Lessons learned

I like to share what I experienced regarding the PMP exam with you

Resources used

• PMBOK
  
• Rita
  
• Kim heldman
  
• Head first
  
• PmStudy
  
• Rita FastTrack
  
• Head first exam
  
• Oliver lehman exam
  
• Online free exams
  

 
 

Comments on the used resources

Resource	Weak points	Strengthens	General comment
PMBOK			No debate you have to read it at least 2~3 times and very slowly
Rita	Ego tone Famous chart doesn't belong to any thing A lot of extraneous		In my opinion this book was not useful at all
Kim		Is explaining the PMBOK Arranged by process groups	Excellent book but need very hard study – you need to study hard.
Headfirst			Very good book at the start to understand what is going on
Pmstudy		Very important material to review before the exam Very useful exams	I used this for the last 21 days before the exam and I bought their program which afforded me about 100 $
Rita FastTrack			You can use it to train yourself only, but use it by the knowledge areas only
Headfirst exam			OK, nice to take it
Oliver lehman			Which is the most difficult free exam I experienced take it only if you are very self confidence
Online free exams			No need for them

General comments

• For sure you need to plan your study and work your plan
  
• You need to study hard for at least 45 days, and for 4~6 hours daily
  
• You need to understand, don't try to anything except understanding
  
• You need to take trial full 4 hours exam and putting yourself in the exam mood
  

Days before the exam

• Be cool
  
• Eat healthy
  
• Drink a lot of water
  
• Don't overdue caffeine
  

Day before the exam

• Wake up very early – to sleep early 
  
• Don't study anything and stay cool
  

Exam approach

• Go to the test center earlier at list half an hour
  
• I take a break in the middle of the exam to have some snacks and juice
  
• Say to yourself ISA you will do it
  

   
   

GOOD LUCK

Scope management

It is about doing the right stuff

It is about set the team goals and keep everybody on track

Product scope; it is about the product features and functions that you and your team are building

Project scope; it is about the work that need to be done to build your product, it is what the PM concerned with

Scope creep; uncontrolled changes that cause the team to do extra work

The project scope include every single thing that made by you and the team and that includes the project plan and other project management documents

There are a plenty of things that are deliverables but the end user will not even see it like project schedule, specifications, blueprints and budget, although some of them you made as PM and some aren't you have made, your job only to ensure they got done

Your job as PM to worry about the work the team does to build the product, and your team job is to worry about actually building it - but that doesn't mean you can't get their cooperation to write down all the work needed to build the product

It is not your job as PM to decide which feature is the best for the product, it just to help everybody involved to keep their priorities in mind and do what is best for the project

You always have to know what the work to be done to build your product before starting your project

The scope management plan; describes how will you write down the scope, ensure it is right and keep it up to date

The scope management plan is the solution of the following problems

1. The team had trouble getting the project off the ground
   
   
2. There were a lot of false starts
   
   
3. The sponsors and stakeholders are unpredictable
   
   
4. There were a whole lot of changes
   

The 5 scope management processes; each process in the scope management processes is designed to help to avoid the scope problems that may get your project off-track

1. Collect requirements;
   It is the process of defining and documenting stakeholders needs to meet the project objectives
   
   
2. Define scope;
   
   Is the process of develop detailed description of the project and product
   
   The project scope statement is built upon the major deliverables, assumptions and constraints that are documented during the initiation process
   
   Existing risk, constraints and assumptions are analyzed for completeness
   
   Additional risk, constrains and assumptions are added
   
   
   When you do this right your stakeholders will never be unpredictable because you already understand their needs
   
   

   

   
   

   
   

3. Create WBS process;
   
   It is about organizing the team work into work packages or discrete pieces of work
   
   By doing this you will keep the momentum of the project form the start
   
   

   

   
   

   
   

4. Control scope;
   
   The scope changes must controlled using the integrated change control
   
   The most frustrating problems comes as a result to uncontrolled changes
   
   

   

   
   

   
   

5. Verify scope;
   
   It is about comparing what you have done against what you had been written down in the scope statement
   

   

   
   

   
   

Risk management

What are Risks?

Uncertain Events or conditions

Components of your project involve uncertainty.

The degree of uncertainty, that a project task could not be completed within the planned time or planned budget.

Involve the unplanned component

Dealing with the unknown

 
 

Risks might have one or more causes

Risk causes or conditions

Requirement,

Assumption,

Condition and

Constraint that may create possibility of negative or positive outcomes

 
 

Risk conditions could include aspects of project's or organization's environment that may contribute to project risk like

Immature project management practices

Lack of integrated management system

Concurrent multiple projects

Dependency on external participants who cannot be controlled

 
 

If it occurs has an effect on at least one project objective.

Project objectives are

Scope

Schedule

Cost

Quality

 
 

Organizations perceive risk as the effect of uncertainty on their project or organizational objectives.

 
 

What is -/+ Risks?

Negative risk has a negative impact on the project aspects as to not get it completed within planned time or budget.

 
 

Positive risk (opportunity) has positive impact on the project aspects as reducing time and/or amount of money needed to get your project completed

 
 

Known versus Unknown risks

Known risks; are those that have been identified and analyzed, making it possible to plan responses for those risks

Unknown risks; those that cannot be managed proactively, which suggests that the project team should create contingency plan

 
 

Risk management objectives; is to make change to increase the probability and impact of positive events, and decrease the probability and impact of negative events

 
 

Risk tolerance; organizations and stakeholders are willing to accept varying degrees of risk. Risks that are threats to a project may be accepted if the risks are within tolerance and are in balance with the rewards that may be gained by taking the risks, for example that adopting fast tracking the schedule technique is a risk taken to achieve the reward created by an earlier completion date.

 
 

Risk attitudes;

Individual and groups adopt attitudes toward risk that influence the way they respond.

Risk attitudes are driven by the perception and tolerance of the people which should be made explicit wherever possible.

 
 

 
 

Risk management includes the processes of conducting risk

Management planning,

Identification,

Analysis,

Response planning and

Monitoring and control on a project

 
 

A consistent approach to risk should be developed for each project, and communications about risk and its handling should be open and honest.

 
 

Risk responses reflect an organization perceived balance between risk taking and risk avoidance.

 
 

To be successful the organization should be committed to address the risk management proactively and consistently throughout the project

 
 

A conscious decision must be made at all levels of the organization to actively identify and pursue effective risk management during the life of the project

 
 

Risk exists the moment a project conceived

Perform quality assurance

Introduction

Simply it is all about 2 aspects

Doing the right things according to quality management plan

Doing things better

 
 

From PMBOK the quality assurance definition is

Auditing quality requirements, and results from QC measurements (actual) to

Ensure appropriate quality standards and metrics (Operational decisions) are used - so we proofed doing the things right according to plan

 
 

Providing an umbrella for continuous process improvement, which is an iterative means for improving the quality of all processes - so we proofed doing things better

 
 

Continuous improvement

Reduces waste

Eliminates activities that don't add value

 
 

This allows processes to operate at increased levels of efficiency (doing the right things) and effectiveness (doing the right things)

 
 

QA department, or similar organization, often oversees QA activities, regardless of the unit's title QA support, may be provided to

PM team

The management of the performing organization

The customer or sponsor

Other stakeholders not actively involved in the work of the project

 
 

Why the quality assurance process of the executing process group?

As the executing process group consists of the processes performed to complete the work defined in the PM plan to satisfy the project specifications, so the QA process is part of it.

 
 

Inputs

1. Project management plan
   
   1. Quality management plan; how quality assurance will be performed.
      
   2. Process improvement plan; what are the steps of analyzing the processes to identify activities which enhance their value
      
2. Quality metrics
   
3. Quality control measurements; the results of QC activities, which used to analyze and evaluate the quality standards and processes of the performing organization
   
4. Work performance information; which routinely collected as the project progress. Performance results may support the audit like
   
   1. Technical performance measures
      
   2. Project deliverable status
      
   3. Schedule progress
      
   4. Cost incurred
      

 
 

Tools and techniques

• Plan quality and perform QC tools & techniques can be used in QA activities
  
• Quality audits;
  
  • We have the project activities = A versus organizational and project policies, standards and procedures = B
    
  • Quality audit is structured, independent review to determine whether A comply with B
    
  • Quality audit objectives
    
    • Identify good/best practices being implemented
      
    • Identify all the gaps/shortcomings
      
    • Share good practices being introduced or implemented in similar project in the organization and/or industry
      
    • Help the team raise productivity, by proactively offer assistance in positive manner to improve implementation of the processes
      
    • Highlight contributions of each audit in lesson learned repository.
      
  • The subsequent effort to correct any deficiencies should result in
    
    • Reduce cost of quality
      
    • Increase in customer/sponsor acceptance of the project's product
      
  • Quality audit may be scheduled or random
    
  • Quality audit may be conducted by internal or external auditors.
    
  • Quality audit can confirm the implementation of approved change requests
    
    • Corrective actions
      
    • Defect repair
      
    • Preventive actions
      

       
       

• Process analysis;
  
  • Process analysis follows the outlined steps in the process improvement plan to identify needed improvement.
    
  • Process analysis examines problems experienced, constraints experienced and non-value-added activities identified during process operation
    
  • Process analysis includes root cause analysis technique
    
    • Root cause analysis is a specific technique to
      
      • Identify a problem
        
      • Discover the underlying causes that lead to the problem
        
      • Develop a preventive actions
        

 
 

Outputs

1. OPA updates
   
2. Change request
   
3. PM plan updates
   
   1. Quality management plan
      
   2. Schedule management plan
      
   3. Cost management plan
      
4. Project document updates
   
   1. Quality audit reports
      
   2. Training plans
      
   3. Process documentation
      

Plan quality

Introduction

It is the process of Identifying quality standards and/or requirements for the project and the product, and documenting how the project will demonstrate compliance

So from the definition the planning process is concerned with 2 parts

1. Targeting the standards or the requirements
   
2. Devising a plan to meet and satisfy those requirements
   

This process has 2 main outputs

1. Quality management plan which describe how the quality policy will be implemented by the PM team during the course of project
   
2. Process improvement plan which documenting the actions needed to analyze the processes to ultimately increase the customer value
   

Contract may have quality provisions that should be considered when developing QM plan

Inputs

Scope baseline

Stakeholders register

Schedule base line

Cost performance base line

Risk register

EEF (standards & regulations)

OPA (quality policy)

Standards & regulation VS policy as inputs

The project manager should consider any standards, regulations and policies that exist concerning the work of the project when writing the QM plan

If possible it is good idea to include info from all of them in the QM plan, if not at least you must reference them and say where you can find them.

Standards and regulations are part of EEF while policies are part of OPA.

It is the PM responsibility to ensure that all stakeholders are aware of and understand all of them.

Standards

Is something that approved by recognized body and that employs rules, guidelines and characteristics that should be followed.

Are not legally mandatory, but it is really a good idea to follow them.

Many organizations or industries have standards in place that are proven best practice.

Disregarding accepted standards can have significant consequences.

Regulations

Is mandatory and always imposed by governments or institutions.

Some organizations have its own regulations.

Requires strict adherence particularly in the case of government-imposed regulations, or stiff penalties and fines could result and may be even jail time if the offensive is serious enough

Policies

It is guidelines published by the executive management that describe the company quality policies that should be adopted for projects the company undertakes

If no policies it is up to PM to adopt one for the project

Tools and techniques (what are tools or techniques that we are in need for, or could help, to determine how will we achieve product and project quality)

Cost benefit analysis;

Considering the benefits versus the costs of meeting the quality requirements, note that quality benefits are customer satisfaction, high the productivity, less rework and lower costs

Cost of quality (COQ);

Includes all the costs incurred over the life of the product

Screen clipping taken: 6/15/2009, 3:45 PM

Control charts;

Used to determine whether or not a process is stable or has a predictable performance. Here we must know the following

• The upper and lower specification limit which are based on the contract requirements and represent maximum and minimum values allowed thus might be penalties associated with exceeding those limits.
  
• The upper and lower control limit which are set by the PM and/or appropriate stakeholders and represent the point at which there is need for corrective actions b4 exceeding the specifications limit. The control limit in repetitive processes is +/- 3σ, a process is considered out of control when exceeding the control limit or if 7 consecutive points above or below the mean
  
• Mean which represent the goal
  

  
  

Control charts could be used to monitor various types of output variables.

Although they are commonly used to track repetitive activities required for producing manufactured lots, the might be used to monitor

• Schedule and cost variances
  
• Volume
  
• Frequency of scope changes
  
• Management results to help determining if the managements processes are in control
  

Screen clipping taken: 6/15/2009, 4:32 PM

Benchmark

Look at the past project to determine ideas for improvement on the current project and to provide a basis to use in measurement of quality performance

Design of experiments (DOE)

Statistical method, for identifying which factors may influence specific variables of a product or process.

For example, a software application has performance, functionality, reliability and usability variables may be influenced by a lot of factors relatively, you use the DOE to determine the number and the type of tests that should be performed and their impact on the cost of quality.

Q: When to use DOE?

• Our first reason from the previous should be …. When we have a situation many variable factors, one or more of them could cause problems, and also when variable factors may be interaction to cause problem
  
• When testing a solution to ensure there is no side effect, like the automotive designers do to determine which combination of suspension and tires will produce the most desirable ride characteristic at reasonable cost
  
• When there are not time or money to try every combination of variables. This point means the DOE give you the ability to put specific variable, combination of some of them or all of them into test which gives you the advantage of time and money
  

  
  

Conclusion; DOE equips us with statistical framework for systematically changing all the important factors, rather than changing the factors one at a time.

Statistical sampling

It is all about choosing part of a population of interest for inspection. From this definition we devise that there is a substantial body of knowledge on statistical sampling thus the PM should be familiar with a variety of sampling techniques, visit this URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sampling_techniques

For sure without saying in your quality management plan you should include the size and frequency of the sample, so the cost of quality will include the cost of test and expected scrap etc…

Flowcharting

It is a graphical representation of a process showing the relationships among process steps.

There are many styles but all styles share the following

All of them show the process activities

Where the decision points are

The order of processing

So the process flowcharting helps the project team

Anticipating where the quality problems might occur. So the awareness of potential problems can result in the development of test procedures or approaches for dealing with them

Proprietary quality management methodologies

There are a lot of these methodologies like six sigma, lean six sigma, CMMI and etc…

Additional tools

• Brainstorming
  
• Affinity diagrams; used to organize ideas and data for review and analysis visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affinity_diagram
  
• Force field analysis; PMBOK 4 said the following; diagrams of the forces for and against change. Let's say simply the following
  
  • We have goal to achieve
    
  • Forces = factors
    
  • We have factors driving forward toward the goal (helping forces) and we have factors blocking driving toward the goal (hindering forces)
    
  • This tools is helpful in the field of process management
    
• Nominal group technique; to allow idea to be brainstormed in small groups then to be reviewed by a larger group
  
• Matrix diagrams; which include 2, 3 or 4 groups of information and show relationships between factors, causes and objectives. That represented in rows and columns and the intersection cells could be filled with the information that describe the nature of the relationship visit http://www.asq.org/learn-about-quality/new-management-planning-tools/overview/matrix-diagram.html
  
• Prioritization matrices; provide a way for ranking diverse set of problems and/or issues by their importance (most commonly used during brainstorming). Used in process improvement to help prioritizing decisions. Visit http://www.micquality.com/six_sigma_glossary/prioritization_matrices.htm
  

Outputs

• Quality management plan;
  
  • Describe how the PM team will implement the organization's quality policy
    
  • Provides input to the overall project management plan and include
    
    • Quality control
      
    • Quality assurance
      
    • Continuous process improvement approaches for the project
      
  • Should be reviewed early in the project to ensure that the decisions are based on accurate information so we gain cost reduction, prevent schedule overrun due to rework
    

    
    

• Quality metrics;
  
  • Know as operational definition, describes in very specific terms, a project or product attributes and how QC process will measure it
    
  • Measurement is actual value
    
  • Quality matrices used in QA and QC processes
    
  • Metrics like on-time performance, budget control, defect frequency, failure rate, availability, reliability and test coverage
    
    • Example 1; you are managing a project of opening new restaurant on July next year, one of your deliverables is the procurement of flatware for 500 place settings, the operational definitions here may include
      
      • Delivery on May,15 for the all 500 or
        
      • Delivery for 250 on May,15 and the rest on May,31
        
    • Example 2; may be staying in +/- 10% of the budget to measure the cost of every deliverable
      

    
    

• Quality checklists;
  
  • stretchered tool, usually component specific, used to verify that a set of required steps has been performed
    
  • Might be simple or complex based of project requirements and practices
    
  • Many organizations have it own checklists to ensure consistency of preformed tasks
    
  • There are a lot of domains or application areas have its own checklist which imposed on them by professional associations or commercial service providers
    
  • Used in quality control process
    

    
    

• Process improvement plan;
  
  • The steps for analyzing processes to identify activities which enhance their value, areas to consider
    
    • Process boundaries; the purpose of the process, its start and end, inputs, outputs, required data, owner and its stakeholders
      
    • Process configuration; how and when it interacts with other processes
      
    • Process metrics; to allow efficient analysis for the process
      
    • Targets for improved performance; to guide the improvement activities
      

    
    

• Project documents updates;
  
  • Stakeholders register
    
  • Responsibility assignment matrix