PMP Study Notes Series

PMBOK speaks about project management practices and standards in 5 Project Management Process Groups and 10 knowledge areas. All the project management process groups have all or some knowledge areas used or all the Knowledge areas were used in all or some process groups. Sorry, if it is confusing, but to keep it short, you can start preparing on process groups or on knowledge areas whichever is easy for you. On the first or second day of reading you should be able to make a decision which path to take, either start with process groups or with knowledge areas. Don’t worry about that. For clarity, please refer to table 3.1 on Page 61 of PMBOK 5.

The series of articles we planned to publish will help you in preparing for PMP in a very less time. These articles are prepared in a capsulated way to save your time in reading and understanding the concepts. Every article being published will also have sufficient questions at their end. Answering these questions will help you to understand the questioning pattern of the PMP exam and also test your understanding of the respective concept immediately after reading them. There will also be couples of articles on ITTO (Input, Output, Tools and Techniques).

1. Introduction and Glossary of Project Management Terminology:

This topic comprises of 5 sub topics wrapped in a series of 5 thought provoking articles. You will also find adequate number of practice questions at the end of each article. The sub topics covered are

1. Mind set required from Project Managers & PMP Aspirants
2. Project/Program/Portfolio in PMI Terms
3. Different Roles in Project management – Covering various Industries
4. Responsibilities of a Project Manager
5. Social & Political Influences on project management

2. Project Management – A Business / Sponsor perspective:

This topic will comprise of 2 sub topics in a series of 3 articles which will have sufficient number of practice questions at the end of the article. The sub topics covered are

1. Business Need & Value realization
2. Vision Formulation and aligning to the business value

3. Organizational Types & Their Influences on Project & Project Mgmt:

This topic comprises of 6 sub topics wrapped in a series of 6 thought provoking articles. You will also find adequate number of practice questions at the end of each article. The sub topics covered are

1. Defining and Identifying Organizational Type
2. Functional Organization
3. Matrix Organizations (weak, balanced, strong)
4. Projectized Organization
5. Organizational Process
6. Enterprise Environmental Factors and Their Influence

4. PM Process Groups:

This topic comprises of 6 sub topics wrapped in a series of 6 thought provoking articles. You will also find adequate number of practice questions at the end of each article. The sub topics covered are

1. Initiation
2. Planning
3. Execution
4. Monitoring & Controlling
5. Closing

5. PM Knowledge Areas:

This topic comprises of 10 sub topics wrapped in a series of 22 thought provoking articles. You will also find adequate number of practice questions at the end of each article. The sub topics covered are

1. Integration Management – Part 1 and Part 2
2. Scope Management – Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3
3. Time Management – Part 1 and Part 2
4. Cost Management – Part 1 and Part 2
5. Quality Management – Part 1 and Part 2
6. Human Resource Management – Part 1 and Part 2
7. Communication Management – Part 1 and Part 2
8. Risk Management – Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3
9. Procurement Management – Part 1 and Part 2
10. Stake Holder Management – Part 1 and Part 2

6. Knowledge Areas vs Process Groups Mapping Chart:

This topic does not have any sub topics it is mainly aimed to identify how process groups and knowledge areas are related or performed in one another. Read more »

7. ITTO – Project Management Mathematics- Initiation:

This topic comprises of 11 sub topics wrapped in a series of 4 thought provoking articles. You will also find adequate number of practice questions at the end of each article. The sub topics covered are

1. Benefits Measurement
2. Constrained Optimization
3. Cost – Benefit Ratio
4. Opportunity Cost
5. Sunk Cost
6. Depreciation
7. Return on Sales
8. Return on Investments
9. Working Capital Ratio
10. Break Even Analysis
11. Make or Buy decision making

The 4 articles on these topics are:

1. Project Selection Methods – Part 1
2. Project Selection Methods – Part 2
3. Project Selection Methods – Part 3
4. Project Selection Methods – Part 4

8. ITTO – Project Management Mathematics – Planning

This topic comprises of 9 sub topics wrapped in a series of 4 thought provoking articles. You will also find adequate number of practice questions at the end of each article. The sub topics covered are

1. Risk Probability Calculation
2. Expected Monetary Value
3. Decision Tree
4. Project Cost Estimation
5. Critical Path and Float
6. Crashing / Fast Tracking
7. PERT, SD, Variance
8. Contract Cost Estimation
9. Point of Total Assumption

The 4 articles on these topics are:

1. Project Management Mathematics (Planning) – Part 1
2. Project Management Mathematics (Planning) – Part 2
3. Project Management Mathematics (Planning) – Part 3
4. Project Management Mathematics (Planning) – Part 4

9. ITTO – Project Management Mathematics – Execution:

This topic comprises of 2 sub topics wrapped in a series of 2 thought provoking articles. You will also find adequate number of practice questions at the end of each article. The sub topics covered are

1. Earned Value Management – Analysis.
2. Earned Value Management – Forecasting

10. ITTO – Project Management Mathematics – Monitoring & Control:

This topic comprises of 15 sub topics wrapped in a series of 4 thought provoking articles. You will also find adequate number of practice questions at the end of each article. The sub topics covered are

1. Beta Distribution
2. Triangular Distribution
3. Uniform Distribution
4. Normal / Bell Distribution
5. Control Charts
6. Bar Charts
7. Histograms
8. Pareto Charts
9. Cause & Effect Diagrams
10. Run Charts
11. Scattered Diagrams
12. Statistical Sampling
13. Flow Charts
14. Inspection
15. Check Sheets.

The 4 articles on these topics are:

1. ITTO – Monitoring & Control – Part 1
2. ITTO – Monitoring & Control – Part 2
3. ITTO – Monitoring & Control – Part 3
4. ITTO – Monitoring & Control – Part 4

11. ITTO – Project Management Mathematics – Closing:

This topic comprises of no sub topics. The article covers points like Measures of central tendency (mean, median and mode) + Data Dispersion (SD, Variation, Change). You will also find adequate number of practice questions at the end of this article. Read more »

12. Tips for PMP Exam:

This is a general article which will give some hints for PMP aspirants about the PMP Exam, pattern of the questions, Tips for PMP preparation etc.

Read more »

• About the Author
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About Sparsh Goyal

A passionate IT professional, Sparsh Goyal boasts of 4.3+ years of experience. He has worked for various projects under AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Spring Boot, Python, Microservices, RESTful, RESTFUL APIs/SOAP, Scripting, Shell and JAVA. He is also working towards gaining proficiency in Oracle Cloud PaaS, DevOps, SaaS and Docker/Kubernetes. His primary and secondary skills validate his relentless pursuits of expanding his horizon and developing more as an IT person. He boasts of the following certifications: *Google Professional Cloud Security Engineer. *AWS Cloud Solutions Architect Associate. *Oracle certified JAVA programmer.

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