PMI PMP Project Management Professional – Get the Most from this course

1. Section Overview: Get the Most from the Course

All right, welcome to section two in our course about the PMP exam prep seminar. In this section, we’re going to talk about how do you get the most from the scores you’ve paid for the course. You’re investing time in the course, and the goal of the course is you passing the PMP. So we might as well create a strategy about how can you get the most out of this course. No one wants to take a class and then get nothing from it. You need to see some return on investment. So I’m going to show you how I’ve designed the course to help you get the most from this course. Our first goal is you passing the PMP. And I know that you can do it, that you can pass the PMP.

Well, our second goal, though, is to have a good understanding and a good base of how can you apply this project management principles in your role as a project manager. Because we want to have some good practices that we want to see a return on investment beyond just the PMP. Now, make no mistake, our first concern is you passing the PMP. That’s our number one goal, you and I, it’s you earning the PMP. So in this course, I want to start off by talking about some frequently asked questions that I’ve taught this course since early 2000 and I’ve taught for a long time online. And I get the same questions over and over and over.

And many of these questions are answered throughout the course, but I think they’re important and I just want to set the answers for those upfront so you know what’s coming. And you may have some of these questions rattling around inside your head right now. So we’re going to talk about FAQs. I’m also going to address this issue of am I earning PDUs professional Development units or contact hours and what’s the difference? So we’ll nail that down and that’ll be clear for the remainder of the course. Yes, you get a certificate of completion.

The number one question that I get every day from people is, do I get a certificate of completion? So, you know, those folks aren’t watching this particular lecture or they wouldn’t be emailing me asking about the certificate of completion. So in this section, I’m going to show you how to claim the certificate of completion and why you need that if you’re audited like we talked about in the last section. So certificate of completion we’ll talk about. We’re also going to look at creating a study strategy. You want a strategy in a project? Well, you need a strategy as you study. So you’re studying to pass the exam. That’s our number one goal here.

We’re going to look at the entire Pmbok Guide, 6th edition. Don’t worry, it’s at a high level, but we’re going to walk through all the different parts of it, and that will help us on the remainder of the course as well. I do have some resources throughout this course, so I’m going to show you how to download those resources and how to navigate the interface to download those so you can utilize those resources. And then you’ll have an assignment where I’m going to give you some resources to download so you can test it out. And then I’ll talk about maintaining your PMP. That once you pass the exam and you will pass the exam. I want to keep a positive mindset. I’m going to talk about after the exam. Well, what do you do now that you’re a PMP? How do you maintain that?

And then I’ve got a new type of lecture that I’m going to share with you in this course that it’s called the PMP Coach. And I’m going to give you some real straightforward, frank advice to keep you going towards earning your PMP, all right? A lot of information, information to talk about in this section. So let’s hop in right now and talk about how can you get the most from this course.

2. Frequently Asked Questions

In this lecture, I want to share with you some common frequently asked questions. So I’m going to walk through these. If you have additional questions, use the Q and A that we looked at in an earlier lecture. You can just go up and post a question into this and we’ll respond to it appropriately throughout the course. All right, so let’s talk about some Q. And here I just want to share with you the most common also in resources. I include an FAQ document that will update frequently. So as more similar questions come in, obviously some clarity is needed so you can check the resource for a current FAQ application. Details I get a lot of questions about the PMP application. So people want to know, do they have to complete this course before they can complete their application? You can start the application, but if you’re needing this course for your 35 contact hours, you need to complete the entire course. And then you can claim the 35 contact hours.

So pay attention to that. You can start it and save it like the assignment that you did earlier, and then you can go and update it and submit it to PMI. If you’re not yet a PMP, then you need this course for your contact hours. This is the course you’ll complete. You can’t enter a future date as silicaama be done next week. You have to wait till next week until you’re done. I also get some questions about PDUs versus contact hours. And so PDUs are professional development units that you earn after Europe PMP contact hours you get before you’re a PMP. This course is contact hours, which is what you want if you are not yet a PMP. I get a lot of questions, a lot of questions about the certificate of completion. Yes, you’ll receive a certificate of completion. I can’t be more clear about this. The certificate of completion you’ll receive has the Instructing. com LLC logo on it.

It has the PMI registered Education Provider logo on it. And you get this at the end of the course, you’ll see that there is a lecture. The next to last lecture in this course has a web link where you’ll go and complete a form you’ll attest that you have completed the entire course. And then you’ll enter your name and date of completion. And then you can download that in PDF format. And that’s your certificate that you give to PMI. If you are audited. You do not give PMI the certificate when you submit your application. They don’t want it.

They don’t want it until you are audited. So there is some truth and honesty as part of our PMI code of ethics and professional Conduct that you are honest in your application, but there’s a chance you could be audited. If you’re audited, this is the certificate you’ll give to PMI. Are we a registered education provider? Yes, we are. My company instructing. com LLC. We’re a PMI registered Education Provider, number 4082. And you can hop out to PMI’s Continuing Certification Registry, which is CCRS PMI. org, and you can search for instructing. com and see all of our courses and our credentials and so on, including this class, which PMI has reviewed as part of our annual cycle, our three year cycle to be a registered education provider.

So this is right from PMI’s website, what you’re seeing on your screen here, that, yes, we are a PMI registered education provider, and this course is accepted by PMI. Another question, will you review my application or take a phone call to discuss my project? No, I’m sorry, I can’t. With thousands of people in this course and my other courses, it’s just impossible. I know you say, well, it’ll only take five minutes or half an hour, but if I gave everyone five minutes or half an hour, I wouldn’t be able to support these courses or create new courses. And I teach live classes, I travel quite a bit, and I’m writing, so I just don’t have time to take on that additional effort.

So I’m sorry. I can’t. But really, if you follow what we’ve discussed in the course and you are very concise in your application, you’ll be fine. But thank you for understanding, but I can’t do application reviews. I just physically am unable don’t have enough time in the day. All right, that is the big FAQs. Again, you can go up to Resources and look at all the other ones that we’ve updated since the start of this course. These FAQs are based on other PMP exam preps I’ve done over the years. So these are the most common questions. If you have a question that’s not in the FAQ document or it wasn’t addressed here, use the question and answer feature so that others can see that as well. And you can also search the Q and A feature because someone may have had the same questions in that you had. So you can go and check that out. All right, keep moving forward. I’ll see you in the next lecture.

3. PDUs Or Contact Hours

I want to take a lecture and really address this idea of, are these PDUs or contact hours? What are you earning from this course? Because there’s a lot of confusion in the community about contact hours or PDUs or I need to go get PDUs so I can qualify for the PMP. We need to be very clear on the difference between a contact hour and a PDU. And so I’ve mentioned this a couple of times, but I just want to nail this down once and for all. This course has both contact hours and PDUs. Let’s look at contact hours first. All right, so if you are not yet a PMP, you want and earn contact hours. You don’t get any PDUs if you are not a PMP. So contact hours are before the PMP.

It’s educational hours, like this course. So this course is worth 35 contact hours that you can use for your PMP application. So contact hours are what you want and what you earn in this course. If you are a PMP, then you can earn PDUs. So once you become a PMP, then you want PDUs. You could only count PDUs from education. And there’s some other things we’ll talk about later, but only from after Europe PMP. So you can’t take this course, earn your PMP, and then claim this course for PDUs. It’s after you’re a PMP moving forward. So PDUs are after the PMP. You need 60 PDUs every three years. So you have three years, 20 a year, couple a month.

It’s not hard to do if you are already a PMP, and I know some of you are, and you’re taking this course as a refresher. This course has 35 PDUs for you. So in PMI’s website, it’s CCRS. PMI. org. You’ll log in if you’re a PMP. You don’t do this if you’re not yet a PMP. If you’re a PMP, you’ll log in, and then you can search for Instructing. com LLC. We’re a PMI registered education provider number 4082, and you’ll look for activity ID. It’s 109 EPS WB. So 109 EPS WB, and then the 35 contact hours. The 35 PDUs are distributed. 25 PDUs for technical, five for leadership, and five for strategic. So you have to have a distribution of your PDUs and you’ll say, what category does this course fit in? So you get 25 for technical, five for leadership, five for strategic if you’re a PMP.

Those of you who are PMP candidates, probably the overwhelming majority of people in this class, this is contact hours. Just 35 straight up contact hours. All right, so hopefully that solves that mis. Street contact hours or PDUs. And now you know, and you can tell other people, so they’re clear as well. All right, let’s keep moving forward.

4. Create a Study Strategy

I think it’s really important for you to create a strategy of when you’ll study and how you’ll study. Now, don’t get too bogged down in the planning and the specifics, so you might have a little flex. But the idea here is you want to create a general idea of your plan of when and how you’ll study, so that you have a well, basically schedule, just like you would a project of when you’re going to commit time to studying. So I think this is an important exercise, but don’t spend hours and hours creating it. Let’s talk about what you need to create a good study strategy. First off, you want to create a place to learn. So you want to emulate the exam environment. Just as the exam is going to be quiet, no disruptions, you are going to have your phone there, so put away any distractions. So turn off your email, get rid of your phone for that time, tell people you’re unavailable, so no visitors.

So you don’t want any distractions, just like you will in the exam environment. I recommend about 2 hours of just immerse yourself in study time. More than that, it really starts to beat you up. So about 2 hours of quiet time immersed in studying. And so you really want to focus only on the PMP, so only on those objectives that we’ve talked about that you’ll be tested on for your exam. I also want you to, of course, complete the course. You’ve got to complete the material here in order to, well, claim your certificate of completion, but also to see everything you’re going to see on the exam. So, yes, take the course in any order that you like, go to what’s most important and you can take those over and over again. I do recommend that you take notes as you move through this course. But don’t write down everything, just write down what’s most important. Review your notes before you leave a module. So you take notes. For example, when we get into Project Integration Management, well, before you go on to Scope Management pause, you’re going to take a little quiz, maybe review your notes right before you take the quiz. That’ll help you.

 But don’t just wait to the end of the course to come back and look at your notes. Have an opportunity to review what you’ve written down and why you thought that was important. And then in this course, as I mentioned, we have that Q and A feature. So take some time to use the Q and A feature, read what other people have written, ask questions there. It’s a great way to interact with your peers and myself. And I have some teaching assistants that will help in the course as well. So use the discussion feature to talk to other PMP candidates and to post questions and read questions what others have posted. Know what to study. You have 14 PMBOK guide chapters and that’s what we’re covering in the bulk of this course. So we’ll cover everything in the pmbok.

There’s a few additional things, but study the pmbok guide, use it as a reference. So the PMP exam focuses on, remember, it’s initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, controlling and closing. But it’s distributed across these knowledge areas, the ten knowledge areas. So project Integration management is chapter four in the PMBOK. So integration management and then scope, schedule, cost, quality, resources, communications, risk, procurement and stakeholders. And believe me, you’ll rattle those off once you get immersed deeper and deeper into the PMP. So know what to study, know what’s important. It’s these knowledge areas. Create your study strategy.

So this is really important, but I want you to take time to look at the exam content. You can download the PMP handbook from PMI. org and look at that content. And I’ve already walked through what those tasks were. That’s where that came from, is the exam content.

I want you to build a plan that works for you. So don’t be unrealistic that you’re going to study 8 hours a day for the next four weeks. That’s probably not going to happen for most people, so be realistic. So how can you give up some time somewhere else to invest time here? So build a plan that works for you. In my resources for this lecture, there is a spreadsheet called a score Tracker that will track you, enter your exam scores and that will let you see, well, which chapters do you need to spend more time on? And it will kind of generate an average for you as you move through the course. Do some SWAT analysis. SWAT we’ll see a couple of times in the course, but it’s looking at your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

If you’re really strong in quality and you get 100 on that exam, you don’t need to keep studying quality. But if you really don’t do so hot on risk, well, then that’s a weakness. You need to go spend more time there. And then opportunities is where we look at those distribution of questions from initiating to closing. That ratio of questions to processes, like initiating has two processes, closing has two processes and executing, which is a pretty significant part of your exam. It’s like a huge number of questions for your exam. So there are some opportunities and threats there of processes to questions. Study according to the exam objectives.

Don’t study things you aren’t going to be tested on, study on things you’re going to be tested on. This is a sample four week study strategy. I’m not saying embrace this and make this yours. I’m just showing you an idea of how you could structure your study habits with this course and your time. So this isn’t what you have to do. I’m not saying this is perfect for everyone, but this is a good model that you might emulate as you create your plan. So week one you might look at modules one through seven, and I’m talking about the modules in this course, the lectures and the sections. So sections one through seven this week, maybe you do more, maybe you do less. Do what works for you.

So preparing to pass the PMP, get the most from the course, looking at the PMP exam domains, the overview, and then get into the foundations, the related areas of project management, and introducing the PM components. So right now you’re on section two, so you can see what you’d still have left to do if you took this plan. Next week, do sections eight through 14, project Environments, role of the PM Integration Management, chapter four in the Pinbox. Now we’re getting into those knowledge areas, scope, Schedule, and Cost Management. So that could be week two. And then week three, you do sections 15 to 22, which would be Quality Resource Communications, Risk Procurement, and Stakeholders, which would be the rest of the PMBOK Guide. And then I’ve got a few additional modules in this course, or sections the Code of Ethics, the Bullets Review, and then wrapping up the course. So that could be week three.

And then week four is putting it all together. Go back and take the practice exams over and over and over until you get 100% on every exam, and then know why you’re missing, the types of questions you’re missing. So give some SWAT. Review your Flashcards until perfect every time. I’ve not talked a lot about flashcards yet, but that’s a resource in this course. So go through the Flashcards, all the terms, and then practice creating your memory sheet. Kind of wait to the end of our study time to really focus on the memory sheet, really know the content first and why things are and have an understanding, and then worry about creating that memory sheet. I think that understanding is more important than just pure recollection. So that’s a sample strategy. I’m not saying you have to use this again, but create a strategy that works for you. All right, keep moving forward. I’ll see you in the next lecture.

5. Explore the PMBOK Guide, Sixth Edition

Your PMP exam is largely based on the PMBOK Guide 6th edition. So it’s important to have an understanding of the structure of the PMBOK Guide, the contents and what you’re going to be tested on. So in this lecture, I want to walk through the Pinback Guide and point out some things that you should pay attention to. And this will also will set us up for the remainder of the course as we explore the Pinbock Guide and those processes and knowledge groups. So let’s take a look. Now. The Pinback Guide Six edition has ten project management knowledge areas. You’ve already seen those several times in this course.

There are 49 processes in the PMBOK Six Edition and it also describes the best practices for project management. So what’s new in the PMBOK Guide Six edition? One of the biggest changes in the PMBOK Guide Six Edition is an addition of agile practices or adaptive environments. So you’ll see, that’s a theme throughout the PMBOK and throughout this course. Now, it’s not a huge overwhelming addition, it’s a small addition in each knowledge area.

So if you don’t come from an adaptive or agile environment, I’ll be explaining some of that as we move through the course, especially when we get into talking about project life cycles later on. But for your exam, you’ll have to know some about agile practices and adaptive and iterative life cycles. So it’s not difficult, it’s just a little different than what you might be used to if you’re in a predictive environment. There’s also been an addition of trends and emerging practices in each knowledge area. So for example, we talk about risk. There’ll be trends and emerging practices for risk.

So we’ll talk about that in each knowledge area as we move through the course. Each process group can be tailored based on the size of the project, your organization, and to what depth are you required to tailor that process. So tailoring means you can adjust the processes for what’s most needed in your project. So for example, if you’re not purchasing, you won’t do any procurement processes. If you’re doing a very small project, maybe you’re replacing all the keyboards with wireless keyboards, that’s your project. Well, we don’t need to have a huge amount of study for that type of a project. So the tailoring of processes would be appropriate for the size of the project and the requirements in your organization. We’ll talk about strategic and business knowledge, we’ll talk about business value, hitting organizational goals or business goals.

And also this idea of business knowledge, of identifying knowledge management is a new process and having a knowledge repository and how do we manage that and organize it and recall from that. So it’s a really important process we’ll look at. Coming up, a new chapter in the PMBOK Guide is the role of the Project Manager. Just a very clear study of what’s expected as you as a project manager. So we’ll look at that in chapter three. So in the Pinback Guide six edition, what is covered? Well, chapter one is kind of like discourse. It’s foundational info. Then we’ll be getting into project environments. We’re going to talk about the project manager role, as I just mentioned in chapter three. And then you can see from chapters four to 13 are those knowledge areas. Those ten knowledge areas.

So integration management, scope, schedule cost, quality, quality, resource management, communications risk procurement and stakeholder management. And that’s the Pinbock Guide. And you can see that this course follows that same trajectory as what we see in the Pinbox. All right, so now you know what’s ahead of you, not only in this course, but also when you open up the Pinbock Guide. All right, great job. Keep moving forward. I’ll see you in the next lecture.

6. Maintaining Your PMP

I do get a lot of questions about what do I do after I’m at PMP? Am I a PMP forever or is there something I have to do? Well, you have to maintain your PMP. So right now, if you are not a PMP, this isn’t really something to worry a whole lot about. Just know it’s coming after you pass the exam. Exam and you will pass the exam. Now, some of you are PMPs and you’re taking this course as a refresher or to earn PDUs like we talked about earlier. Well, let’s just be real clear on what PMI’s requirements are to maintain your PMP. So a PDU, we know PDUs come after you’re a PMP. A PDU is a professional development unit. You have to get 60 PDUs every three years. That’s called your certification cycle. 1 hour of education is equivalent to one PDU.

So you’re a PMP and then you take training, for example. There are some other ways, but training will give you one PDU per hour of education. PMI has created this talent triangle to describe the particulars of education we have to have in three different categories. We have leadership, business and strategy and technical. So of the 60 PDUs you must earn every three years, at least 35 of those must come from continuing education. Within the distribution of 35 minimum education hours, you have to have eight PDUs in leadership.

You have to have eight PDUs in technical, project management and eight PDUs in business and strategic management. So you can see that’s 24 of the 35 PDUs, then you can choose any combination from the remaining three areas for eleven additional PDUs. Now, you’re not limited to just 35 minimum education hours. You can get all of your 60 from education, but it has to be distributed with at least eight in technical, eight in leadership, and eight in business and strategy. This course, if you are a PMP and you’re looking for your PDUs, you have to have eight. You’ll get five PDUs in leadership, five in business and strategy, and there are 25 in this course in technical. So by taking this course, you do earn 35 total PDUs. But notice that it’s only five in leadership and five in business. So you’ll have to get still an additional three in the leadership and three more in business beyond this course. But all 35 can count towards your 60 PDU requirement.

This went into effect back in 2015, the 35 minimum education, that’s for all our PMPs. 25 is the maximum PDUs you can earn by giving back. So giving back are things like volunteering or working as a project manager. So you can only have a maximum of 25 giving back PDUs. So if you’re creating new knowledge, like I write books and so I get some PDUs for that, or if you speak at different chapter events or you volunteer to chapter event, you can earn PDUs for that. But you’re only allowed to earn 25 total. So you have to have 35 in education, and then you can give 25 by giving back. Now here’s a little nugget that a lot of people don’t know. You’ll get eight PDUs just by working as a project manager. So you can have up to eight PDUs just by being a PM. So there you go.

That’s a great way to get eight PDUs right away. Our goal in this course though, I won’t be talking a whole lot about the PDUs anymore. Our goal is to focus on passing the exam, not PDUs. So I’m going to really leave this idea of PDUs behind. So if after this course you want PDUs, I have other training that’s online that will help you earn your PDUs. All PDUs from education is fine, but first things first, let’s focus on passing the PMP and then we’ll worry about PDUs later. Want you to use the memory sheets. This is a resource that is part of this course that has everything that you need to know. So use the memory sheets. It’s a really good way to follow along in the course. It’s a quick way to reference processes and whatnot. So if you’ve not downloaded that resource yet, I encourage you to do it.

7. PMP Coach: Confidence

You’re making progress here in this course. And that’s a great thing because as you make progress, you’re going to gain confidence, and your confidence may go up and down as you move through the course. And that’s okay. But confidence is such an important thing that you need as an exam candidate. You need the confidence in yourself that you’ve done the work, that you’ve had years of experience and you’ve put in the time to study, to pass this exam.

I’m not going to kid you. This is a tough exam. And I’ve heard from lots of people who have unfortunately not passed on their first attempt. Now, the overwhelming majority of people that I hear from, especially after taking my course, have passed. But I know there are people that have taken courses elsewhere, and then they’ve come in here to this course and gone on to pass. And yes, there have been some people who have completed my course and still were not successful.

Now, I’m not telling you this to discourage you, especially so early in the course, but I’m just telling you this to show you that this is a tough exam. As I mentioned, I’ve had a lot of people, the overwhelming majority of people that I get feedback from have told me they’ve passed the exam. So I’m confident that what I’m sharing with you is the information that you must know in order to pass the test. But I want you to be confident as well. And how you’re going to gain confidence is by continuing to do the work that’s required in order to pass the exam. So when you get to the end of a chapter and there’s a quiz and you don’t do very well in that quiz, you can’t just shrug it off.

But don’t get discouraged. Use that as an opportunity to learn. The questions throughout this course are part of the learning. And yes, occasionally I’ll sneak a term in that I may not have mentioned in the lecture. That’s not to be unfair. It’s because the questions are part of the learning process. So you see a term that you don’t know, go search the Q and A, go out to Google and search it. Look in the Pin box, because maybe it’s a term that’s not even relevant to project management. And that’s a distractor. That’s the kind of things that you can expect on the test, because those distractors are there. They’re going to shake your confidence.

They’re going to make you doubt yourself, doubt your study. But doubt isn’t something that we’re going to allow because you have to think with a positive mental attitude that you’ve done the work, you’ve put in the time you invested the money, and you can do this. That confidence. You can do it. And so you need to have confidence in yourself.

And as you begin to have these wins as far as finishing lectures and finishing sections and finishing quizzes and doing the assignments that’s going to bolster your confidence. So right now, and in these early sections, you might feel a little overwhelmed that as we get deeper and deeper into the course, your confidence level will go up, but you have to stick with the course. All right, that’s our PMP coach here, so keep moving forward. I’ll see you in the next.

8. Section Summary: Get the Most from the Course

Great job finishing this section on how to get the most from this course. I know we talked about a lot of information in this section, so I think it’s important to just touch base on some of those headlines again, that we talked about FAQs, some of those frequently asked questions that I get all the time. But one of the biggest, big things that we talked about is how do you earn your certificate of completion? At the end of the course, you get a certificate of completion, and this is a form that you’ll fill out with My company instructing. com and that we are a PMI Registered Education Provider.

And so you’ll attest to completing the course. The system here tracks your completion, and if you’re audited, you’ll give that certificate to PMI. We also looked at PDUs or contact hours, and now you know the difference. Before you are a PMP, contact hours. After the PMP. You want PDUs Professional Development Units. If you’re a PMP right now and you’re taking this course as a refresher, you’ll get 35 PDUs because you’re a PMP.

If you’re not a PMP, you get those contact hours, which is what you want, what you need for your exam. We talked about creating a study strategy that how can you map out a strategy to best learn this material in order to pass the exam? And that’s your goal, right, is to pass the PMP? I know that’s my goal is you passing the PMP. We looked at all the contents for the Pinback Guide 6th Edition at a very high level. Really sets the tone for where we’re going in the remainder of the course.

So we’ve mapped out the Pinback Guide, 6th edition. We did an assignment, we downloaded some resources, a little practice, and throughout the course, you’ll see other opportunities to download resources. We talked about maintaining your PMP. How do you continue your education and maintain your PMP with PDUs? And then I gave you a coaching session, and you can look for more of those throughout the course. All right, good job finishing this section on how to get the most from this course. I want you to keep moving forward, have confidence that you can do this. I’ll see you in the next section.