the organization that has oversight of the needed resources and finances the project will require. |
The various benefit measurement methods are all about comparing values of one project against the values of another. As you might expect, the projects with higher, positive values typically get selected over projects with low values. This lecture describes some common benefit measurement methods you may encounter on your exam.
| Project plan development requires an iterative process of progressive elaboration. The project manager will revise and update the plan as research and planning reveal more information and as the project develops. For example, an initial project plan may describe a broad overview of what the project entails, what the desired future state should be, and the general methods used to achieve the goals of the plan. Then, after research, careful planning, and discovery, the project plan will develop into a concise document that details the work involved in, and the expectations of, the project; how the project will be controlled, measured, and managed; and how the project should move. In addition, the project plan will contain all of the supporting details, specify the project organization, and allow for growth in the plan through a disciplined change control process. |
| So you’ve got a project plan—great! Now the work of executing the project plan begins. The project manager and the project team will go about completing the promises made in the project plan to deliver, document, measure, and complete the project work. The project plan will communicate to the project team, the stakeholders, management, and even vendors what work happens next, how it begins, and how it will be measured for quality and performance. |
The product of the project is created during these execution processes. The largest percentage of the project budget will be spent during the project execution processes. The project manager and the project team must work together to orchestrate the timings and integration of all the project’s moving parts. A flaw in one area of the execution can have ramifications in cost and additional risk and can cause additional flaws in other areas of the project.
Executing the project plan will also create work performance data. Work performance data are observations, measurements, and facts that aren’t necessarily useful without some content. You’ll see coming up that work performance data is analyzed and processed into work performance information. Work performance information will then help you create work performance reports to communicate information about your project. A little tip, these happen in alphabetical order: data, information, and then reports.
Issues will happen throughout the project and these issues need to be documented and added to the project’s issue. Whenever there are inconsistencies between what was planned and what was experienced, you’ve likely got an issue. You can sometimes refer to issues as risk events that have happened: problems, conflicts, gaps. When you document the issue in the issue log you’ll also assign an issue owner and a target resolution date for the issue.
When you manage a project you’ll rely on your existing knowledge, based on your education and experience, but you might also learn new things to better manage the project. That’s what this new to PMBOK Guide, sixth edition, process is all about. Managing both existing knowledge and new knowledge while managing the project. It’s not just documenting information, but documenting knowledge to openly share with others in the current project, future projects, and in operations to support the solution the project creates.
Sure, sure, it’d be nice to have a project plan and a team that follows orders and to have all the work requests completed on budget and on time every time—but this isn’t fiction. One of the key activities for the project manager is to monitor the project team and control the work that they complete as part of the project. This is the hands-on portion of the project management career. Monitoring and controlling the project helps stakeholders see where the project is and to better understand the actions of what’s needed to keep the project in alignment with the project plan.
Integrated change control examines a change request to determine the total effect the change may have on all parts of the project: deliverables, project documents, and the project management plan. It determines the value of the change on the project to help determine whether the change should actually be approved, declined, or postponed. Integrated change control examines changes that stem from scope, cost, schedule, and contract, though scope changes are the most common.
The project management plan defines what the project or phase is, how the project or phase will be completed, and finally—the good part—how the project or phase will be closed. The close project processes are activities that the project manager, the project management team, vendors, and the organization’s management will undertake to close out the project work. If a project has multiple phases, as most projects do, the closing processes will be implemented at the end of each phase.
| If there’s one thing I hate while I’m writing or working it’s an interruption. Just today I was deep in thought, in concentration and a stranger opened my office door. I didn’t know this guy and it threw me off my pace, my cadence. Interruptions can be a time suck for project managers. Take steps to guard your time, to guard your mental focus. |
| Project integration management is an ongoing process the project manager completes to ensure that the project moves from start to completion. It is the gears, guts, and grind of project management—the day-in, day-out business of completing the project work. Project integration management takes your project plans; coordinates the activities, project resources, constraints, and assumptions; and massages them into a working model. Of course, project integration management isn’t an automatic process; it requires you, the project manager, to negotiate, finesse, and adapt to the project’s circumstances. Project integration management relies on general business skills such as leadership, organizational skills, and communication to get all the parts of the project working together. |