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

   1. INPUT: Project Statement of Work

   2. OUTPUT: Project Charter

2. Stakeholder Management

   1. OUTPUT: Stakeholder register.

3. Develop Project Management Plan

4. Project Scope Management

   1. OUTPUT: Requirements documentation and requirements traceability matrix.

5. Collect Requirements

   1. Conduct interviews and workshops.

6. Define Scope

7. Work Breakdown Structure

   1. Divide deliverables into manageable pieces.

8. Plan Schedule Management

   1. OUTPUT: Schedule Management Plan.

   2. levels of accuracy for activity estimations.

9. Define Activities

   1. OUTPUT: Activity list and Milestone list.

10. Sequence Activities

    1. Precedence Diagramming Method (PDM)

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

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

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

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

11. Estimate Activity Resources

12. Estimate Activity Durations

13. Project Cost Management

14. Estimate Costs

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

15. Determine Budget

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

16. Project Quality Management

    1. 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).

17. Plan Quality Management

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

18. Human Resource Management

19. Plan Communications Management

20. Risk Management

21. Identify Risks

22. Qualitative Risk Analysis

23. Quantitative Risk Analysis

24. Procurement Management

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

25. Stakeholder Management

26. Integration Management

    1. 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).

27. Quality Management - independent audit should be performed.

28. Direct & Manage Project Work

29. Perform Quality Assurance

30. Acquire Project Team

31. Develop Project Team

32. Manage Project Team

    1. Avoid conflict

    2. Smooth conflict by emphasizing areas of agreement.

    3. Compromise by getting some satisfaction to all.

    4. Force by pushing your own view point.

    5. Collaborate or problem solve to get consensus.

33. Manage Communications

34. Conduct Procurements

35. Manage Stakeholder Engagement

36. Monitor & Control Project Work

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

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

39. Validate Scope - acceptance of the completed deliverables.

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

41. Control Costs -

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

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

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

43. Control Risks

44. Control Procurements

45. Control Stakeholder Engagement

46. Close Project or Phase

    1. Note lessons learned.

    2. Release resources

47. Close Procurements

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