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PMP course

This page has Notes from the Project Management Professional Course.

  • PM- stands for Project Management
  • PMO- Project Management office
  • OPM- Organization project management
  • KPI- Key performance Indicators
  • Phasegate- untill a phase is fully completed, I can not move to the next phase in project.

Business value:

what are the project success criteria/checklist. projects end when:

  • Objectives meet
  • Objectives can not or will not be met
  • Funds are depleted
  • Need no longer exist
  • Resources are no longer available.

Projects create business value:

  • Tangible business value:
    • Monetary assets
    • stockholder equity
    • market share
  • Intangible business value:
    • Goodwill & reputation
    • Brand recognition
    • benefit to public
    • strategic alignment

Projects initiation Context:

  • stakeholder requested for project
  • technological advancement created need for new project
  • crating new products, improving exisiting produts, and more

Typical Project managements:

  • identifying requirements
  • addressing needs, concern, rquirements of stakeholders.
  • settingup, maintaining, and carrying communication.

  • balancing competing project constraints.

    • Scope
    • quality
    • budget
    • resources
    • risks

PM LifeCycle:

  • Idea or Concept
    • Formulate the Idea
      • Business case
        • feasibility study
          • project

Project Management application areas:

  • Construction
  • Healthcare
  • finance
  • IT
  • Govt
  • NGOs

Other areas that effect project Management:

  • program management
  • portfolio management
    • A senior level excutive managing where & how do we invest in programs and different projects.
    • portfolios are about maximizing investments.
    • portfolio is collection of programs, program is collection of projects.

PMO- Project management office:

  • supports project managers
  • manages shared resources
  • coaching, mentoring & training for project managers
  • conducts project audits(to ensure whether using right tools)
  • develops & maintains procedures.
  • facilitates communication across different projects to speedup

Organizational Culture and Structure:

  • Vision
  • Mission
  • Values and Beliefs
  • Cultural Norms
  • Hirarchy and authority
  • organizational & managment style

Project Management Process:

Work Performance Data:

  • Raw data & facts about project.
  • status of project work assignments
    • percent complete
    • in progress
    • start & finish dates
  • Data can include:
    • Cost of the activities.
    • no.of.change requests.
    • Defects
    • Duration

Work Performance Information:

  • Analyzed work performance data.
  • usable information to make decisions.
  • status of actionable results.

Work Performance Reports:

  • Work performance information in communicable form.
  • Status reports
  • Memos
  • Dashboards
  • Project updates
  • helps stackholders make decision

Project Management Lifecycles:

  • Predictive lifecycle
    • plan-driven
    • waterfall approach
    • predicts the project life cycle
    • changes to scope are tightly contolled
  • Iterative (or) Incremental lifecycle
    • iterations create deliverables(we deliver in each iteration)
    • detailed scope is elaborated for each iteration.
    • changes to the project scope are expected.
  • Adaptive Life cycle
    • change driven
    • agile project managment
    • rapid iterations (or) project work (or) sprint based (15 days mostly)
    • backlog of requirements
    • changes to the project scope are expected

Business Document for Project Management(to present to management):

  • report phase-gate work
  • report actual performance/costs compared to earlier business documents.
    • if I did great, then cool
    • if not, then create variance/exception report to report why I did not hit my KPI, why I was late or why I was over budget.
  • Decision of comparision include:
    • should we continue to next phase(if overcost, if too much delay,)
    • end of the project
    • should remain in the same phase
    • repeat the phase again

Project Business case:

  • economic feasibility study- is it financially profitable..?
  • benefits the project creates
  • project sponsor is accountable for the developement & maintainence not the manager.
  • PM responsible for providing recommendations.

Business Needs:

  • what is prompting the need for action
  • statement document the opportunity
  • stakeholders effected
  • identification of the scope

Business case: project determination:

  • root cause of an opportunity
  • gap analysis of capabilities
  • know risks
  • critical success factors
  • Decision criteria

Organizational knowledge repositories:

  • cataloging
  • archieveing
  • retrievable
  • Organization process Assets(the then worked team on the usecase) are part of knowlege repositories.
  • archieve at closure.
  • storage
    • project files from past projects
    • historical information and lessons learned
    • issues and defect databases
    • configuration management databases
    • financial databases

Role of Project Manager:

  • Manage things, lead people to conclusion
  • getting things done
  • active listener & speaker
  • written & oral to internal(team) & to external(to non team and to management)
  • project manage negotaites:
    • aim for fair agreement
    • priorities
    • technical approach
    • project scope
    • schedule
    • cost
    • changes to project scope, schedule , budget
    • vendor teams and conditions
    • resource constraints.
  • PMs solve problems
    • problem definition
    • RCA- root cause analysis
    • treat causes, not symptoms
    • Don't go to the management without a solution

Values to have to be a PM:

  • knowledge: understanding project management
  • performance: accomplish as a project manager
  • personal: behavior, effectiveness, character, leadership

Project Documents:

project documents