- Dedication
- A Note Regarding Supplemental Files
- Praise for Head First PMP
- Praise for Head First PMP
- Praise for other Head First books
- How to Use this Book: Intro
- Who is this book for?
- Who should probably back away from this book?
- We know what you’re thinking.
- And we know what your brain is thinking.
- We think of a “Head First” reader as a learner.
- Metacognition: thinking about thinking
- Here’s what WE did:
- Here’s what YOU can do to bend your brain into submission
- Read me
- The technical review team
- Acknowledgments
- O’Reilly Safari
- 1. Introduction: Why get certified?
- Do these problems seem familiar?
- Projects don’t have to be this way
- Your problems...already solved
- What you need to be a good project manager
- Understand your company’s big picture
- Your project has value
- Portfolios, programs, and projects have a lot in common
- Portfolios, programs, and projects all use charters
- What a project IS...
- ... and what a project is NOT
- A day in the life of a project manager
- How project managers run great projects
- Project management offices help you do a good job, every time
- Good leadership helps the team work together
- Project teams are made of people
- Operations management handles the processes that make your company tick
- A PMP certification is more than just passing a test
- Meet a real-life PMP-certified project manager
- 2. Organizations, constraints, and projects: In good company
- A day in Kate’s life
- Kate wants a new job
- There are different types of organizations
- Kate takes a new job
- Stakeholders are impacted by your project
- More types of stakeholders
- Your project team has lots of roles too
- Back to Kate’s maintenance nightmare
- Managing project constraints
- You can’t manage your project in a vacuum
- Kate’s project needs to follow company processes
- Kate makes some changes...
- ... and her project is a success!
- 3. The Process Framework: It all fits together
- Cooking up a project
- Projects are like recipes
- If your project’s really big, you can manage it in phases
- Phases can also overlap
- Break it down
- Anatomy of a process
- Combine processes to complete your project
- Knowledge areas organize the processes
- The benefits of successful project management
- Exam Answers
- 4. Project Integration Management: Getting the job done
- Time to book a trip
- The teachers are thrilled...for now
- These clients are definitely not satisfied
- The day-to-day work of a project manager
- The six Integration Management processes
- Start your project with the Initiating processes
- Integration Management and the process groups
- The Develop Project Charter process
- Make the case for your project
- Use expert judgment and facilitation techniques to write your project charter
- A closer look at the project charter
- Two things you’ll see over and over and over...
- Plan your project!
- The Project Management plan lets you plan ahead for problems
- A quick look at all those subsidiary plans
- Question Clinic: The “just-the-facts-ma’am” question
- The Direct and Manage Project Work process
- The project team creates deliverables
- Executing the project includes repairing defects
- Eventually, things WILL go wrong...
- Sometimes you need to change your plans
- Look for changes and deal with them
- Make only the changes that are right for your project
- Changes, defects, and corrections
- Decide your changes in change control meetings
- How the processes interact with one another
- Control your changes; use change control
- Preventing or correcting problems
- Finish the work, close the project
- You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here
- So why INTEGRATION Management?
- Integration Management kept your project on track, and the teachers satisfied
- 5. Scope Management: Doing the right stuff
- Out of the frying pan...
- ... and right back into the fire
- Cubicle conversation
- It looks like we have a scope problem
- You’ve got to know what (and how) you will build before you build it
- The power of Scope Management
- The six Scope Management processes
- Plan your scoping processes
- Now you’ve got a roadmap for managing scope
- Cubicle conversation
- Collect requirements for your project
- Talk to your stakeholders
- Make decisions about requirements
- Help your team to get creative
- Use a questionnaire to get requirements from a bigger group of people
- Observation can help you see things from a different point of view
- A prototype shows users what your product will be like
- Now you’re ready to write a requirements document
- Define the scope of the project
- How do you define the scope?
- The project scope statement tells you what you have to do
- Question Clinic: The “which-is-BEST” question
- Create the work breakdown structure
- The inputs for the WBS come from other processes
- Breaking down the work
- Break it down by project or phase
- Decompose deliverables into work packages
- Inside the work package
- The project scope baseline is a snapshot of the plan
- The outputs of the Create WBS process
- Cubicle conversation
- Why scope changes
- The Control Scope process
- Anatomy of a change
- A closer look at the change control system
- Just one Control Scope tool/technique
- Make sure the team delivered the right product
- The stakeholders decide when the project is done
- Is the project ready to go?
- The project is ready to ship!
- 6. Time management: Getting it done on time
- Reality sets in for the happy couple
- Meet the wedding planner
- Time management helps with aggressive timelines
- Plan your scheduling processes
- Now you know how you’ll track your schedule
- Use the Define Activities process to break down the work
- Tools and techniques for Define Activities
- Rolling wave planning lets you plan as you go
- Define activities outputs
- The Sequence Activities process puts everything in order
- Diagram the relationship between activities
- Network diagrams put your tasks in perspective
- Dependencies help you sequence your activities
- Leads and lags add time between activities
- Create the network diagram
- Rob and Rebecca have resource problems
- What you need to estimate resources
- Estimating the resources
- Figuring out how long the project will take
- Estimation tools and techniques
- Create the duration estimate
- Back to the wedding
- Bringing it all together
- Question Clinic: The “which-comes-next” question
- One thing leads to another
- Use the critical path method to avoid big problems
- How to find the critical path
- Finding the float for any activity
- Float tells you how much extra time you have
- Figure out the early start and early finish
- Figure out the latest possible start and finish
- Add early and late durations to your diagrams
- Take a backward pass to find late start and finish
- Let’s take some time out to walk through this!
- Crash the schedule
- Fast-tracking the project
- Modeling techniques
- Other Develop Schedule tools and techniques
- Outputs of Develop Schedule
- Influence the factors that cause change
- Control Schedule inputs and outputs
- What Control Schedule updates
- Measuring and reporting performance
- Control Schedule tools and techniques
- Another satisfied customer!
- 7. Cost Management: Watching the bottom line
- Time to expand the Head First Lounge
- The guys go overboard
- Lounge conversation
- Introducing the Cost Management processes
- Plan how you’ll estimate, track, and control your costs
- Now you’ve got a consistent way to manage costs
- What Alice needs before she can estimate costs
- Other tools and techniques used in Estimate Costs
- Let’s talk numbers
- Now Alice knows how much the Lounge will cost
- Lounge conversation
- The Determine Budget process
- What you need to build your budget
- Determine budget: how to build a budget
- Question Clinic: The red herring
- The Control Costs process is a lot like schedule control
- A few new tools and techniques
- Look at the schedule to figure out your budget
- How to calculate planned value
- Earned value tells you how you’re doing
- How to calculate earned value
- Put yourself in someone else’s shoes
- Is your project behind or ahead of schedule?
- Are you over budget?
- The earned value management formulas
- Interpret CPI and SPI numbers to gauge your project
- Forecast what your project will look like when it’s done
- Meanwhile, back in the Lounge
- Once you’ve got an estimate, you can calculate a variance!
- Finding missing information
- Keep your project on track with TCPI
- A high TCPI means a tight budget
- Party time!
- 8. Quality Management: Getting it right
- What is quality?
- You need more than just tests to figure out quality
- Once you know what the product is supposed to do, it’s easy to tell which tests pass and which fail
- Quality up close
- Quality vs. grade
- “An ounce of prevention...”
- Plan Quality is how you prevent defects
- How to plan for quality
- The Quality Management plan gives you what you need to manage quality
- Inspect your deliverables
- Use the planning outputs for Control Quality
- The seven basic tools of quality
- Pareto charts, flowcharts, and histograms
- Checksheets and scatter diagrams
- More quality control tools
- Question Clinic: The “which-one” question
- Quality control means finding and correcting defects
- Trouble at the Black Box 3000TM factory
- Introducing Quality Assurance
- A closer look at some tools and techniques
- More ideas behind quality assurance
- The Black Box 3000TM makes record profits!
- Exam Answers
- 9. Human Resource Management: Getting the team together
- Mike needs a new team
- Cubicle conversation
- Get your team together and keep them moving
- Figure out who you need on your team
- The Staffing Management plan
- Get the team together
- Cubicle conversation
- Develop your project team
- Develop the team with your management skills
- Your interpersonal skills can make a big difference for your team
- Lead the team with your management skills
- Motivate your team
- Stages of team development
- How’s the team doing?
- Cubicle conversation
- Managing your team means solving problems
- Conflict management up close
- How to resolve a conflict
- The Cows Gone Wild IV team ROCKS!
- Question Clinic: The “have-a-meeting” question
- 10. Communications management: Getting the word out
- Party at the Head First Lounge!
- But something’s not right
- Anatomy of communication
- Get a handle on communication
- Tell everyone what’s going on
- Get the message?
- More Manage Communications tools
- Let everyone know how the project’s going
- Take a close look at the work being done
- Now you can get the word out
- People aren’t talking!
- Count the channels of communication
- It’s party time!
- Question Clinic: The calculation question
- 11. Project Risk Management: Planning for the unknown
- What’s a risk?
- How you deal with risk
- Plan Risk Management
- Use a risk breakdown structure to categorize risks
- Anatomy of a risk
- What could happen to your project?
- Information-gathering techniques for Identify Risks
- More Identify Risks techniques
- Where to look for risks
- Now put it in the risk register
- Rank your risks
- Examine each risk in the register
- Qualitative vs. quantitative analysis
- Perform Quantitative Risk Analysis
- First gather the data...
- ... then analyze it
- Calculate the expected monetary value of your risks
- Decision tree analysis uses EMV to help you make choices
- Update the risk register based on your quantitative analysis results
- How do you respond to a risk?
- It isn’t always so bad
- Response planning can even find more risks
- Add risk responses to the register
- You can’t plan for every risk at the start of the project
- Control Risks is another change control process
- How to control your risks
- More control risk tools and techniques
- Question Clinic: The “which-is-NOT” question
- 12. Procurement Management: Getting some help
- Victim of her own success
- Calling in the cavalry
- Ask the legal expert
- Anatomy of an agreement
- Start with a plan for the whole project
- The decision is made
- Types of contractual agreements
- More about contracts
- Figure out how you’ll sort out potential sellers
- Get in touch with potential sellers
- Pick a partner
- Two months later...
- Keep an eye on the contract
- Stay on top of the seller
- Close the contract when the work is done
- Kate closes the contract
- Question Clinic: BYO questions
- Exam Questions
- Exam Answers
- 13. Stakeholder Management: Keeping everyone engaged
- Party at the Head First Lounge (again)!
- Not everybody is thrilled
- Understanding your stakeholders
- Find out who your stakeholders are
- Stakeholder analysis up close
- How engaged are your stakeholders?
- Managing stakeholder engagement means clearing up misunderstandings
- Control your stakeholders’ engagement
- Now you can tell when you need to change the way you deal with stakeholders
- It’s party time!
- Exam Questions
- Exam Answers
- 14. Professional Responsibility: Making good choices
- 15. A Little Last-Minute Review: Check your knowledge
- 16. Practice makes perfect Practice PMP exam
- Index
- About the Authors
- Copyright
To our friends and family, and the people who make us laugh (you know who you are)
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