About Project Management Institute (PMI)

The Project Management Institute (PMI) , incorporated in 1969, was founded by five volunteers, with its headquarters in Newtown Square, outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It has published a number of standards related to project management, and manages several levels of project management certification.

The Project Management Institute (PMI) published the first Project Management Body of Knowledge Guide as a white paper in 1987 in an attempt to document and standardize generally accepted project management information and practices[1]. The current edition, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) – Third Edition, was released on 2004-10-31 and provides a basic reference for Project Management.

The PMBOK Guide – Third Edition is an internationally recognized standard (IEEE Std 1490-2003) that provides the fundamentals of project management that are applicable to a wide range of projects, including construction, software, engineering, automotive, etc.

The Guide recognizes 5 basic process groups and 9 knowledge areas typical of almost all projects. The basic concepts are applicable to projects, programs and operations. The five basic process groups are:

1. Initiating,


2. Planning,


3. Executing,


4. Controlling and Monitoring,


5. and Closing.

For more information about PMBOK Guide, please click here

Certification Courses offered by PMI
With three credentials currently available — and market research being conducted to learn of the profession’s need for more — PMI offers a comprehensive certification program for professionals with varying levels of experience that supports a career framework:

• Program Management Professional (PgMPSM)


• Project Management Professional (PMP®)


• Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM®)


• New PMI Credentials for Project Management in Development

Program Management Professional (PgMPSM) Credential
PMI's newest credential has been developed to demonstrate the skills of professionals who manage multiple related projects that are aligned with an organization's strategy. Those with the PgMP credential have successfully completed a rigorous multi-stage knowledge, skills and experience assessment process

Program Management Professional (PgMPSM) Credential

PMI's newest credential has been developed to demonstrate the skills of professionals who manage multiple related projects that are aligned with an organization's strategy. Those with the PgMP credential have successfully completed a rigorous multi-stage knowledge, skills and experience assessment process.

Candidates for the PgMP credential:

• Are responsible — under minimal supervision — for the coordinated management of multiple related projects directed toward strategic business and organizational objectives. These programs contain complex activities that may span functions, organizations, geographic regions and cultures.
  
• Define and initiate projects and assign project managers to manage cost, schedule and performance of component projects, while working to ensure the ultimate success and acceptance of the program. Program managers are responsible for determining and coordinating the sharing of resources among their constituent projects to the overall benefit of the program.
  
• Possess the knowledge and skills needed to be effective in both the project and business or government environment and to make decisions that accomplish strategic objectives. They should have advanced skills in finance, cross-cultural awareness, leadership, communication, influence, negotiation and conflict resolution.

For more information, download the PgMP Credential Handbook

Project Management Professional (PMP®) Credential

One of the most valued credentials in project management, the PMP credential assures employers that you are committed to project management. Earning and maintaining this credential demonstrates a solid foundation of experience in effectively managing projects.

Candidates for the PMP credential:

• Perform their duties under general supervision and are responsible for all aspects of the project for the life of the project.


• Lead and direct cross-functional teams to deliver projects within the constraints of schedule, budget and resources.


• Demonstrate sufficient knowledge and experience to appropriately apply a methodology to projects that have reasonably well-defined project requirements and deliverables.

For more information, download the PMP Credential Handbook

Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM®) Credential

Considered an essential step for project team members, the CAPM credential can benefit a wide range of individuals who want to demonstrate a comprehensive and consistent understanding of the application of their work. By gaining knowledge of project management processes and terminology, project team members can enhance their contributions to the team’s success.
The CAPM is designed for project team members who:

• Provide subject matter expertise (e.g. marketing, finance, customer care, processing, fulfillment)


• Serve as project team sponsors, facilitators, liaisons or coordinators

For more information, download the CAPM Credential Handbook

New PMI Credentials for Project Management in Development

In response to market demand to distinguish specialized roles on project teams, PMI introduces two new credentials: one for project risk and one for project scheduling. Because projects are getting bigger, more complex and more globally diverse, the market suggests that risk and scheduling are key aspects of a project. As a result, PMI initiated a two-pronged global research study, employing its dedicated research function, to determine the importance of specialty credentials.

The project scheduling credential and project risk credential addresses the need for project practitioners to distinguish their roles and contributions in their specialized area of project management. These new credentials are currently in development and PMI will release them in 2008.

Basic Principles for Successful Project Management

Nick Jenkins (Pioneer in project management) has been suggested following self evident truths about project management:

I. Know your goal
It may sound obvious, but if you don’t have an end-point in mind you’ll never get there. You should be able to clearly state the goal of your project in a single sentence. If you can't, your chance of achieving it is slim.

II. Know your teamYour
team is the most important resource you have available and their enthusiastic contribution will make or break your project. Look after them and make sure the team operates as a unit and not as a collection of individuals. Communications are vital! Invest time in promoting trust and ensuring that everyone knows what they have to contribute to the bigger picture. Dish out reward as well as criticism, provide superior working conditions and lead by example.

III. Know your stakeholders
Spend time with your stakeholders. Stakeholders either contribute expert knowledge offer their political or commercial endorsement which will be essential to success. Shake hands and kiss babies as necessary and grease the wheels of the bureaucratic machine so that your project has the smoothest ride possible.

IV. Spend time on planning and design
A traditional mistake is to leap before you are ready. When you’re under pressure to deliver, the temptation is to ‘get the ball rolling’. The ball is big and heavy and it's very, very difficult to change its direction once it gets moving. So spend some time deciding exactly how you’re going to solve your problem in the most efficient and elegant way.

V. Promise low and deliver high
Try and deliver happy surprises and not unpleasant ones. By promising low (understating your goals) and delivering high (delivering more than your promised) you:
Build confidence in yourself, the project and the team
Buy yourself contingency in the event that something goes wrong
Generate a positive and receptive atmosphere
Consider : if everything goes right you will finish early everyone will be happy; if something goes wrong you might still finish on time ; if things goes really badly you might still not deliver what you anticipated but it will still be better than if you over-promised!

VI. Iterate! Increment! Evolve!
Most problems worth solving are too big to swallow in one lump. Any serious project will require some kind of decomposition of the problem in order to solve it. You must pay close attention to how each piece fits the overall solution. Without a systematic approach you end up with a hundred different solutions instead of one big one.

VII. Stay on track
You have an end goal in mind. You need to work methodically towards the goal and provide leadership (make decisions). This applies whether you’re a senior project manager with a team of 20 or you’re a lone web developer. Learn to use tools like schedules and budgets to stay on track. Consistency is what separates professionals from amateurs.

VIII. Manage change
We live in a changing world. As your project progresses, the temptation to deviate from the plan will become irresistible. Stakeholders will come up with new and ‘interesting’ ideas, your team will bolt down all kinds of rat holes and your original goal will have all the permanence of a snowflake in quicksand. Scope creep or drift is a major source of project failure and you need to manage or control changes if you want to succeed.This doesn’t imply that there should be single, immutable plan which is written down and all other ideas must be stifled. You need to build a flexible approach that absorbs changes as they arise. It’s a happy medium you’re striving for - if you are too flexible your project will meander like a horse without a rider and if you are too rigid your project will shatter like a pane of glass the first time a stakeholder tosses you a new requirement.

IX. Test Early, Test Often
Projects involve creative disciplines burdened with assumptions and mistakes. Sure you can do a lot of valuable work to prevent mistakes being introduced, but to err is human and some of errors will make it into your finished product. Testing is the best way to find and eliminate errors.

X. Keep an open mind!
Be flexible! The desired outcome is the delivery of the finished project to a customer who is satisfied with the result. Any means necessary can be used to achieve this and every rule listed above can be broken in the right circumstances, for the right reasons.Don’t get locked into an ideology if the circumstances dictate otherwise.Don’t get blinded by methodology.Follow your head.Focus on delivering the project and use all the tools and people available to you. Keep an eye on the schedule and adjust your expectations and your plan to suit the conditions. Deliver the finished product, promote its use, and celebrate your success and then move on to the next project.

References:

Project management associations Several national and professional associations exist which have as their aim the promotion and development of project management and the project management profession. The most prominent associations include:

The Project Management Institute (PMI)
The Association for Project Management (UK) (APM)
The Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM)
The International Project Management Association (IPMA)
The International Association of Project and Program Management (IAPPM)

Tips on Applying for and Passing the PMP or CAPM Exam

Tips on Applying for and Passing the PMP or CAPM Exam

Overview: This white paper outlines the application process for both the PMP® and CAPM® exams, explains the composition of the exam questions, provides tips for successfully passing the exam, and lists the requirements to maintain certification.
Format: PDF Pages: 10
Download Link: Download

By www.globalknowledge.com

A Project ManagementPrimer

A Project ManagementPrimer

“a guide to making projects work (v2.0)”by Nick Jenkins©Nick
Free PDF Ebook

43 page guide to being a project manager : scope & goals; requirements; budgeting and scheduling; risk & change mgt

Download Link: Download

Author Refference: http://www.nickjenkins.net/

Project Management

Project management is the discipline of organizing and managing resources in such a way that these resources deliver all the work required to complete a project within defined scope, time, and cost constraints. A project is a temporary and one-time endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service. This property of being a temporary and a one-time undertaking contrast with processes, or operations, which are permanent or semi-permanent ongoing functional work to create the same product or service over-and-over again. The management of these two systems is often very different and requires varying technical skills and philosophy, hence requiring the development of project management.The first challenge of project management is ensuring that a project is delivered within the defined constraints. The second, more ambitious, challenge is the optimized allocation and integration of the inputs needed to meet those pre-defined objectives. The project, therefore, is a carefully selected set of activities chosen to use resources (time, money, people, materials, energy, space, provisions, communication, quality, risk, etc.) to meet the pre-defined objectives.

Role of Project Manager

Project management is quite often the province and responsibility of an individual project manager. This individual seldom participates directly in the activities that produce the end result, but rather strives to maintain the progress and productive mutual interaction of various parties in such a way that overall risk of failure is reduced.

A project manager is often a client representative and has to determine and implement the exact needs of the client based on knowledge of the firm he/she is representing. The ability to adapt to the various internal procedures of the contracting party, and to form close links with the nominated representatives, is essential in ensuring that the key issues of cost, time, quality and above all, client satisfaction, can be realized.

In whatever field, a successful project manager must be able to envisage the entire project from start to finish and to have the ability to ensure that this vision is realized.

Any type of product or service - buildings, vehicles, electronics, computer software, financial services, etc. - may have its implementation overseen by a project manager and its operations by a product manager.

According to Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), the project manager is the person responsible for accomplishing the project objectives, managing a project includes:

• Identifying requirements
• Establishing clear and achievable objectives
• Balancing the competing demands for quality, scope, time and cost
• Adapting the specifications, plans and approach to the different concerns and expectations of various stakeholders.
  

Project managers often talk of a “triple constraint” – project scope, time and cost – in managing competing project requirements. Project quality is affected by balancing these three factors. High quality projects deliver the required product, service or result within scope, on time and within budget. The relationship among these factors is such that if any one of three factors changes, at least one other factor is likely to be affected. Project managers also manage projects in response to uncertainty. Project risk is uncertain event or condition that, it occurs, has positive or negative effect on at least one project objective.

Scope Triangle

Like any human undertaking, projects need to be performed and delivered under certain constraints. Traditionally, these constraints have been listed as: scope, time, and cost. This is also referred to as the Project Management Triangle where each side represents a constraint. This triangle illustrates the relationship between three primary forces in a project. Time is the available time to deliver the project, cost represents the amount of money or resources available and quality represents the “fit-to-purpose” that the project must achieve to be a success. The normal situation is that one of these factors is fixed and the other two will vary in inverse proportion to each other. For example “Time” is often fixed and the “Quality” of the end product will depend on the “Cost” or resources available. Similarly if you are working to a fixed level of “Quality” then the “Cost” of the project will largely be dependent upon the “Time” available (if you have longer you can do it with fewer people).A phenomenon known as “scope creep” can be linked to the triangle too. Scope creep is the almost unstoppable tendency a project has to accumulate new functionality. Some scope creep is inevitable since, early on; your project will be poorly defined and will need to evolve. A large amount of scope creep however can be disastrous. When the scope starts to creep, new functionality must be added to cover the increased scope. This is represented by the quality arm of the triangle, representing the ability of the ‘product’ to fulfill users’ requirements. More requirements fulfilled = a better quality product. In this situation you have three and only three options:1. Add time – delay the project to give you more time to add the functionality2. Add cost – recruit, hire or acquire more people to do the extra work3. Cut quality – trade off some non-essential requirements for the new requirementsIf the art of management lies in making decisions, then the art of project management lies in making decisions quickly! When faced with scope creep you cannot ignore it. You need to tackle it in one of the ways described above (more later) and the sooner the better. Delaying raises the risk of your project failing. A poor project manager will see the scope triangle as a strait-jacket by which their project is irrevocably constrained. A better project manager will make better use of one or more of the axes and will shift the emphasis in the project to one of the other axes. The best project managers will juggle all three like hot potatoes and will make decisions every day which effectively trade-off time vs. quality vs. resources.

The Critical Path

Another important concept in planning projects is that of the critical path. If a project consists of a set of tasks which need to be completed, the critical path represents the minimum such set, the critical set. This might seem to be a contradiction since you might think completion of all tasks is necessary to complete a project; after all, if they weren’t necessary they wouldn’t be part of your project, would they? The critical path represents not the ideal set of tasks to be complete for your project, but the minimum set. It is this path that you must traverse in order to reach completion of your project on time. Other tasks while important to overall completion do not impact upon the final delivery for the project. They can therefore be rescheduled if time is tight or circumstances change. Tasks on your critical path however will affect the delivery time of the project and therefore should only be modified in extremis. In the following example the critical path is represented in bold.

In order to complete my project of cooking breakfast I have to go through the steps of frying bacon and sausages and scrambling eggs. The tasks “make toast” and “wash plates”, while important, are not time-dependent or as critical as the other three tasks. I can move either of those tasks but if I try to move anything on the critical path its going to delay the project. Ideally I’d like to have toast with my breakfast but a) it’s not essential and b) it doesn’t matter where in the process it happens. If I make toast before or after scrambling my bacon, it makes little difference to the overall result. On the other hand I can hardly fry my bacon before the oil is hot, nor can I scramble my eggs before frying my bacon (they’d turn to glue). The critical path represents the critical sequence of events which must occur if I want to successfully complete my project. Normally major 'milestones' will be represented on the critical path and they will often occur when different threads of the project come together. For example in the diagram to the right my only milestone is when I serve the completed breakfast. At this point I will have finished my preparations and completed everything on both tracks. This is represented by a diamond in the diagram above. If I suddenly discovered I was late for work, I could cheerfully discard the optional “toast” component of my project, take the critical path instead and still achieve my original milestone of delivering breakfast (and maybe even make it to work on time!).