Tips to Clear the PMP Exam for the IT Professional

The PMP Exam is common for all businesses and is a valid qualification for people who are managing projects in their respective industries. But, these days IT Professionals form a bulk of the people who apply for and pursue the PMP Exam. As IT Professionals there is a lot of difference in how IT projects are managed and how projects in other industries are managed. So, it is imperative that as IT Professionals we understand how IT projects are different from other industries.
The purpose of this article is to summarize the common gaps between the experiences of IT project managers and other industries.

Exam Alert!!!

Don’t think that since you have been managing IT Projects for years, you will be able to crack the exam easily. Unfortunately, truth may be that the way you have completed IT projects and the way you understand IT project management may not be the way that PMI sees this industry. So, when it comes to passing this exam, you will need to stay alert to what PMI says about a topic in order to answer exam questions correctly. You can visit the “PMI Way of Thinking” series of chapters to understand them better

This post is split in several sections. They are:
• Conceptual gaps
• Experience gaps
• Key PMI Assumptions

Conceptual Gaps

• Culture clash - Most IT Organizations have their own project management methodology and PM’s who are groomed in their organization are streamlined into thinking that way. It is important that you understand the PMI Way of project management and keep that in mind while answering the exam questions.
• Unapproved practices - There are several project management practices and techniques used routinely within IT that are considered “inappropriate” by PMI. The single biggest example is “Slogging”. Team members in 2 out of 3 IT projects slog weekends and late nights to finish their projects. This is either because of inaccurate estimates or pressure from the customer to meet some deadline. From PMI perspective this is totally unacceptable and when slogging or adjusting estimates appears as an answer to a question about best practices in the exam, it will be incorrect.
• The whole story - Most IT project managers lack experience in the complete lifecycle of project management. This is because most of the work done by IT companies is in the “Maintenance” phase and people spend a lot of time planning, executing & controlling. But, they have very little or no experience in the Initiating or closing phases. If you are one of those managers, it is important that you double verify your understanding of these 2 phases before you take up the exam.

Experience Gaps

These are areas where an IT Project Manager does not spend much time or has little or no exposure. If you are an IT Professional, you must ensure that you try to bridge all these gaps as much as possible before you appear for the exam.

• Project planning - Of the 42 PMBOK project management processes, nearly 50% are with planning. As you can imagine, PMI's definition is much more encompassing than the project plans routinely developed by IT project managers.
• Developing a project schedule – It is extremely common in IT projects where the Schedule is crammed up to accommodate the whims and fancies of people with power. Be it the customer or even your Relationship Manager. If a high-ranking official feels the project must take only a certain amount of time, that is what the project gets. No matter how complicated the project is, the time it gets is in almost all cases governed by someone upstairs. According to PMI this is a NO NO and totally unacceptable.
• Creating WBS – In most IT Projects, the schedules are so tight that the team does not have time to create a full-fledged WBS and use it to create accurate estimates and schedules. But, PMI insists you do it as a mandatory step while planning your project.
• Planning project management - PMI expects that all project management activities are planned and documented. So, if your project plan does not include supplementary plans, such as a staffing-management plan, a responsibility matrix, a communications-management plan, a quality-management plan, a scope-management plan, and a risk-management plan (for starters), you will want to focus on these and understand their value.
• Tracking project performance -”Earned value” is PMI's recommended technique for tracking and controlling project costs, schedule, and scope. Earned value analysis is not a generally applied technique across IT, and many IT professionals have limited experience in managing project costs.
• Risk management – Most IT Projects do not spend sufficient time in Risk Management. I doubt even if a Risk Register exists. As per PMI this is a mandatory step.
• Quality management – For most IT projects Quality Management means getting in some extra testers and identify more defects. Unfortunately this is only one part of the PMI’s Quality management methodology.
• Procurement management – As IT Project Mangers, most of us will not have any experience in this area. We don’t usually procure anything from anyone. In fact, we are the ones from whom our customers procure. So, to understand this knowledge area, think from the perspective of your customer and you will be able to make sense of the whole process.
• Project selection – Most IT Managers get projects handed over to them. They don’t spend time doing any feasibility analysis or project selection. Most IT PM’s don’t even know what NPV or IRR or Payback Period is.

Key PMI Assumptions

According to PMI, the below mentioned things have to happen in any project. But, unfortunately that is rarely the case in real life IT Projects. So, I suggest you go through this list and keep your mindset tuned to the PMI Way.

• The project manager is selected when the project is authorized. This means that the manager is assigned to the project before any estimating or preliminary requirements gathering has started.
• The project manager is ultimately accountable for the project.
• PMI assumes you have historical records of past projects. (This is something most IT cos do. They have historic records that is accessible to project managers to understand how previous projects were executed in their company)
• WBS is the basis for all project planning.
• The project plan is the baseline that the PM uses to “control” the project.
• The project plan accurately describes the project activity. The project plan is realistic and can be used to measures progress.
• PMI assumes your organization has project management methodologies and quality-assurance procedures.
• The project manager does have Human Resources and team-development responsibilities.
• PMI assumes the project team is involved in all planning decisions and problem-solving situations.

A Last Word:

As an IT Project Manager you may be very good at your job. But, unless you understand the PMI Way of managing you wont be able to pass the exam. The exam is not to test how great a manager you are. It is to test if you understand the standardized project management approach. So, if you feel your practical management experience is very different from the PMI Way, I suggest you recap all the weak points and ensure you align your thinking to be in line with PMI

Some Nice Questions - Part 3

31: How do you know your Quality Benchmarks before you start building?

That’s what your Organizational Process Assets are for. Since your company keeps a record of all of the projects that have been done over the years, those projects’ quality measurements can help you get a gauge on how your project will perform too. If your company knows that all of the
projects in your division had a cost of quality that was 40% of the cost of the overall cost of development, you might set 40% cost of quality as a benchmark for your project as well. Your company might have stated a goal of having a schedule variance of plus or minus 10% on all projects for this calendar year. In that case, the schedule variance is a benchmark for your project

32: I don’t really have good requirements for my projects because everyone on the team starts out with just a good idea of what we’re building. How do I handle quality?

You should never do that. Remember how you spent all that time collecting requrements in the Collect Requirements process? Well, this is why you needed them. And it’s why it’s your responsibility to make sure that the project starts out with good, well-defined, and correct requirements. If you don’t have them, you can’t measure quality—and quality is an important part of Pproject management. Without requirements, you have no idea what the product is supposed to do, and that means you can’t judge its quality. You can learn a lot about a product by testing it, but without knowing its requirements, a product could pass all of its tests and still not do what the customer expects it to do. So having good requirements really is the only way to know whether or not your product is high quality.

33: If I am trying to prevent quality problems, why can’t I just test more?

You can find a lot of problems by testing. If you find them during testing, then you have to go back and fix them. The later you find them, the more expensive they are to fix. It’s much better for everybody if you never put the bugs in the product in the first place. It’s much easier to fix a problem in a specification document than it is to fix it in a finished product. That’s why most of the Plan Quality process group is centered around setting standards and doing reviews to be sure that bugs are never put into your product and, if they are, they’re caught as early as possible.

34: Is the RACI chart really necessary?

Yes, definitely! Sometimes people split up responsibilities in ways that aren’t immediately obvious just from people’s titles or the names of their roles on the project—that’s one of the big advantages of a matrixed organization. RACI charts help everyone figure out their assignments.

35: Can the “halo effect” really affect my projects?

The halo effect is something that happens when you’ve got a team member who’s very good at a job—especially a technical job, like computer programmer or engineer. It’s easy to forget that just because someone is very good at one job, it doesn’t mean he or she has the skills to do another,equally hard job. This happens a lot with functional managers: the top programmer will often get promoted to a management position… but if she doesn’t have management or leadership skills, then the company just lost their best programmer and gained a lousy manager.


36: Per the PMBOK, it sounds like compromise is a bad thing. But I’ve been told that when people are fighting, I should always look for a middle ground!?

Yes, as little kids a lot of us were told that we should always look for a compromise. And that probably is the right thing to do on the playground. But when you’re managing a project, you’re judged by the success of your final product, not by how happy your team is. When you forge a compromise instead of really figuring out what’s causing the problem, you’re usually taking the easy way out.

37: What do I do with lessons learned after I write them?

The great thing about lessons learned is that you get to help other project managers with them. You add them to your company’s process asset library, and other project managers then use them for planning their projects.

38: Do I have to know everything that will be communicated to build a plan?

No. As you learn more about the project you can always update the plan to include new information as you learn it. Pretty much all of the planning processes allow for progressive elaboration. You plan as much as you can up front, and then put all changes through change control from then on. So, if you find something new, put in a change request and update the plan when it’s approved.

39: What’s the difference between active and effective listening?

Some of the communications ideas do have names that are a little confusing. But don’t worry, they’re really easy concepts for you to understand.

Active listening just means when you’re listening to something, you keep alert and take specific actions that help make sure you understand. It includes both effective listening and feedback.
Effective listening is a way that you do active listening—it means paying attention to both verbal and nonverbal communication. Feedback means doing things like repeating back the words that you were told in order to make sure you understood them, and giving your own nonverbal cues to show the speaker that you got the message.

40: Are nonverbal and paralingual communication the same thing?

They are very similar, but they’re not exactly the same. Nonverbal communication is any kind of communication that doesn’t use words. That includes things like changing your body language, making eye contact, and using gestures. Paralingual communication is a kind of nonverbal communication—it’s changing your tone of voice or intonation, finding ways to communicate things above and beyond just the words that you’re saying. For example, the same words mean very different things if you say them sarcastically than if you say them in a normal tone of voice.

41: What if people disagree on how to rank risks?

There are a lot of ways to think about risks. If a risk has a large impact on your part of the project or your goals, you can bet that it will seem more important to you than the stuff that affects other people in the group. The best way to keep the right perspective is to keep everybody on the team evaluating risks based on how they affect the overall project goals. If everyone focuses on the effect each risk will have on your project’s constraints, risks will get ranked in the order that is best for everybody.

42: How do I know if I’ve got all the risks?

Unfortunately, you never know the answer to that one. That’s why it’s important to keep monitoring your risk register throughout the project. It’s important that you are constantly updating it and that you never let it sit and collect dust. You should be looking for risks throughout all phases of your project, not just when you’re starting out.

43: What’s the point in even tracking low-priority risks? Why do we need the Watchlist in the first place when the risks are low priority?

Actually, watchlists are just a list of all of the risks that you want to monitor as the project goes on. You might be watching them to see if conditions change and make them more likely to happen. By keeping a watchlist, you make sure that all of the risks that seem low priority when you are doing your analysis get caught before they cause serious damage if they become more likely later in the project. The conditions that cause a risk are called triggers. So, say you have a plan set up to deal with storms, and you know that you might track a trigger for lightning damage, such as a thunderstorm. If there’s no thunderstorm, it’s really unlikely that you will see lightning damage, but once the storm has started, the chance for the risk to occur skyrockets.

44: I can figure out how much the risk costs using EMV, or I can do it with Decision Tree Analysis. Why do I need two ways to do this?

That’s a good question. If you take a really careful look at how you do Decision Tree Analysis, you might notice something... it’s actually doing exactly the same thing as EMV. It turns out that those two techniques are really similar, except that EMV does it using numbers and Decision Tree Analysis spells out the same calculation using a picture.

It turns out that there are a lot of EMV techniques, and decision tree analysis is just one of them. But it’s the one you need to know for the test, because it’s the one that helps you make decisions by figuring out the EMV for each option. You can bet that you’ll see a question or two that asks you to calculate the EMV for a project based on decision tree like the one on the facing page. As long as you remember that risks are negative numbers and that opportunities are positive ones, you should do fine.

45: Why do we do risk audits?

Risk audits are when you have someone from outside your project come in and review your risk register—your risks and your risk responses—to make sure you got it right. The reason we do it is because risks are so important that getting a new set of eyes on them is worth the time.

46: Do I always need to hold a bidder conference whenever I do procurement?

No, you don’t always need a bidder conference. Sometimes your company has a preferred supplier who you always deal with, so you don’t have to advertise for sellers. And sometimes there’s a sole source for a particular service or part—there may only be one company that provides it. In that case, advertising and bidder conferences would be pointless.

The bidder conference has two goals. The first is to make sure that you answer all of the questions from potential sellers. But the other is to make sure that all potential sellers are treated equally and have access to the same information.

47: Once a contract is signed, does that mean it’s never allowed to change?

No. This confuses some people, because when you sign a contract, it’s legally binding—which means you must abide by the terms of the contract. But that doesn’t mean those terms can’t change. If both the buyer and the seller agree to make a change to the contract, then they have every right to do so. That’s why you have a contract change control system—so you can Pmake sure these changes are made properly. But you can’t always assume that you have the ability to change a contract that you’re not happy with. Once your company has agreed to a contract, then you’re absolutely required to meet its terms and complete your side of it. If you want to make a change to it, you need to negotiate that change, and it’s possible that the seller won’t agree to it—just like you have every right to refuse an unreasonable change that the seller requests.

48: What is the difference between a performance review and an audit?

The difference is that performance reviews are about the work, while inspections and audits are about the deliverables and products. You’ll use a performance review when you want to make sure that the team at the seller is doing every activity that they should. For example, if you have a contract that requires the seller to perform certain quality control or project management tasks, you might conduct a performance review where you observe the team and verify that they do those tasks. On the other hand, if you want to make sure that the products that the team is producing meet your requirements and standards, you’ll send out an auditor to inspect the products that the seller is making to verify that they meet the requirements.

49: Do I Really need to follow all these Ethics & Professional Responsibility ideas outlined by the PMI?

Yes, absolutely. Being a PMP means you are a cut above the rest of the people who may do project management and one of the key distinctions is the expectation that a PMP Certified individual will be fair in his practices and work with honesty and integrity. Though accepting/giving a bribe or taking a short cut may not mean much harm, the point here is that, are you doing the right thing? When you ask yourself this question "Is this correct and legal?" and the answer is "NO" then you are not supposed to do it. I do agree that in real life situations there may be more than one reason to make a decision, but the most important should always be "Is this Ethical & Legal" irrespective of the situation and that is what PMI encourages.

If you have any more questions, dont hesitate to leave it as a comment and I shall try to answer them!!!

Some More Questions:

More Questions - Part 1
More Questions - Part 2

Some Nice Questions - Part 2

16: Is product analysis the same as requirements gathering?

Not exactly. When people gather requirements, they’re trying to understand what needs the product should fill. Requirements are the contents of the
product. When you use product analysis to define the scope of the work to be done, you’re figuring out what deliverables the team needs to work on in order to build your scope statement. So product analysis is concerned with how the work will be done, not what’s in it.

17: What if a stakeholder can’t tell me how to measure his needs?

That can get kind of tricky. Sometimes stakeholders know that they want things to get better, but they don’t know how to tell when they’ve
succeeded. You need to work with them to find something that can be measured in their ideas about project success. Without a way to measure your success, you won’t know whether or not you are accomplishing your goals.

18: What if I don’t know enough to estimate the cost of a work package? What do I add to the WBS Dictionary?

The WBS Dictionary should only contain information that you can fill in when you create it. A lot of the time, you’ll know all of the information that needs to go into it. If you have an estimate and know the resources that should be used, then put it in. But if all you have is a statement of work and an account code, then that’s all the information you’ll be able to add to the entry.

19: What happens if I need to change the scope?

You need to put it through change control – just like a change to the product scope. As you’re building the product, it’s always possible that some work will pop up in an P unexpected place. It could be that the initial technical design is inadequate or buggy. Or maybe you just think of a better way to do things while you’re working. In either case, you have to determine the impact to the schedule, the budget, the scope, and the quality of the product and put the proposed change through change control. That’s what it means to look at the project constraints every time there’s a change.

Once everyone understands the impact and approves the change, you need to go back and adjust your scope baseline to include the new work. If your budget or schedule are affected, you’ll need to change those baselines too and integrate all of them into the project management plan

20: How do I know when I have decomposed the work to a small enough work package?

The short answer is that you should decompose that work until it is manageable. You need to be careful when you come up with the work packages for
your WBS. If you decompose to the most granular level, you could end up wasting everybody’s time trying to figure out exactly how much effort goes into, say, “writing up meeting minutes” for each and Pevery meeting in your project. So, you should break down the work to small enough packages that everybody can understand what’s being done and describe it in the dictionary… and no further.

21: Can you explain the difference between the Scope Management Plan and the Project Management Plan?
Remember how the Project Management Plan was divided into subsidiary plans? The Project Management Plan tells you how to manage all of the different knowledge areas, and it has baselines for the scope, schedule and budget.

The Scope Management Plan is one of those subsidiary plans. It has really specific procedures for managing scope. For example, it tells us which stakeholders we need to talk to when gathering requirements. It lists what tools and techniques we are planning to use when we use the Scope Definition to define the scope. And when there’s an inevitable change because even the best project manager can’t prevent every change, it gives him procedures for doing Scope Management. So even though the Scope Management Plan is created in the Develop Project Management Plan process, it’s used throughout all of the Scope Management processes.

22: Is Control Scope always about work and project scope? Can it ever be about deliverables and product scope?

No. The Control Scope process is always about the work that the team does, because the whole Scope Management knowledge area is about the project scope, not the product scope. In other words, as a project manager, you manage the work that the team is doing, not the things that they’re making. Now, that doesn’t mean you should never pay attention to deliverables. You still need to pay attention to the scope of the product, too, since the two are pretty closely related. Any time you make changes to the project scope, it affects the product scope, and vice versa.

23: What if a change is really small? Do I still have to go through all of this Change Control Process?

Yes. Sometimes what seems like a really small change to the scope—like just adding one tiny work package—turns out to be really complex when you take a closer look at it. It could have a whole lot of dependencies, or cause a lot of trouble in other work packages. If you don’t give it careful consideration, you could find yourself watching your scope creep out of control. Each and every change needs to be evaluated in terms of impact. If there is any impact to the project constraints—time, cost, scope, quality, resources, or risk, you have to put it through change control. No Exceptions here.

24: What if I need a resource that isn’t available when my project needs it?

This is one of the reasons that project management is a tough job! When you need a resource that isn’t available, you need to negotiate for it. Your project depends on getting this resource, and without it your project won’t get done. You need it, or you’ll face delays! You have to do whatever you can to get that resource for your project. You can look in the other departments of your company or hire a contractor or hire a person from another company. At the end of the day, your job is to staff resources for your project and how you do it, is entirely upto your discretion. (Of course, dont forget management & budgetary approvals before hiring contractors or people from other company's)

25: Since reserve analysis lets me use buffers, why can’t I just put everything I don’t know about into the reserve?

The idea behind reserve analysis is that there are always unknowns on any project, but you can account for these unknowns by taking your best guess at what’s going to go wrong and inserting a buffer. But you can’t just make an enormous reserve, because then there’s no reason to ever do any estimation! The entire project becomes one big unknown, and that’s not particularly useful to anyone.

26: What if there’s a path that’s not critical, but where even a small slip in one activity would delay the project?

This is exactly why it’s important to know the float for each of your activities. When you’re managing your project, it’s not enough to just pay attention to the activities on the critical path. You need to look for any activity with a low float. And don’t forget that there may be some activities that aren’t on the critical path but still have a float of zero! These are the ones where you really want to pay attention and watch out for potential resource problems.

27: Would I really use this critical path stuff in real life, or is it just something I need to memorize for the PMP exam?

Yes, critical path analysis really is important in real life! Sure, for a small project with a dozen or so activities, it’s pretty easy to figure out which activities are critical and which can slip by a little bit. But what happens if you’ve got a project with dozens of team members and hundreds of activities?

That’s where critical path analysis can come in very handy. For a project like that, you’d probably be using project management software rather than calculating the critical path yourself, and the software will be able to highlight that path for you. Pay special attention to all of the activities that are on the critical path—those are the ones that could potentially delay the project.

28: Don’t we need to go through change control before we update the resource requirements or the activity attributes?

No. You need to go through change control if you are requesting changes to, say, your cost management plan. But while you are working on creating your schedule, everything you have created as part of the Time Management knowledge P area is fair game.

As you work your way through your network diagram and figure out new dependencies, you are going to find that you need more resources for some items or that the activity itself has changed. That’s why this process gives you the freedom to refine your earlier idea and make all of the time management documents in sync with your new understanding. The Develop Schedule process is about taking all of the information you are able to think of up front and putting it into a schedule that is realistic. When you are done with this process, you should have a really good idea of what you are going to do, who will do it, and how long it will take.

29: We always want to do our projects as quickly as we can. Why don’t we always fast-track and crash our schedules?

Because crashing is expensive and fast-tracking is risky. While it may look good on paper to add a lot of resources to a project that is running late, it often adds so much management overhead and training issues that Pthe project just comes in later.

Even though it might seem like some predecessors are really unnecessary, you usually planned them for a reason. So when you break your dependencies to fasttrack your project, you can significantly compromise the quality of the work that gets done. That means you might have to redo it altogether—which would probably take a Plot of time. While fast-tracking and crashing might work sometimes, they always add both risk and cost to your project.

30: In my job I am just handed a budget. How does estimating help me?

In the course of estimating, you might find that the budget you have been given is not realistic. Better to know that while you’re planning, before you get too far into the project work than later. You can present your findings to the sponsor and take corrective action right away if your estimate comes in pretty far off target. Your sponsor and your project team will thank you for it.

Some More Questions:

More Questions - Part 1
More Questions - Part 3

Some Nice Questions - Part 1

1: What are the differences between a project coordinator and a project expediter?

They’re actually pretty similar. A project expediter is somebody who keeps track of status but has no decision-making authority on a project at all. A project coordinator is someone who does pretty much the same thing, but does get to make some of the minor decisions on the project without having to run them by the functional manager. Coordinators usually report to somebody who is pretty high up in the organization, while expediters are more like assistants to the functional manager. Both of them usually exist in weak-matrix or functional organizations.

2: Does the PMP exam favor any kind of organization?

When you’re taking the PMP exam, if you see a question that mentions a PM, then you should assume that the question is asking about a matrix organization if it doesn’t say up front which kind of organization is being described. Functional organizations are usually painted in a negative light because they tend to give less authority to project managers.

3: what’s the difference between process groups and knowledge areas?

The process groups divide up the processes by function. The knowledge areas divide the same processes up by subject matter. Think of the process groups as being about the actions you take on your project, and the knowledge areas as the things you P need to understand. In other words, the knowledge areas are more about helping you understand the PMBOK® Guide material than about running your project. But that doesn’t mean that every knowledge area has a process in every process group! For example, the Initiating process group only has two processes, and they both show up in the Integration Management knowledge area. The Risk Management knowledge area only has Planning and Monitoring & Controlling processes. So the process groups and the knowledge areas are two different ways to think about all of the processes, but they don’t really overlap.

4: Can a process be part of more than one process group?

No, each of the processes belongs to only one process group. The best way to figure out which group a process belongs to is to remember what that process does. If the process is about defining high-level goals of the project, it’s in Initiating. If it’s about planning the work, it’s in Planning. If you are actually doing the work, it’s in Executing. If you’re tracking the work and finding problems, it’s in Monitoring & Controlling. And if you’re finishing stuff off after you’ve delivered the product, that’s Closing.

5: Do you do all of the processes in every project?

Not always. Some of the processes only apply to projectized organizations or subcontracted work, so if your company doesn’t do that kind of thing, then you won’t need those processes. But if you want to make your projects come out well, then it really does make sense to use the processes. Even a small project can benefit from taking the time to plan out the way you’ll handle all of the knowledge areas. If you do your homework and pay attention to all of the processes, you can avoid most of the big problems that cause projects to run into trouble!


6: At a high level, the initiating & planning process groups look very similar. Are they really different?

Initiating is everything you do when you first start a project. You start by writing down (at a very high level) what the project is going to produce, who’s in charge of it, and what tools they need to do the work. In a lot of companies, the
project manager isn’t even involved in a lot of this. Planning just means going into more detail about all of that as you learn

more about it, and writing down specifically how you’re going to do the work. The Planning processes are where the project
manager is really in control and does most of the work.

7: What are Enterprise Environmental Factors?

Enterprise Environmental Factors tell you about how your company does business. There’s a lot of information about your company that will be really useful to you when you’re planning your project. You need to know how each of the different departments operates, the market conditions you’re working in, the company’s overall strategy, any policies you need to work with, your company’s culture, and all about the people who work at the company.

8: What are Organizational Process Assets?

Organizational Process Assets tell you about how your company normally runs its projects. Every company has standards for how to run their projects. There are guidelines and instructions for managing projects, procedures you need to follow, categories for various things you need to keep track of, and templates for all of the various documents that you need to create. These things are usually stored in some sort of library. One of the most important organizational process assets is called lessons learned, which is how you keep track of valuable historical information about your project. At the end of every project, you sit down with the project team and write down everything you learned about the project. This includes both positive and negative things. That way, when you or another project manager in your company plans the next project, you can take advantage of the lessons you learned on this one.

9: How is the Business Case different from the Project Charter?

The business case is a description of what your company is trying to get out of the project—like how much money you’re planning on making from the project, how it will benefit parts of your organization, and future business you might gain from the project.P PT he project charter is a high-level description of your project. It tells you—and anyone else who needs to know about your project—what you’ll be delivering, including a really high-level description of what it is that you’ll build. A really important difference between them is that the project charter is what authorizes the project manager to do the work, while the business case helps give justification for the project. You can think of the business case as the background research that had to be done in order to make sure the project was worth doing, and the project charter as the thing that formally announces the decision to do it.

10: Do Project Sponsors really type & create the Project charter? Usually Sponsors are people in high positions in a company and do they do such tasks as well?

This is actually a very nice question. Sponsors are important people in an organization and that’s exactly why the project sponsor will often delegate the actual creation of the charter to the project manager. For the exam, though, keep in mind that the sponsor is ultimately responsible for creation of the charter irrespective of whether he types the whole thing or delegates it to someone else.

11: Isn’t a project plan just something I get out of Microsoft Project?

No. The project management plan is not the same thing as a project schedule. You’ll use a tool like Microsoft Project when you’re doing Time Management to build the project schedule. (It’s also useful for other knowledge areas as well.) But you’ll use your project management plan as a guide to help you develop that schedule. It will tell you what tools to use when you develop it, and how changes will be handled.


12: What is a performance baseline and what do I do with it?

A performance baseline is a snapshot of your project’s scope, schedule, and cost. When you plan out the work you’ll do on a project, you write it down all of the activities you’ll need to do and save that understanding as your scope baseline. You’ll do the same with your understanding of the project’s schedule and its cost. That way, you can always compare your actual
performance to your plan. Every time a change is approved, that means the plan has changed. So you have to update your baseline to include the new work (or cost, or schedule).

13: Can you explain Project Integration Management in one line?

Integration Management means making sure that all of the processes work together seamlessly to make your project successful.

14: Does the project manager care only about the project scope? Doesn’t he care about the product scope?

No, you still need to think about your project’s final product. You can never ignore product scope, because most projects have changes to the product scope along the way. You’ll have to change your product scope to include the work that’s caused by
product scope changes. Changes like that will probably have an impact on time and cost, too.

For Ex: Lets saty, you are the project manager who manages a project that is part of the scope of Product X. If somebody asks for a new feature in Product X, the first thing the team needs to do is understand how much work is involved to accommodate it, and what that scope change will do to the cost and schedule. As a project manager, your main concern is understanding that impact, and making sure everyone is OK with it before the change gets made. It’s not your job to decide which is the best feature for the product, just to help everybody involved keep their priorities in mind and do what’s best for the project.


15: How do I know when I am done collecting requirements?

That’s a good question. Your requirements need to be measurable to be complete. So it’s not enough to write down that you want good performance in your product. You need to be able to tell people what measurement counts as good performance for you. You have to be able to confirm that all of your requirements are met when you close out your project, so you can’t leave requirements up to interpretation. You know your requirements are complete when you’ve got a way to verify each of them once they’re built.

Some More Questions:

More Questions - Part 2
More Questions - Part 3

PMP Test Taking Tips

When you sit for the PMP certification examination, there will be 200 multiple-choice questions and you will have up to four hours to complete the examination. This breaks down to exactly 50 questions per hour and a little more than one minute per question. Not all questions require equal time. Don’t agonize over every question. Read the question and each possible answer in its entirety prior to selecting an answer. Select the best answer to each question based on the response that seems to adhere to the PMBOK and PMI.

More than one answer might seem plausible and correct. Select the best answer from those provided rather than aiming for the “correct” answer. In some cases, multiple choices among the available answers might seem equally valid, so it is important to rule out obviously incorrect choices to narrow down your options.

If more than one answer seems logical, look for an answer that includes both responses. Some of your choices include “Both X and Y”, “Neither X nor Y,” “All of the above,” or “None of the above.” The inclusion of a choice that includes multiple answers does not mean it is the correct answer. Some of the choices can be tricky and aimed at throwing you off track from the correct answer.

Likewise, many of the available choices include terminology, concepts, and processes endorsed by the PMBOK and PMI. Just because you recognize the term does not mean this is the correct answer. The exam uses terms in similar contexts to assure you thoroughly understand and can apply the material. Be sure to read each question carefully to avoid any confusion among terminology or process names.

In your response to every test question, you should strive to select the best answer based on how you believe PMI and the PMBOK would respond given the question and not necessarily from your own project management experience. The best answer as determined by PMI is always provided as one of the four possible responses.

Be suspicious of answers offering definitive responses such as never and always. Some answers might tout non-PMI methods and reflect common project management misconceptions. Some answers might offer correct information but the information is not pertinent to the question at hand and is simply included to confuse you. Similarly, some questions might contain factually correct information that has no bearing to the possible answers. If you do not have a firm grasp of the material and immediately know the best answer, you can waste valuable test time trying to figure out a way to use and apply irrelevant information. This is particularly tricky when mathematical calculations are requested in response to an examination question. Remember that the purpose of this exam is to measure your ability to understand and apply the PMI methodology, not your past experiences as a project manager. Whenever there is a discrepancy between your experience and the PMBOK, go with the PMBOK answer.

I Repeat – When you feel an answer is right based on your project management experience and another answer is right based on the PMBOK – The PMBOK answer will be the correct choice. The PMBOK is always right, at least from the exam perspective.

Whenever you are taking test or mock exams, make sure you set yourself the same time conditions like the original exam. This will give you a fair idea of how quickly you are able to complete the exam. Remember that there are 200 questions and you have approximately 1 minute per question and hence, practice is extremely important. Be aware of your time to avoid having to rush at the end to complete the exam.

You should leave adequate time to review any responses you are unsure of and/or to return to unanswered questions. If you are spending more than one minute on a question, it is better to skip the question and mark it for review later than to waste your time over that question. The logic is simple, the 5 or 10 minutes you waste on figuring out the answer of a question you do not know, can be used to answer a number of questions to which you may know the answer. You may not be able to reach those questions, if you are stuck to one complicated question.

During the actual computerized exam, you can mark questions for later review and/or make multiple passes through the exam. Mark every question you are unsure of even if you have selected an answer. This approach saves you time when you review your responses because you do not need to review any unmarked questions. If on a second review you determine an answer, unmark the question. Continue this process of going through all the marked questions until they all have answers or you are nearing the end of the allotted time period.

Save the last 20 minutes or so of the test to finalize any unmarked answers and assure you have provided an answer to each question. For the practice test, if you adhere to the suggested one minute per question rule of thumb, you have 10 minutes to review your answers and respond to any marked questions. On the actual exam day, try to make a best guess by ruling out definitely wrong answers as discussed earlier. Select an answer for each question even if you have to guess.

The best part about the PMP Exam is the fact that there is no negative marking or penalty for choosing an incorrect answer. So in all probabilities, there is a 25% chance that the answer you choose is correct. Don't let this chance slip bye. If you don't know the answer to a question, make sure you select an answer and if that is your lucky day, you may even choose the right answer.

Important:
Almost all of us have the habit of second guessing ourselves. You may choose an answer to a question and during review another answer might seem appropriate. Don't give in to such impulses. Never change your initial answer unless you are 100% sure that the answer you have already selected is wrong. The human mind can be a little bit unstable at times and the nervousness of taking such a long exam can cost you if you toggle between answers. In most cases, the first answer you select will be the right answer and by changing the answer during review, you are in actuality damaging your chances of passing the exam.

All said and done, preparation is the key input to passing any certification. Make sure you read the PMBOK Guide once and any other good material like “PMP Exam Prep by Rita Mulcahy”. In my experience, this is one of the best PMP Exam prep books. The “Head First PMP” book too is a wonderful knowledgebase that has a strange way of explaining things, but it works.

Prepare well, use the material in my blog, leave comments where you need help and you will be able to Crack the Exam in your first try.

All the very best in getting your PMP Certification!!!