Introduction to the PMBOK Guide

-: I've mentioned the PMBOK Guide a lot already in our time together. And of course, you know the PMBOK Guide is what a bulk of your PMP exam is based on. The PMBOK Guide is a publication from PMI that describes the generally recognized approach to project management. It is the Project Management Body of Knowledge guide. It is not just the Project Management Body of Knowledge. The Project Management Body of Knowledge is really much, much larger. It's everything that's out in the world about project management. So it's a guide to the generally accepted practices all of that information that's out in the world. The PMBOK Guide describes a good practice for project management. These are the generally accepted approaches of how you do a project in any organization: healthcare, IT, manufacturing, what have you. These are the generally accepted practices. It also establishes a common lexicon of terminology that what we call integration management regardless of the discipline, is integration management or quality or communications or risk or what have you. That we all agree as a project management community that this is what this term means. It's a fundamental for PMI exams, as I mentioned the PMP exam, but also for the CAPM, the PGMP to some extent, the ACP, the Risk Management Professional and the Scheduling Professional. So it's a guide that's gonna have some bearing on all of these PMI certifications. Let's talk about the PMBOK Guide. As I mentioned, it's a guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge. Overwhelmingly, your PMP exam will be based on the PMBOK Guide. This course is based on the PMBOK Guide Sixth Edition. There are five process groups, as you've seen already and there are 49 processes within those five process groups. Those five process groups are distributed across the 10 knowledge areas, chapters 4 through 13 in the PMBOK Guide. Let's talk about the PMBOK Guide chapters. So chapters one, two and three are kind of a high level overview and really give us a good understanding of project management and how the PMBOK guide fits into the world of project management. First off, the first chapter is just an introduction. It's just a quick start about why do we need the PMBOK guide and what it does. The second chapter is about the environments in which projects operate. So, unique to your organization the environments where you operate. We'll be talking about that coming up. Chapter three is the role of the project manager. What are the generally accepted roles and responsibilities that you do as a PM. Chapter four is on project integration management. I like to call this chapter all about the gears. It's the only knowledge area. Integration management is a knowledge area that has at least one process in every process group. So initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, controlling and closing. Integration management spans all of those process groups. So it's a pretty large chapter 'cause there are a lot of processes within the knowledge area of integration management. Chapter five is on scope management and schedule cost quality. Chapter 9 on resource management, 10 on communications 11 on risk, 12 on procurement and 13 on stakeholder management. So that's the PMBOK Guide. Just a quick tour of it. As we move deeper and deeper into the course we'll be looking at each one of those chapters in detail. So this is setting us up. This is all foundations and brick by brick we're getting there, building a good foundation as we move into the very specifics of each chapter. So keep pressing forward.