PMI PMP Project Management Professional – Review the PMP Exam Domains

1. Section Overview: Review the PMP Exam Domains

Welcome to this section where we’re going to talk about the PMP exam domains. This is a really important section because I’m going to cover exactly what you’re tested on. A lot of people miss this. That PMI tells us what the exam will test you on. There’s an assumption that it’s only the Pmbok. That’s not true. There are specific things from the Pinbock, but there are topics that are broader than just the Pinbock guide. So we’re going to look at what exactly will you be tested on.

So in this lecture, we’re going to talk about initiating the project. That’s a PMP exam domain. Planning the project, another domain, execute the project, monitor the project, and close the project. That those are all PMP exam domains. Now, if you’ve been around project management for any amount of time, which I know you have as a PMP candidate, you recognize, initiate, plan, execute, monitor, and control and closing. Well, those are the PMP exam domains. A domain is the area, the topic, the discipline that you’re tested on on the PMP exam.

 But there are specific activities that you need to know how to do in order to pass the exam. So this section is all about what PMI gives us in the PMP handbook. And I have an assignment for you in this section where we’re going to walk through the process of downloading this PMP handbook. Then we’ll have a little coaching session. I know you’re looking forward to that. And then we’re going to wrap up with all of these PMP exam domains. So a really important section. It’s all about what you’re about to be tested on as you go in to pass the PMP. All right, let’s hop in and take a look at this now. I’ll see you in the next lecture.

2. Initiate the Project – PMP Exam Domain I

Your goal and my goal is the same and it’s you passing the PMP. Well, in order to pass the PMP, what we really need to look at is what will you be tested on? I mean, so many people that don’t take the time to consider the very specific details that PMI gives us that will be tested on. So in this section, as I mentioned, we’re going to walk through all of these different domains, starting with initiating the project. So initiate the project. This is PMP exam domain one. It’s 13% of the exam. So it’s approximately 26 questions. It’s based on two Pinbuck guide processes, the charter and identify stakeholders. So you’re going to have 26 questions against two processes.

So that’s really important to know, to pay attention to those processes. There are eight tasks that you’ll do when you create a charter and initiate the project. Basically create a charter and identify stakeholders. So in the PMP handbook, these are the tasks we’re going to walk through these. So there are eight tasks on those two processes that account for 26% of your exam or 26 questions. Okay? So the first task is to perform a project assessment. So remember, this is initiating so based on available information, lessons learned, past projects. So really part of your organizational process assets will help you initiate the project. You’re going to meet with stakeholders and you’re going to get a sense of how feasible it is to create these new products or services.

So that’s the first task. You think about initiating some of the beginning work that you do. The second task is you’re looking for key deliverables. So initiating in order to create that charter, right, we have a big picture of what the project is going to create. So what are the key deliverables, what are the business requirements? And the business requirements, we’re talking about value and what constitutes success, how do we know we’re done and how do we know we’re successful? The third task here is to do some stakeholder analysis, which we’ll talk about in detail when we get to the stakeholder chapter, chapter 13 of the Pinbox. But here we’re in initiating. So you’re going to do stakeholder analysis with some tools and techniques. So as you begin to identify stakeholders for your project, you also are doing some analysis.

You want to understand what are their fears or threats, or even perceived fears and threats. The fourth task here in initiating is to look at what are the high level requirements because you’re creating a charter, what are your assumptions and constraints, like whether the team support financing constraints, maybe of a deadline. So you get an understanding of what do you have to deal with and that will help you propose how you will finish the project, what’s your implementation strategy. So this is all in initiative. These are four of our eight tasks.

Let’s look at the second bunch here. So our second set of four tasks. Task number five is to participate in developing the project charter. Well, that one’s a direct correlation to what we’re going to see in Project Integration management, but you have to create a charter. Task six is you want that charter approved. So you need the right sponsor to sign off on your charter. You need someone with the right authority that can make decisions in the project. Task number seven is you’re going to do a benefits analysis. So what is this project going to create? What business value does it create for the organization? And notice it says with relevant stakeholders. That’s a little clue here that we’re talking about business analyst. So there’s another PMI certification.

The PMI PBA. So a little hint there no, some business analyst. We’ll talk about that a little bit later when we get into project integration management. But we’ll see business analysts a lot as we move deeper in the course, especially with scope and requirements gathering. Well, here at Initiating, it’s all about just getting some idea of what are we trying to create and does that align with our organizational strategy and the goal being business value? The last task is to inform stakeholders about the approved charter and then to get some common understanding among the stakeholders of what we’re going to create. Okay, so that is right from PMI. I didn’t make that up. It’s right from PMI and the PMP handbook. In an assignment coming up, I’m going to have you download this handbook, but this is exactly what you’re tested on for the PMP as far as initiating goes. All right, good job. Keep moving forward. We’ll talk about planning next extend.

3. Plan the Project – PMP Exam Domain II

The second group of tasks that we have to know for the PMP exam is all about planning. Planning is an iterative activity. It’s going to happen throughout the project. But for your exam it’s really kind of packaged up as its own process group and really it’s in the Pinbox as well. But what we’re after here is to really understand the 24 PMBOK guide processes and this will account for 24% of your exam. So basically every planning process you can expect two questions. Not saying that’s always how it’s going to hold up, you might have more or less questions in that distribution, but that makes sense to me that it’s 24% of your exam and there are 24 processes in the PMP handbook. Among those 24 processes, there are 13 activities that you have to do and understand for the PMP exam. So let’s take a look at those 13 tasks that you’ll be tested on. The first task is to understand and to assess your project requirements. So we’re talking about the business requirements and the product scope and what you must deliver for the customer. So some planning there to begin with of water we’re creating, it’s also understanding and doing an assessment of the constraints and the assumptions. Notice you’re doing this with stakeholders, so it’s not a solo activity.

The customers, your management, your project team, SME’s for expert judgment, all of those folks are involved here in this assessment and planning of requirements. So we’ll really see that task in chapter five in the Pinbox on project scope management. The second task also in scope management is to create a scope management plan. The scope management plan tells us how will we define scope, how will we create a work breakdown structure, how will we control scope and validate scope. So we’re going to see that plan really follow us through the project because it’s all about scope management. Our next planning task is to create a cost management plan. So the cost management plan is going to follow us as well throughout the project because it’s all about controlling cost and estimating cost and budgeting. And we’ll see all about the cost management plan in chapter seven in the Pinback guide. But this is a task in planning that you’ll be tested on.

Our next two here we have are all about the schedule. So developing the schedule and then identifying milestones, mapping our scope and activities, our activities list and resource management plans. So you can see how this is really overlapping a few knowledge areas here. Obviously It’s schedule which is chapter six in our Pinbuck guide and cost being chapter seven. So six is on schedule and it also has some inroads into HR. So that would be chapter nine with our resource management because we need people, we need materials and equipment that helps us build the schedule and actually do the work to hit our milestones.

Our next task is to develop a human resource management plan. So this is in chapter nine between this and the Pinback guide. You might notice a little difference here in the Pinback guide. It’s the resource management plan. Well in our task here, they call it still the HR management plan. It’s the same concept, but the resource management plan also includes physical resources. So equipment, materials, facilities. The HR plan only addresses people, or the resource management plan addresses both. We will have to define what resources do we need, people and physical resources. So we need to think about how do we get people on the team, how will we utilize them and report on their time and then how will they be released from the project when they’re no longer needed or being utilized. Our next task that we have in the planning, task six is to create a communications management plan. And this correlates to chapter ten in the Pinbox on communications management.

So we want to create a communications management plan that follows our project structure, considers our stakeholder requirements and then what information is needed, when, what modality, how you protect it. So factors like that will affect our communications management plan. Task seven is developing a procurement management plan. And this is chapter twelve in the Pmbok guide that if we have to purchase, we’re going to need a procurement management plan. So this will direct us on how do we find vendors, how do we purchase, how do we do contracting, how do we do contract administration and audits, things of that nature.

So all about procurement management is task seven in planning. Task eight is to develop the quality management plan where the quality management plan will define what are the quality standards that you have to adhere to. And then also how will you assure that quality is in the project. So how will you do quality assurance where we’re preventing mistakes and how will you do quality control where you want to inspect the product you’re creating to ensure that it is of quality to keep mistakes away from the customer. So task eight is module eight in the Pinbox when it comes to quality management. So this is all about quality management planning in this knowledge, in this process group and the knowledge area of quality. Task nine of 13 for planning is to create a change management plan because we want to be able to manage changes and to control changes and to assure that changes are accounted for. And so this is chapter four of the Pinbox.

When we talk about integrated change control, we’ll see a change management plan because changes aren’t just scope that we could have changes to cost, to schedule, to our contract, but also we could have changes to our documents that may have to go through change control. So we’ll talk about that in chapter four in the Pinbox with project integration Management. Task ten of 13 is to create a risk management.

So the plan for risk management will create a risk management plan. And this plan is all about how will you identify risk, how will you analyze risk with qualitative or quantitative analysis? How will you create risk responses and contingency plans or fallback plans? And then how will you monitor risk in your project. So we’ll look at that in chapter eleven in the Pinbox on risk management. All right, three more tasks for this process group that you need to know for your exam. Task eleven is then to you take your plan and you have to get approval so you present it to the appropriate or relevant stakeholders. So you’re talking properly.

Your manager could be some key stakeholders like the CIO or CEO where you are. But whatever is relevant to your organization, your policies and procedures is what we’re after here. Task twelve is you’re going to do a kickoff meeting. The kickoff meeting is really the start of the project and we’ll talk more about this coming up. But we’re going to communicate that we’re leaving planning and now we’re going into executing. So we’re kicking off the actual work. We’ll talk more about that later in the course. Task 13 is to create a stakeholder management plan. The stakeholder management plan will be how will you identify stakeholders, how will you engage stakeholders and manage that engagement throughout the course.

So that’s our last task. It also happens to be the last chapter in the Pinball guide, chapter 13 on Stakeholder Management. All right, so these are the planning tasks that we’ll map to your 24 planning processes. So don’t ignore these. I encourage you to look these over and keep these in the back of your mind as we move through the course because you’ll see these different planning tasks come into play. All right, good job. Keep moving forward. I’ll see you in the next lecture and we’re going to talk about execution.

4. Execute the Project – PMP Exam Domain III

Our next domain of tasks for your PMP exam is on project execution. This accounts for 31% of the PMP exam, so roughly 62 questions just on execution there are seven tasks and there are ten PIMB guide processes. So you can see this is really a section that you want to pay attention to. Project management is about getting things done. So if you want to get things done, you have to execute. So really know these tasks for your exam. Let’s look at these seven tasks. Now the first task is acquiring and managing resources. So you want to get resources on your team. So we’re talking about people, but we also need to acquire and manage physical resources.

So procurement is involved here as well, materials and equipment. Our second task is to manage task execution based on your project management plan. So you need a work authorization and you’re going to lead and develop the project team so that they can achieve project deliverables. So our resource management plan from chapter nine will come back here as well. Implement quality management plan. So we’re talking about quality assurance and doing quality control. And that here in Execution we’re worried about quality assurance or assuring and managing quality. That quality is planned into the project, not inspected.

 In quality control comes in the next process group. Right now it’s assuring or managing quality. Task four is implementing approved changes. So as stakeholders make change request, or as we have corrective action or preventive action, those change requests will flow through integrated change control and we’ll see that exact process in chapter four. But when we do integrated change control, if we have approved changes then those Are allowed to enter the project. And so we have to get those approved changes into our plan back in planning. And then once we have it there, here in execution, we assure, we ensure that the work is being done. So this is all about implementing those approved changes. Three more tasks here in executing. Task five is implementing approved actions for risk management.

So we’re talking about minimizing the impact and could be the opportunity, so probability and impact, the probability of a risk event to take advantage of opportunities in the project. Now an opportunity is a positive risk event, so you have an opportunity for a cost savings or to get done early or to save time. Those are opportunities that generally we want those to happen. A risk is a threat that we want to not allow those to happen. So we’ll talk about this in chapter eleven in the pmbok on risk management, but it ties into executing because we have to do those activities.

Task six is to manage the flow of information. So we’re talking about the communications management plan. You have a plan to communicate, so now you have to communicate and then task seven is to keep that stakeholder relationship. So to keep stakeholders engaged and create synergy and buy in and to keep people excited about your project. So this is all stakeholder management, which we’ll see in chapter 13 in the Pinbox. All right, those are our seven executing tasks for the PMP exam. Keeping moving forward. We’re going to talk about monitoring and controlling tasks next.

5. Monitor the Project – PMP Exam Domain IV

Our next group of tasks that you need to know for the PNP exam is about monitoring the project. There are seven tasks that you need to know with monitoring the project, and those seven tasks will account for 25% of the PMP exam. In the Pmbok Guide Six edition, there are twelve processes that are part of monitoring and controlling. Let’s take a look at these tasks. Now, the first seven of these tasks will begin with measuring project performance. So this is a good idea that we could map this to earned value management, but project performance could also be mapped to quantifying variances and then applying or recommending corrective actions.

The second task is managing changes. So monitoring and controlling changes. Typically we think about changes, they’re coming from scope, but they could also come from our schedule. They could come from cost and contract, and there’ll be a few other times some changes come in as well, verify that project deliverables are meeting our quality standards. So our quality management plan. So this is about quality control, monitor and assess risk. So we’ll need our risk management plan. And this is all about looking at the risk and seeing if the exposure has changed, if the probability and impact has changed, and then also looking at what about opportunities? Have those changed at all? So we have threats and opportunities. So this ties again to chapter eleven on risk management. Our next task is to review the issue log. So we’ll look at the issue log.

This will be a log that we update throughout the project. And then we want to see if there’s anything we should do with corrective actions or even preventive actions or how else can we address these issues because we don’t want them to continue to affect the project. So our issue log will keep an ongoing record throughout the project, and we’ll see that several times in the course. Task number six is to capture and analyze your lessons learned.

So we’ll see lessons learned a lot through the course that will be updating. Lessons learned, it’s part of our organizational process assets. The lessons learned we create now we can use in our current project and we share with other project managers. And then it becomes historical information, so it becomes part of OPA. Task number seven is to monitor procurement activities. So we’re going to keep an eye on our procurement activities and making sure that this is in alignment with our procurement management plan. So it’s all about verifying compliance with project objectives. All right, great job. We’ll take a look next at our last set of exam tasks when we talk about close the project. So closing is next, of course.

6. Close the Project – PMP Exam Domain V

Our last set of project management tasks for the PMP exam domain is on closing the project or phase. So we’ll talk about close the project or phase here. This is the last exam domain. It accounts for 7% of the PMP exam. There are seven tasks that you need to know. Let’s look at the seven tasks that you’ll do as part of close the project. Task one is you want to get final acceptance. We have to get people to accept the work that we’ve done. So we need the stakeholders to sign off on what we’ve created. The second thing that we do is we do some operational transfer. We do a transfer the ownership of the deliverables from the project team to the stakeholders.

Now somebody else owns it, not us. Task number three is we need financial, legal, and administrative closure. So whatever the generally accepted practices are, whatever your contract calls for, whatever your enterprise environmental factors, call for some way to close that out. And this is also talking about the transfer of liability that once they accept it and they own it, we’re no longer liable that it’s been approved and now it’s on them. Task number four, we want to share the final project reports. You have to create this final project report and share it out with the appropriate stakeholders. The final project report is documented as part of the communications management plan because that is a communication. Task five is you have to organize all your lessons learned. So throughout the project, you want to keep a good lessons learned documentation that makes this task a little bit easier, and that helps you do a comprehensive project review, and then that becomes part of OPA, your organization’s knowledge base. Task number six is you archive project documentation. You don’t ignore it. You don’t throw it away.

You don’t stick it in the hallway closet. That there needs to be a way to archive that information in case you need it later. So you want to generally out in the world have a way to archive information. But definitely for your exam, you’re going to be a process of the project’s done. How do I archive the information? Very important task there for closing. And then the last one here is you want to get feedback from your stakeholders based on how satisfied were they with the project.

You do an assessment or an end of project review, or you might that is a project post mortem where you want to get feedback on how they felt the project went, and that helps you better manage projects in the future. So those are the seven tasks you need to know for closing on the PMP exam. And of course, we’ll see that type of business throughout the course when we talk about these different processes. All right, good job. Keep moving forward.

7. Review the PMP Exam Domains

Great job finishing this section about the PMP exam domains. I know there’s a lot of information in this section, and some of that’s really tedious and dry, but it’s important for us to review that. And I encourage you to come back to this or to come back to the PMP handbook that you downloaded periodically, because you’re really need to know that information as you go in and prepare to pass the exam. It’s really important because that’s what you’re tested on. Don’t ignore the content of this lecture. And so we talked about the five domains that we talked about initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, controlling, and your favorite, closing. So those five domains and the tasks within those are really what you’re tested on.

Now we’ll correlate that business. As we move through the remainder of the course, we’re going to be looking at all of those process groups, and then how does that relate to test material? So your assignment was to download and to read the PMP handbook. And so that will be a good umbrella of what the remainder of the course has that you can always reference back to that PMP handbook and say, is this something that I really know how to do or should I spend some more time studying? And so as we move through the course and we talk about these topics, we’re also talking about those in relation to the Pmbok Guide Six edition, that those should mesh up in your study efforts. Did you know that you are not studying to take the PMP exam, you’re studying to pass the PMP exam.

I believe there’s a real difference in the mindset between I’m studying to take a test and I’m studying to pass the test. I think it’s important for us to have PMI, that positive mental attitude that as we study that I’m studying. I’m doing this work because I’m studying to pass, not because I have to go take it. There’s a difference, I think, between having to do something and wanting to do something that you have to study. It’s like homework, right? You have a negative connotation there. But if I want to do it, then I’m excited about it, that I get to do it. This is a great opportunity. So part of that PMI is to think about that I don’t have to do this. This is something that I want to do, that I’m choosing to do, that you know, is going to be good for your career. It’s going to be good for you as a project manager. It’s going to be good for your organization. It’s going to give you opportunities. I know it’s tough. It’s hard work.

It’s like saying you want to go lose weight or you want to go run a marathon. You have to give up some things like pie and cake and pizza, all three things that I love. But you have to give that up in order to be able to lose the weight or to run the marathon or what have you. So same is true here in our efforts to pass the PMP that I know you’re giving up other things in your life. I know you could be going to the movies or going to a baseball game or watching TV or just relaxing on the weekend, but you’re making a choice that you choose choosing to do this because you realize it’s an investment. And that’s part of PMI, and I want you to have that and continue to do that as we move through the course. And I’ll be here to remind you of that. So, PMI. PMI. Positive mental attitude. Great job. Keep up the PMI, and I’ll see you in the next lecture.