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Project Management Overview

The Project Management Professional (PMP) certification exam is based on the contents of the Project Management Body of Knowledge. John P. Muldoon has posted a summary of the PMBOK here, which addresses all 47 covered processes. Here's a rough outline of this summary, the purpose being to give a quick glance at what the field of project management covers.


  1. Develop Project Charter

  2. INPUT: Project Statement of Work

  3. OUTPUT: Project Charter

  4. Stakeholder Management

  5. OUTPUT: Stakeholder register.

  6. Develop Project Management Plan

  7. Project Scope Management

  8. OUTPUT: Requirements documentation and requirements traceability matrix.

  9. Collect Requirements

  10. Conduct interviews and workshops.

  11. Define Scope

  12. Work Breakdown Structure

  13. Divide deliverables into manageable pieces.

  14. Plan Schedule Management

  15. OUTPUT: Schedule Management Plan.

  16. levels of accuracy for activity estimations.

  17. Define Activities

  18. OUTPUT: Activity list and Milestone list.

  19. Sequence Activities

  20. Precedence Diagramming Method (PDM)

  21. Finish to start - Successor cannot start until predecessor has finished.

  22. Finish to finish - Successor cannot finish until predecessor has finished.

  23. Start to start - Successor cannot start until predecessor has started.

  24. Start to finish - Successor cannot finish until predecessor has started.

  25. Estimate Activity Resources

  26. Estimate Activity Durations

  27. Project Cost Management

  28. Estimate Costs

  29. Begin with Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) ranges that should decrease as more information becomes available.

  30. Determine Budget

  31. The project budget includes the cost baseline (the approved budget) and a management reserve.

  32. Project Quality Management

  33. Quality is the degree to which requirements are met. Grade is the design. Low grade software (with limited functionality) may be of high quality (in that it does not have any defects).

  34. Plan Quality Management

  35. Measured by cost of conformance (to avoid failures) and the cost of nonconformance (money spent because of failures).

  36. Human Resource Management

  37. Plan Communications Management

  38. Risk Management

  39. Identify Risks

  40. Qualitative Risk Analysis

  41. Quantitative Risk Analysis

  42. Procurement Management

  43. Consider fixed price contracts; cost reimbursable contracts; and times and materials contracts.

  44. Stakeholder Management

  45. Integration Management

  46. Corrective action (to re-align work with the plan); preventive action (to maintain work with the plan); defect repair (fix nonconforming product); and updates (changes to plans).

  47. Quality Management - independent audit should be performed.

  48. Direct & Manage Project Work

  49. Perform Quality Assurance

  50. Acquire Project Team

  51. Develop Project Team

  52. Manage Project Team

  53. Avoid conflict

  54. Smooth conflict by emphasizing areas of agreement.

  55. Compromise by getting some satisfaction to all.

  56. Force by pushing your own view point.

  57. Collaborate or problem solve to get consensus.

  58. Manage Communications

  59. Conduct Procurements

  60. Manage Stakeholder Engagement

  61. Monitor & Control Project Work

  62. Perform Integrated Change Control - reviewing all change requests, approving some, managing the change, and communicating those changes.

  63. Control Quality - perform attribute sampling (to see if something is conforming or not); and variable sampling (measure the degree of conformity).

  64. Validate Scope - acceptance of the completed deliverables.

  65. Control Schedule - Is there any deviation from the schedule?

  66. Control Costs -

  67. Track Planned Value (PV), Earned Value (EV) and Actual Cost (AC).

  68. To-Complete Performance Index (TCPI) - how much to meet a goal.

  69. Control Communications - meet the information needs of the stakeholders.

  70. Control Risks

  71. Control Procurements

  72. Control Stakeholder Engagement

  73. Close Project or Phase

  74. Note lessons learned.

  75. Release resources

  76. Close Procurements


Note that each stage consists of INPUTS, TOOLS & TECHNIQUES, and OUTPUTS.




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