PMI PMP Project Management Professional – PMBOK Guide, Sixth Edition

1. Section Overview: PMBOK Guide, Sixth Edition

Whenever the PMBOK Guide changes, which is about every three to five years, somewhere in there, there’s always a flurry of concern and worry, especially if people are on the verge of, well, which version of the Pmbok should I study for my exam? Of course you’re studying. Pmbok Guide, 6th edition. And in the 6th edition, there are some new things that have been introduced that you need to be aware of for your exam. So in this section, we’re going to drill down a little bit deeper into the PMBOK Guide 6th Edition. So if you have a PMBOK Guide and I encourage you to have one, this is a good time to get that out. And you can kind of correlate between what we’re going to talk about in this section and the PMBOK Guide. So we’re going to really look at each chapter. If you don’t have a PMBOK Guide, you can just follow along here and then maybe later you want to get that. Remember, you can get a PMBOK Guide as part of your PMI membership.

Okay, so we’re going to look at the PMBOK Guide Six edition. We’re going to start with just an introduction. What is the PMBOK Guide and why do we need it, how’s it created, and what’s it for? Then we’ll look at a new chapter in the PMBOK Guide 6th Edition, which describes the environment in which projects operate. So we’re going to look at this concept of environments, and then we’ll talk about the role of the project manager. Just a real clear picture about what do you do as a project manager. You can see how those two go together. The different environments you operate in will affect how you operate as a project manager. And then we’ll get into the knowledge area. So this will pick up in chapter four in the Pmbok. We’ll talk about Project Integration Management, project scope management, and then we’ll look at what’s now called Project Schedule Management. It’s no longer called project time management. It’s project schedule management. Cost management is chapter seven in the pmbok. Chapter eight on quality management. And then we’ll look at chapter nine. And Project Resource Management. Used to be HR.

Human Resource Management. But now chapter nine of the Pmbok is Project Resource Management because we managed things, we lead people. But there’s some correlation here. We still have some HR business, but now we’re also talking about physical resources, materials and equipment and what have you. So we’ll look at that coming up, and then we go into chapter Ten on Project Communications Management. And then chapter eleven in the PMBOK on project risk management. Chapter twelve in the Pinboc on procurement and then stakeholder management. So those are all of the things we’re going to talk about in this section. I do have an assignment for you that you may want to check out. It’s how to get an access to an electronic copy of the Pimbach Guide. So I encourage you to look at that assignment. If you’re a member of PMI, you get a copy of the PMBOK Guide. It’s an electronic format, which I personally love, because then I can search for keywords. So you make sure to do that assignment, especially if you’re already a member of PMI. Okay, let’s hop in here and talk about these components in the Pmbok Guide. And that will also help us for the remaining under of the course. Keep moving forward.

2. 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 Pinback Guide is a publication from PMI that describes the generally recognized approach to project management. It is the project management. It 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 going to 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 6th 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 ten knowledge areas, chapters four through 13, and 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 to 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 because there are a lot of processes within the knowledge area of integration management. Chapter five is on scope management, then schedule cost quality. Chapter nine on resource management, ten on communications, eleven on risk, twelve on procurement and 13 on 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.

3. Environments in Which Projects Operate

The second chapter in the Pmbok Guide describes environments where projects operate. So it’s kind of a mouthful. Environments in which projects operate well, projects exist in different organizations, so it could be notforprofit for profit, profit could be a community, could be a government entity. So the environment that a project operates in is going to vary based on where the project’s taking place. That no two environments are identical, just as no two projects are identical. There are some factors or terms that you need to know that we’ll see throughout the remainder of the course that describe the environments in which projects operate. First off, we have enterprise environmental Factors. These are kind of like the rules and the policies that you must follow. Then we have OPA organizational process assets. OPA describes the benefits or things that have been created for you that you get to use as a project manager. So historical information forms that have been created for you or software that your organization uses, those are all things like OPA.

And then organizational systems describe the structure and how work gets done within that structure. So you can imagine a very large organization, how the process may work to procure in that large organization versus a very small start up, what procurement is like there. So the organizational system is how do you get things done in that organization, but it also describes the hierarchy and the framework and just the maturity level that comes with older organizations and larger organizations, but they aren’t always as nimble as smaller organizations where they have more flexibility. Let’s look at Enterprise environmental factors, which I call EEFs, and organizational process assets, which are opas and organizational systems. So some things to consider here. First off, Enterprise Environmental Factors and Opas, they really influence the project management approach.

Opas are created for projects based on past experience. So Opas are, as I mentioned, historical information, similar projects, software forms, things that to some extent have been created for you, although you might say, well, historical information wasn’t created for me, I’m just taking advantage of it. All right, fair enough. Opas, though, are things that came before you that you get to use. Enterprise environmental factors, those originate from outside of the project and often outside of the enterprise. So a policy in your company on how you procure that’s an EEF that’s outside of your project, a law or a regulation that you have to adhere to, that’s outside of the enterprise, that you have to adhere to it. Organizational systems also affect how you do the project.

So in your organization, you may have team members that come from all over, so you have to wait until the team members available to do the project work. So that has an effect on how you manage and how you schedule resources, versus a small organization where everyone contributes to the work. And so it’s different. So that the organizational system also how you communicate, you might have a formal communications department or you might have a quality assurance department or a risk management department where a smaller or different company doesn’t have that. So just the framework and the structure of your company affects how you manage your project. A little bit more about enterprise environmental factors. I just want to be real clear that there are two types here. We have those that are internal to the organization or external. Internal are like policies and rules and procedures that you must follow as the project manager.

Generally, if you’re required to behave a certain way in your project, it’s an enterprise environmental factor. External to the organization are things like safety or OSHA concerns or laws on how you do things, or if you have a contract with a union. So you have a relationship there that you have to adhere to their rules as far as scheduling their resources or those employees. That could be an external, but typically external, we’re talking about laws and regulations. Internal are things that are created that control how you operate or how you behave in that organization. Now, organizational process assets are also processes, but these may be processes on just how you get things done that I wouldn’t say they restrict your options. They could be policies on how the project team has to communicate to the PM, to the sponsor. So processes and policies, you can see there’s some overlap. It’s not always enterprise environmental factors and it’s certainly not always OPA organizational knowledge repositories. This is a new term. We’re going to see knowledge management as a process later in the course and later in the Pmbok. But organizational knowledge repositories, we’re talking about historical information, databases, data, reports, things that you can go and look at and do some analysis of to make the best decisions and to leverage that information for your project.

So know that term, organizational knowledge repositories, we’ll see it again, it’s part of OPA. Then organizational systems. This is how your company is structured, the rules in your company, the framework in your company, which we call the governance framework. So how you get things done and the rules that you have to follow in order to be successful or operate in that organization. The management elements, who reports to whom, what’s the hierarchy like, and then the organizational structure are things that we’ll see coming up.

But we’re talking about how project team members get on your project and if they’re on other projects and operational, but also who is in charge of things like the project budget and the project team and decisions? Is it the project manager or the functional manager? So basically organizational systems, when you see that, you just think about the structure, the governance, and then how groups are arranged, or different lines of business, how they are arranged. So you think about sales, marketing, finance, how do those people come together and operate with one another, what are the rules spoken or unspoken, that affect how you get work done. So that’s certainly going to affect how you manage your project. All right. Great job. Keep moving. Moving forward.

4. Role of the Project Manager

A new chapter in the Pmbok Guide, 6th edition is the Role of the Project Manager. The role of the project manager really describes the roles and responsibilities, the standard expectations, if you will, of what it means to be a project manager. It’s a good idea to really understand this chapter and we’ll be talking about the role role the project manager throughout the course. But let’s take a look at what the contents are of this new chapter and what does it mean about being a project manager. One of the themes that you’ll see in chapter three in the Pmbok, the role of the project manager is that the project manager can be involved before the project and after the project. Before the project, you might be working with a business analyst to gather requirements and document requirements and to write the project charter.

After the project, you might be part of the support team for the solution you’ve created and other people can come to you and you serve kind of as a SME for similar projects. So the PM can be involved before and after the project. As far as the role of the project manager, there are really four key items that we need to know. First off, we want to lead the team to get things done, lead the team to achieve objectives. Really important, right? That’s why we’re doing the project. Balance competing objectives, time, cost, scope, quality and risk. Those are always competing objectives. And probably the three that you know from the iron triangle is the idea of time, cost and scope.

So schedule is always competing with cost and to have enough time and enough money to complete the scope. So balancing competing objectives, this can also be competing objectives where you have two stakeholders that their choices are mutually exclusive. So you can’t have carpet floors and tile floors. You got to have one or the other. You have to communicate with stakeholders. 90% of a project manager’s job is communicating. So it’s so important to be available and to communicate and to get out and talk with people. So communicating and following our communications management plan, then you have to contribute to business value.

A new term, business value. Business value is we’re talking about the value that your project creates for the organization. So business value is what is your project worth? How is this a benefit? How is this contributing to worth, tangible or intangible assets for your organization? So contribute to business value. So we’re talking about how is it valuable to your company? And it’s not always money. It could be things like brand recognition or goodwill in the community. So it’s not always money, but often it is that we want a return on investment and we want business value that has to create and support our strategy. So we’ll see business value some more in the course. All right, great job. Keep moving forward.

5. Project Integration Management

The next chapter we’ll talk about in the Pinbuck guide is project Integration management. I’d like to say that project integration management is kind of the gears of project management. This is a really big knowledge area. In the Pinbuck Guide. There is a process in every process group that touches is project integration management. It’s the only knowledge area. Chapter four in the Pmbok that has at least one process in every process group. So the processes that we see in project integration management is to develop the project charter, develop the project man, develop the project management plan, direct and manage the project work, manage project knowledge, monitor and control project work, perform integrated, change, control, and close the project or phase.

So these processes are really important as you move through the project. A lot of people think that I have to do the processes in a particular order. The truth is, there’s only two processes that you must do in a particular order, and that is the first one and the last one. So typically almost 99. 9% of the time we’re going to develop the project charter first.

So that’s part of project integration management. And then the last process that we do is to close the project or phase that we’re going to close the project out. So I don’t always have to do the processes in this order. And we know there’s 49 processes, but this is a pretty good idea of how processes flow through the project. So in project Integration management, if you wanted to say what’s the most typical order at just a summary level, you could say, well, you develop the charter, you develop your plan, you do the work, you manage the knowledge, monitor and control that work.

You want it to be correctly perform integrated, change control, and then close the project or phase. So project integration management, I think it’s the gears. It really oversees all of those big categories there of processes. All right, we’ll be looking at integration management in detail. This is just an overview of the PMBOK guide, but this is chapter four in the Pinbock guide. When you see project integration management, think about gears. All right, I’ll see you in the next lecture.

6. Project Scope Management

Chapter five in the Pinbach guide is on project scope management. Project scope management is about defining all of the project work and really only the required work to satisfy the objectives of the project. In project scope management, we’re dealing with six processes. So in chapter five in the Pinbach, there are six processes in this knowledge area. Let’s look at those. Now we have planned scope management, collect requirements, define scope, create the work breakdown structure, validate scope, and control scope. So everything here we’re dealing with the scope of the project. Let’s talk about plan scope management first. Every one of our knowledge areas that we’re going to see in this overview and later as we dive into each particular chapter, will deal with a plan in that knowledge area.

So this particular knowledge area, project scope management is about planning. How do we do the other processes? So the scope management plan will tell us or we define, how will we collect requirements, how will we define the scope statement, how will we create the work breakdown structure? How will you validate scope and how will you control scope? So that’s the project scope management plan, it’s all of those things. How will you do it? Now, to collect requirements, this is typically done up front or very early in the project.

And you might be doing this with a business analyst even before the project begins. In some cases you might have a high level overview of what the project is going to create. But now you need very specifics so you collect requirements to get very specific information. Defining scope is the actual creating the project scope statement. So writing that out, the project scope statement is not part of plan scope management. It’s a separate document.

It’s part of the project plan, but it’s a separate document. Once we define the scope, then we can go about decomposition, decomposing the scope statement into actual deliverables. So we create the work breakdown structure. The WBS is a way to visualize what we are creating in the project. So we create the WBS and I’ll go and give you a little aside here. Along with creating the work breakdown structure, we’ll create another document called the WBS dictionary. The WBS dictionary kind of follows a surround, but just like a regular dictionary, it defines what these items are in the WBS. So create work breakdown structure means that we take the project scope statement and we break it down into smaller and smaller pieces. It helps us not only visualize the project work, but it allows us to create more accurate or definitive estimates for time and cost to better understand our resources. And that will also help us do cost aggregation.

So we’ll talk about the scope a lot in chapter five, but we’ll also see it in our chapter six on schedule and seven on cost. And it pokes its head up in a few other places as well. Validate scope happens after we create the project, deliverable the customer comes and inspects what we’ve created so they validate scope that it’s an activity that is inspection driven with the customer and it leads to acceptance. And then we have control scope that we want to control the scope, keep things on target, keep delivering what was promised to the customer and to prevent unapproved changes from entering our project. So we control scope, and then if there are change requests, it would flow back to what we already looked at in integrated change control in chapter four. Okay, so this is chapter five in the Pmbok scope management. Just a big overview. We’ll be getting into these very specifics as we move into that chapter in our course and in the pinball. All right, keep moving forward.

7. Project Schedule Management

Chapter six in the Pmbok guide is Project Schedule Management. Project Schedule management is all about creating a schedule management plan, defining and sequencing the activities and then developing our schedule. So this is the chapter where we’ll get into Float, not right now, but later are in the course. Right now we’re just at a high level overview. But when we dig into chapter six later in the course, we will be talking about Float.

And how do we find that? Because that’s part of schedule management. Schedule management is done typically after we have the project scope statement created, but early in the project. If you remember back in the charter we have milestones. What are our high level milestones? So this trips up some people sometimes that well, how do we predict milestones if we don’t have our schedule yet in the project charter and even in the project scope? To some extent we do with a high level prediction of what’s going to happen.

So this is a good example of the Iterative nature of these processes. In addition, most organizations are doing the same types of projects over and over. So if you’re a home construction company or you’re an It integrator, or you create software, you can probably look at the square footage or the type of network you have to create, or the general requirements for that software you’re creating, and based on your years of experience, have a pretty good idea of how long that type of project should create. Now some projects obviously lend themselves more to that where the requirements are more certain, like construction or manufacturing.

Other organizations where it’s more nebulous, like software development, where lots of changes could happen or you aren’t real clear on the requirements. It’s tough to give a milestone schedule up front and it’s tough to have good requirements upfront. The challenge though, if I don’t know exactly what the requirements are, then I really don’t have a good scope and I’m not going to have a good schedule. So let’s look at these processes. Six processes in this chapter on Project Schedule management. First off is to create the schedule management plan. So like all of our knowledge areas, we need a plan. So this one’s no different. Plan schedule management.

Then we will define the activities. So based on our scope statement, we can create what’s called an activities list. So we’re defining the activities. Once we have the activities defined, then we can put those in the order in which it should happen. So we sequence the activities, then we’ll do an estimate of the activities duration. How long will these activities take, then we can develop the schedule and that’s where we get into Float. And then finally we can control the schedule schedule that we don’t want unapproved changes. Or if we have slippage where tasks are taking longer than what we planned, then we have to react to that problem. So this is Project Schedule Management chapter six in the Pmbok. I’ll see you in the next lecture.

8. Project Cost Management

One of the first questions that we often receive as a project manager is, how much is this thing going to cost? Well, cost management, chapter seven of the Pinball Guide is all about answering those types of questions. Based on the amount of information that we have, we’re able to give more reliable predictions of cost. That’s one of the things that we talk about in chapter seven in the Pinbuck. So project cost management has four processes plan cost management, estimate cost, determine the budget, and control cost. So cost management is a really important part of your PMP exam, and it’s a pretty significant chapter in the Pmbok only if there are four processes. Plan cost management creates a cost management plan that will tell us what’s the acceptable way in our organization to estimate cost to determine the budget, and then how do we go about controlling cost? Estimating cost is where we predict. So based on the amount of information we have and even the amount of time we have to predict, we can create cost estimates.

So there’s a variance or a range of variants tied to the different types of estimates. And we’ll look at that when we get into chapter seven in the Pmbok. Determine the budget is where it’s linked back to our work packages in the work breakdown structure, it’s the cost aggregation of all of those work packages to help us create the budget. And then we’ll also control cost that just as we control scope and we control our schedule, we have to control cost that we don’t want fluctuations, we don’t want wasted time which may result in wasted money or wasted materials which will result in wasted money. So control cost is something that’s a very important activity. All right, so these are the four processes in chapter seven of the Pmbok. And yes, we’ll be looking at earned value management management in this chapter. So something to look forward to later in the course. All right, great job. Keep moving forward.

9. Quality in Project Management

Chapter Eight in the Pmbok Guide is on project quality management. Quality is the totality of an entity that will bear on that thing’s ability to satisfy stated or implied needs. I know that’s a really complex definition, so let’s boil it down like this. That quality is a conformance to requirements. Quality is a fitness for use. So conformance to requirements, fitness for use that we’re delivering on our promises that we’re creating exactly what was requested, nothing more and certainly nothing less. So chapter eight of the Pinback Guide is all about project quality management. In this chapter, we have just three processes, but they’re really three important processes.

The first one is to plan quality management, and that’s where we’ll create the quality management plan. The quality management plan will direct our quality activities, but it also addresses one of the enterprise environmental factors, such as your QA programs, that might be unique to your company. So you might be using Six Sigma or Lean or some other QA program that your project has to adapt or incorporate in its practices. So planned quality management considers those enterprise environmental factors. Also, in project quality management, we have to consider manage quality. This is the idea, to some extent, of quality assurance. But what we’re talking about here with managing quality is that as we plan and as we do the work, that quality is built into the deliverable, that we’re doing the right work and we’re doing the right work correctly. So that quality is built into the process, that quality is built into the design, and that quality is in the execution of what we do in our project. So it’s really important to manage quality. Then we have control. Quality control. Quality is an inspection driven activity. It’s where we go out as the project team and the project manager. Or maybe you have a SME that does this, but we have to inspect the work. So if you imagine you’re building a house, the city inspector would come out and inspect it to make sure it’s of code. And also your project team would inspect it and look for the airs or defects because you want to get all of that taken care of before the customer, the owner of the home, comes and sees it. So the same is true in an It project or a software development project or a manufacturing that we inspect the work as part of quality control to keep mistakes out of the customer’s hands. So control quality is inspection driven, but the goal is to keep mistakes out of the customer’s hands. All right, so that’s our big picture here with chapter eight in the Pmbok on project quality management. Keep moving forward. You’re making great progress.

10. Project Resources Management

Chapter nine in the Pinbach guide used to be called human Resources Management. When Pinbock guide six was released, the name was changed to project Resources Management. Not only was the name changed, but also the content was changed to reflect that we manage things and lead people. So we’re talking about physical resources. So materials, equipment, facilities, different tools that you need, those are all physical resources that we might need in our project. Chapter nine still includes in resource management, human resources.

So we think about our project team and leading and developing our team. So it’s both now that we need to consider when it comes to physical resources, how do I get those into my project? So when do I need the physical resources? How much would they cost? Should I buy it or build it? And then procurement, what’s the procurement process like in my organization? What’s the lead time to procure and how do I go about doing that? So there’s a lot of things that resource management touches. So cost as well as the biggie. So we’ll see a real relationship here when we get into time and cost and resource management. In addition to physical resources. Chapter nine addresses human resources. So we’ll talk about some HR theories in leading and managing and developing the team. And so that’s some important information in chapter nine.

Let’s look at the six processes here you’ll need to know for your exam. And that we’ll see. In chapter nine. In the Pinbach guide, we have plan resource management, and this creates the resource management plan. Then we have estimate activity resources. So this goes back to chapters six on schedule and seven on cost, because we have to estimate when resources are available. And then with cost, how much does it cost, and here is how much do you need. So how many hours we really need, what type of materials, and how much of those materials will you need.

So you can see that the integration here that’s happening between time and with cost and with resource management, we have to acquire resources, could be physical resources, could be a contractor. But we have to acquire those and deal with procurement and cost and scheduling. Then we focus now on Hrs. We’re developing the project team. We want the team to come together and to be a cohesive unit and to work well in our organization. And then we manage the team. We ensure that the team is doing the work and that they’re working well together and we’re managing conflicts or issues. So we manage the team and then finally we control resources.

We assure that we are getting the materials and supplies and the resources that we need in order to do the project work. All right, so those are the six processes in chapter nine on resource management. I’ll see you in the next lecture.

11. Project Communications Management

If there’s any one knowledge area that you can do to improve your role as a project manager, it would be project communications management. Project managers spend at least 90% of their day communicating. When you think of all the customers, project team members, other project managers, and all the different stakeholders that you have to interact with, it’s easy to see how the bulk of a project manager’s time could be communicating.

So this knowledge area, project communications management and the Pinbock Guide has three processes that you really want to know for your exam. This is chapter ten in the Pinbock Guide six edition. The three processes plan communications management, which will create a communications management plan. This plan defines who needs what information, when do they need it, and then what modality. It also defines things like who has access to that information and how will you secure the information, what are the channels you have to follow for communication, like dealing with the public or working with the communications department? So plan communication is a really important process. Then we manage the communication.

We ensure that we’re following our plan and that we’re following the right cadence to distribute information as needed, because stakeholders will have expectations of us to communicate with them. And then we monitor the communication that we ensure that people are communicating with one another, that we’re receiving the type of communication that we need in the project, and that we’re following our plan. This knowledge area is kind of unusual in that it tracks very closely with stakeholder management. So project communication management, you’re speaking with stakeholders and doing stakeholder engagement. So we’ll see this a little bit again coming up when we get into chapter 13 in the Pmbok about stakeholder management. I’ll see you in the next lecture.

12. Project Procurement Management

Chapter Twelve of the Pinback Guide 6th Edition is on project procurement management. Not every project procures, but as a candidate for the PMP exam, you need to be familiar with the procurement management processes. So this is a chapter that sometimes beats up project managers, especially if they don’t normally do procurement. Many project managers defer procurement to a centralized contracting or a procurement administrator in their organization. So if you don’t regularly do procurement, don’t ignore this chapter.

You need to spend a little bit extra time here and really know these processes for procurement. So the three processes we’ll address in the Pinbach Guide Six Edition, chapter Twelve, is project procurement management, which we begin with creating a plan. So plan procurement management and then conducting procurements and controlling procurements. So these are the three processes we need to know. So plan, you’re going to create a procurement management plan.

Then you follow the plan, you’ll conduct it. This is how you begin interacting with sellers, getting a bid or quote or proposal. We’ll talk about terms of reference or statements of work and then controlling that procurement. About making sure that both parties are living up to the terms of the contract, that it’s not just the project manager, that both the vendor, the buyer and the seller live up to the terms. Procurement will also touch base when we talk about time and cost because you may have a lead time to procure, and obviously with cost because this affects your project budget. In Chapter Nine on resource management, we talked about physical resources and acquiring those physical resources. So again, we’ll be coming back to procurement because this is how we acquire. So we have to work with our procurement policies, our procurement processes. All right, great job. Let’s keep moving forward and we’ll talk about stakeholder management processes in the next lecture.

13. Project Stakeholder Management

Chapter 13 of the Pmbok Guide, 6th Edition is on project stakeholder management. A stakeholder is any individual or group or entity that’s affected by your project or they can affect and influence your project. So stakeholder management is a really important activity that starts way back in initiating when we identify stakeholders and then it works its way throughout the project. So we always want to be on the lookout for stakeholders and worried about stakeholder engagement and keeping stakeholders engaged. So this chapter trends closely to chapter Ten on communications management because who are we communicating with will be stakeholders. The four processes we need to address in project stakeholder management we want to identify stakeholders. So that’s one of our first activities that we’ll do in a project. We’ll create a plan.

So how do we plan stakeholder engagement that we want to have a strategy of? How do we begin engaging stakeholders and keep them engaged, keep them excited, and to have a sense of ownership and shared ownership and buy into our project. Then we’ll manage stakeholder engagement that we want to make sure that we’re working properly to keep stakeholders involved and then we monitor that engagement, that we don’t want the stakeholder relationship to diminish or to fade away. In fact, we’ll also talk about creating some goals about a current level of engagement and what’s our desired level of engagement.

So project stakeholder management is a really important topic in the Pmbok Guide and it will close. As I mentioned, it’s going to follow closely with communications, but if you think about it, also with scope, because we have scope validation with our stakeholders with risk because we have risk for stakeholder, tolerance for risk. So we’re going to see that stakeholder really touches a lot of different areas of our project. So it’s a very important chapter. I’ll be at the last chapter in the Pmbok Guide. All right, great job. This has been a quick review of our different lectures and our different sections and chapters in the Pmbok Guide, 6th Edition. Keep moving forward. A few more things we have to do to close out this section. I’ll see you in the next lecture.

14. PMP Coach: Daily Work

One of the skills that we need as a project manager is the ability to problem solve. We have to be able to look at a problem, dissect it, understand the challenges, and then see what the symptoms are and see what the root cause is. So problem solving requires some critical thinking, the ability to look at the problem, and how does that problem really affect our project? In your goal to earn the PMP, you have to do some problem solving as well. So what problems are you having as you study, as you complete this course, as you learn the terms and answer questions, so identify those problems. Let’s do some critical thinking here. What types of questions are you having trouble answering? What areas of the PNP landscape is most challenging to you? What areas are you most comfortable with because of your experience? So what areas are you more weak in because you’ve not experienced that?

So these are opportunities to do some problem solving, and that’s part of passing the PMP exam. When I say that the PMP exam is problem solving, I don’t mean just figuring out questions. I mean figuring out personally what you need to study, what you need to spend more time in, and then how you take that information and then apply it so that you can answer those questions more effectively. All right, take some time and do some critical thinking and do some problem solving. As you prepare to pass the PMP, you’re making great progress. I have confidence that you can continue to do this and you can work your way through through this. Don’t get discouraged. This is hard work. Not everyone can do this, and you’re doing something that a lot of people haven’t even considered. So keep moving forward. Keep doing the work, keep investing the time. I have confidence in you that you can get this done. All right, I’ll see you in the next lecture.

15. Section Summary: PMBOK Guide, Sixth Edition Overview

Well, you did it. You knocked out another section in this course in your journey to earn the PMP. We spent some time in this section talking about the Pmbok Guide, 6th Edition. I know a lot of information in this section, but this is really a highlevel overview of the Pimbach Guide, but it will also glue us in to the remainder of the course. I know these are high level sections, but we’re getting deeper and deeper and deeper, and it’s going to get pretty deep in just a few minutes as we get into some more material about passing the PMP. All right, in this section, we talked about the Pmbok Guide, 6th Edition.

We talked about what is the Pmbok Guide, what are the environments that projects operate in, and how does that affect you as a project manager? We looked at the role of the project manager. What do you do as a project manager? So the activities and expectations of a project manager. Then we got into the knowledge areas. We looked at chapters four all the way to 13. So we looked at project integration

management, project scope management, project schedule management, project cost management. Chapter eight on quality Human Resources. See Copy Resource Management. It’s Human Resources and Physical Resources. So. Chapter nine on Resource Management in the Pinball. Chapter ten on Communications Management. Chapter eleven on Risk Management. Chapter twelve on Procurement Management and 13 on Project Stakeholder Management. So a lot of information we talked about. We also did an assignment right, you did an assignment on how to access the Pinback Guide if you’re a member of PMI. And then I gave you some coaching advice here on how to keep working towards passing the PMP. All right, great section, a lot of information. You’re doing a great job. Just keep moving forward. Got to COVID this material and just observe and absorb as much as you can. All right? Keep moving forward. I’ll see you in the next lecture.