Pass the Exam: CompTIA Project+ PK0-004

Projects get selected to solve a problem or seize an opportunity. Projects are going to fix something, adhere to a new law or regulation, or they’re going to attempt to earn a profit. Understanding why a project exists can help you and the project team reach the primary project objective. All projects must support the organization’s business objectives; an accounting firm isn’t likely to initiate a project to build bicycles. Projects must be in alignment with the organization’s strategic goals and mission.

Project selection is often, but not always, done without the project manager. A project steering committee, upper management, or just a meeting with your company’s stakeholders can all be reason enough to select a project. Project selection can be complex and cumbersome with multiple formulas, analyses, business cases, and feasibility studies, or it can be a quick conversation and a handshake. The culture of the organization, the size of the project, the cost, risks, and confidence in project success all affect the project selection.

The project statement of work is defined early in the project timeline. It maps out what the project will create, at a high-level, and usually precedes the project scope and the project charter.

The project charter, as a final reminder for your exam, is endorsed by an entity outside of the project boundaries. This person or entity has the power to authorize the project and grant the project manager the power to assign resources to the project work. The project charter should define the business needs and what the project aims to create in order to solve those business needs. You'll need to know how project charters are written. This includes:

· Project statement of work

· Business cases

· Using expert judgment

· Identifying the contents of the project charter

Project selection is often, but not always, done without the project manager. A project steering committee, upper management, or just a meeting with your company’s stakeholders can all be reason enough to select a project. Project selection can be complex and cumbersome with multiple formulas, analyses, business cases, and feasibility studies, or it can be a quick conversation and a handshake. The culture of the organization, the size of the project, the cost, risks, and confidence in project success all affect the project selection.

Stakeholder management is a new knowledge area in the PMBOK Guide, fifth edition. Stakeholder management happens throughout the project and requires an understanding of who a stakeholder is, their power and influence in the organization, and how the project manager can work with each stakeholder type.

· A stakeholder is anyone that can influence your project or is influenced by your project.

· Determining who is a stakeholder

· Typical project stakeholders

· Working with positive and negative stakeholders

· Managing stakeholder expectations

This is a brief summary of everything we have covered in this section. This lecture will quickly put it all together and serve as a reminder of what the section included. Good job!

The project management plan is comprised of several different subsidiary plans we’ll discuss in this lecture.

Through progressive elaboration you’ll build the project management plan.

It’s important to work with stakeholders to describe exactly what they want and want they need early in the project.

One of the first things you'll have to achieve in your role as the project manager of a new project is to define the project's scope management plan. Now, your organization may rely on organizational process assets in the form of a template for all projects, but it's possible that you'll be creating this scope management plan from scratch. In this section, you'll learn both approaches that you can apply to your projects and your PMI exam. This lecture includes:

• Relying on project information

• Using templates and forms

• Creating the Project Scope Management Plan

• Performing product analysis

• Using alternative identification

• Interviewing experts and stakeholders

Stakeholder observation is a tool and technique that will help the project manager and project team define the project requirements.

The project requirements are defined through many tools and techniques to help document the requirements and to create a requirements traceability matrix. This lecture details:

· Working with stakeholders to define requirements

· Requirement gathering techniques

· Documenting and publishing requirements

· Creating a requirements traceability matrix

The project scope statement, one of the cornerstones of effective project management, must be completely defined. This lecture explains all of the items that should be in the project scope statement. The product scope describes what the customer wants and receives as a result of the project work.

One of the first things you'll have to achieve in your role as the project manager of a new project is to define the project's scope management plan. Now, your organization may rely on organizational process assets in the form of a template for all projects, but it's possible that you'll be creating this scope management plan from scratch. In this section, you'll learn both approaches that you can apply to your projects and your PMI exam. This lecture includes:

· Relying on project information

· Using templates and forms

· Creating the Project Scope Management Plan

· Performing product analysis

· Using alternative identification

· Interviewing experts and stakeholders

This is a brief summary of everything we have covered in this section. This lecture will quickly put it all together and serve as a reminder of what the section included. Good job!

The project management planning processes are iterative, as you know, and will happen over and over throughout the project. You and the project team—and even some key stakeholders—will work together to define the project's schedule management plan. This will happen early in the project's planning processes, but chances are good you'll need to return to schedule management planning to adjust, replan, or focus on the schedule you've created for the project. Schedules are created and designed throughout the project. This lecture will help you to understand these concepts:

· Examining policies and procedures

· Working with a deadline

· Creating the schedule based on scope

The project scope statement is broken down into smaller and smaller deliverables to create the work breakdown structure. This lecture explains and demonstrates this project management activity.

When a project is first initiated, project managers often focus immediately on the labor and activities that will be required to complete the project work. But that focus ignores the scope. In Chapter 5, I discussed the project scope and the work breakdown structure (WBS) as prerequisites to defining the project activities. Before the work actually begins you'll need to work with the project team to define the activities to schedule. This lecture covers:

· Examining the inputs to activity definition

· Decomposing the project work

· Relying on project templates

· Using rolling wave planning

· Planning for more work

· Examining the project activities and their attributes

Now that the activity list has been created, the activities must be arranged in a logical sequence. This process calls on the project manager and the project team to identify the logical relationships between activities, as well as the preferred relationship between those activities. Once you have the activities defined you'll need to put them in the correct order. That's what this module is all about:

· Defining the activity relationships

· Determining the network structure to use

· Establishing activity dependencies

· Applying leads and lags

Resources include materials, equipment, and people. After the project manager and the project team have worked together to determine the sequence of the activities, they now have to determine which resources are needed for each activity, as well as how much of each resource. As you can guess, resource estimating goes hand in hand with cost estimating. This lecture will define:

· Considering the project work

· Examining the labor availability

· Estimating the resource need

· Creating a resource calendar

First, you identify the activities, sequence the activities, define the resources, and then estimate durations. These processes are needed to complete the project schedule and the project duration estimate. These four processes are iterated as more information becomes available. If the proposed schedule is acceptable, the project can move forward. If the proposed schedule takes too long, the scheduler can use a few strategies to compress the project. We'll discuss the art of scheduling in a few moments.

Activity duration estimates, like the activity list and the WBS, don't come from the project manager—they come from the people completing the work. The estimates may also undergo progressive elaboration. In this section, we'll examine the approach to completing activity duration estimates, the basis of these estimates, and allow for activity list updates. In order to predict when the project will end you'll need to examine project activity duration.

Buffering is utilized in the critical chain approach to project scheduling. Rather than concerning with float, time is built into the project schedule to accommodate delays.

This is a brief summary of everything we have covered in this section. This lecture will quickly put it all together and serve as a reminder of what the section included. Good job!

The project scheduled needs to be developed, planned out well, and predict when project is going to happen.

Creating the project schedule is part of the planning process group. It is calendar-based and relies on both the project network diagram and the accuracy of time estimates. When the project manager creates the project schedule, she'll also reference the risk register. The identified risks and their associated responses can affect the sequence of the project work and when the project work can take place. In addition, if a risk comes to fruition, the risk event may affect the scheduling of the resources and the project completion date. Do you know how to calculate float? If not, this is the module you'll want to spend some time in.

Float, or slack, is the amount of time an activity can be delayed without postponing the project's completion. Technically, there are three different types of float:

· Free float: This is the total time a single activity can be delayed without affecting the early start of any successor activities.

· Total float: This is the total time an activity can be delayed without affecting project completion.

· Project float: This is the total time the project can be delayed without passing the customer-expected completion date.

There are a couple of different approaches to calculating float. I'm sharing the approach that I learned and that I think is the best approach. You may have learned a different method that you prefer. You won't hurt my feelings if you use your method to get the same result as my method. What's most important is that you understand the concepts of forward and backward passes, and that you can find the critical path and float in a simple network diagram.

Critical chain considers the availability of the project team members as activities are mapped out in the project schedule network diagram.

Sometimes the project manager needs to take action to reduce the overall duration of the project. Deadlines, delays from vendors, slow work, and other issues can all bog the schedule down. Schedule compression techniques analyze where and how the project work can be shortened and takes action to reduce the overall duration. These actions aren't without some risks and costs to the project, however.

The schedule baseline defines when things, such as key activities and milestones, will be accomplished. It shows the progression of the project in relation to the amount of funds being used to reach that point.

This is a brief summary of everything we have covered in this section. This lecture will quickly put it all together and serve as a reminder of what the section included. Good job!

You need a plan just for project costs. You need a plan that will help you define what policies you and the project team have to adhere to in regard to costs, a plan that documents how you get to spend project money, and a plan for how cost management will happen throughout your entire project. Well, you're in luck! This plan, a subsidiary plan of the project management plan, is the project cost management plan. You'll need to understand all about the project's cost management plan for your CAPM exam. This lecture covers:

· Creating the cost management plan

· Adhering to organizational policies and procedures

· Relying on organizational process assets and enterprise environmental factors

Assuming that the project manager and the project team are working together to create the cost estimates, there are many inputs to the cost-estimating process. For your PMI exam, it would behoove you to be familiar with these inputs because these are often the supporting details for the cost estimate the project management team creates. Cost estimating uses several tools and techniques. You'll learn in this module:

· Following the organizational process assets

· Building a cost management plan

· Creating an analogous estimate

· Determining resource cost rates

· Create a bottom-up estimate

· Building a parametric estimate

· Using the PMIS

· Analyzing vendor bids

· Considering the contingency reserve

· Presenting the cost estimate

There is a difference between what was estimated and what's actually being spent on the project. This lecture defines:

• Aggregating the project costs

• Completing project cost reconciliation

• Creating the project cost baseline

• Examining the project cash flow

Now that the project estimate has been created, it's time to create the official cost budget. Cost budgeting is really cost aggregation, which means the project manager will be assigning specific dollar amounts for each of the scheduled activities or, more likely, for each of the work packages in the WBS. The aggregation of the work package cost equates to the summary budget for the entire project.

This is a brief summary of everything we have covered in this section. This lecture will quickly put it all together and serve as a reminder of what the section included. Good job!

Planning the human resources means you’ve a grasp on what resources are needed in the project and understand the enterprise environmental factors for obtaining the needed resources.

The project human resources management plan defines how the project team will be acquired, managed, controlled, and ultimately released from the project. This plan is a subsidiary plan of the overall project management plan.

How do people come onto your project team where you work? Are they assigned to your team by a functional manager? Do you work with vendors to place contractors on the project team? Do you go and campaign for certain project team members that you like to work with based on their talent and personality?

All of these approaches can be valid ways to get people onto your project team. For your examination, you'll need to recognize the pros and cons of the different approaches to get people onto your project team.

This is a brief summary of everything we have covered in this section. This lecture will quickly put it all together and serve as a reminder of what the section included. Good job!

Quality planning is the process of first determining which quality standards are relevant to your project and then finding the best methods of adhering to those quality standards. This is a great example of project integration management, which was referred to earlier. Quality planning is core to the planning process group because each knowledge area has relevant standards that affect quality, and quality planning is integrated into each planning process. Quality can be an esoteric topic, but this lecture will help.

Planning quality management determines the quality assurance activities and the quality control activities for the project. Plan quality also directs the process improvement plan and its execution in the project. This process creates the Project Quality Management Plan as part of the overall project management plan. In this lecture, we'll compare and contrast these two plans.

The quality management plan defines what quality means in the project, how quality assurance will be applied, and the techniques prescribed for quality control.

In order to performance quality assurance and quality control you'll rely on seven basic quality tools. These tools are applicable to any project and will help you measure, analyze, control, and predict project performance.

The quality management plan defines what quality means in the project, how quality assurance will be applied, and the techniques prescribed for quality control.

This is a brief summary of everything we have covered in this section. This lecture will quickly put it all together and serve as a reminder of what the section included. Good job!

90 percent fo a project manager's time is spent communicating. This overview will explore our lecture objectives and expectations for communicating in a project.

The communications model is a mapping of all components of all types of communication – from fax machines to hallway conversations. You'll need to identify the communications model for your examination.

Communication planning is done very early in the project planning processes. It's essential to answer the previous questions as early as possible because their outcomes can affect the remainder of the project planning. Throughout the project, updates to communications planning are expected. Even the responses to the five project management communication questions can change as stakeholders, project team members, vendors, and other project interfaces change.. Communication is key to most of project management. This lecture defines:

· Examining the communications model

· Analyzing communication requirements

· Determining the communications technology

· Creating the Communications Management Plan

Now that the project's communications management plan has been created, it's time to execute it. Managing project communications is the process of ensuring that the proper stakeholders get the appropriate information when and how they need it. Essentially, it's the implementation of the communications management plan. This plan details how the information is to be created and dispersed, and also how the dispersed information is archived. Managing project communications ensures that the right people, get the right message, at the right time, in the right modality.

The risk appetite describes an organization's or person's willingness to accept risk events. In some instances there'll be no comprise on allowing a particular risk into the project. Other times, the risk's probability or impact will seem so trivial that the risk is monitored and accepted. This lecture defines the idea of risk appetite and how it may affect your projects.

Risk management planning is not the identification of risks or even the response to known risks within a project.

Risk management planning is how the project management team will complete the risk management activities within the project. These activities really set up the project to effectively manage the five other risk management activities. Risk management planning creates the risk management plan.

Risk identification is the systematic process of combing through the project, the project plan, the work breakdown structure (WBS), and all supporting documentation to identify as many of the risks that may affect the project as possible. Remember, a risk is an uncertain event or condition that may affect the project outcome. Risks can be positive or negative.

The first, and somewhat shallow, risk analysis is qualitative analysis. Qualitative risk analysis “qualifies” the risks that have been identified in the project. Specifically, qualitative risk analysis examines and prioritizes the risks based on their probability of occurring and the impact on the project if the risks do occur. Qualitative risk analysis is a broad approach to ranking risks by priority, which then guides the risk reaction process. The end result of qualitative risk analysis (once risks have been identified and prioritized) can either lead to more in-depth quantitative risk analysis or move directly into risk response planning. Qualitative risk analysis is a high-level, fast method of qualifying the risk for more analysis. This lecture will define:

· Using a risk register

· Creating a risk probability and impact matrix

· Examining the data quality

· Categorizing risks

· Updating the risk register

Quantitative risk analysis attempts to numerically assess the probability and impact of the identified risks. It also creates an overall risk score for the project. This method is more in-depth than qualitative risk analysis and relies on several different tools to accomplish its goal.

Qualitative risk analysis typically precedes quantitative risk analysis. I like to say that qualitative analysis qualifies risks, while quantitative analysis quantifies risks. All or a portion of the identified risks in qualitative risk analysis can be examined in the quantitative analysis. The performing organization may have policies on the risk scores in qualitative analysis that require the risks to advance to the quantitative analysis. The availability of time and budget may also be a factor in determining which risks should pass through quantitative analysis. Quantitative analysis is a more time-consuming process, and is, therefore, also more expensive. This lecture will cover:

· Gathering risk data

· Creating a risk probability distribution

· Modeling risk data

· Creating a contingency reserve

· Updating the risk register

Risk response planning is all about options and actions. It focuses on how to decrease the possibility of risks adversely affecting the project's objectives and also on how to increase the likelihood of positive risks that can aid the project. Risk response planning assigns responsibilities to people and groups close to the risk event. Risks will increase or decrease based on the effectiveness of risk response planning. This lecture will help you learn everything there is to know for your CAPM exam about risk responses.

This is a brief summary of everything we have covered in this section. This lecture will quickly put it all together and serve as a reminder of what the section included. Good job!