Kaplan IT Training Blog

PMBOK 5th Edition: Changes to the Executing Process Group (7/9)

This is the seventh installment of my PMBOK 5th Edition overview (and we’re finally finished with the Planning Process Group):

• Knowledge Area and Process Group changes
• Initiating Process Group changes
• Planning Process Group Changes – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

The Executing Process Group has quite a few changes, including a (sorta) new process and changes to the names of two processes. This post will cover the following processes:

• Direct and Manage Project Work
• Perform Quality Assurance
• Acquire Project Team
• Develop Project Team
• Manage Project Team
• Manage Communications
• Conduct Procurements
• Manage Stakeholder Engagement

So now let’s get to the Executing Process Group changes!

Changes to the Direct and Manage Project Work process

In this PMBOK 4th Edition, this process was referred to as Direct and Manage Project Execution.

The Direct and Management Project Work process has no changes to its inputs. However, the introductory explanation for this process has been expanded and includes a great explanation of the three types of changes that will affect this process: corrective actions, preventive actions, and defect repair.

One new tool has been added to this process: meetings.

One output of this process has a slight name change: work performance information has been changed to work performance data. Note that both of these concepts (data and information) have been retained in PMBOK 5th Edition; they were simply rearranged among the processes. Work performance data is raw data from the project. Work performance information is the work performance data combined with some technique or tool to produce usable conclusions or metrics.

Changes to the Perform Quality Assurance process

The Perform Quality Assurance process now has five inputs:

• The quality management plan – new to this process in the PMBOK 5th Edition
• The process improvement plan – new to this process in the PMBOK 5th Edition
• Quality metrics
• Quality control measurements
• Project documents – new to this process the PMBOK 5th Edition

While this process still lists three tools and techniques, the Plan Quality and Perform Quality Control  tools and techniques was renamed Quality Management and Control Tools. For all of you project management professionals out there, just keep in mind that any quality management or control tool can basically be used throughout the Project Quality Management Knowledge Area. In the 8.2.2.1 section of the PMBOK 5th Edition, the following tools are specifically listed:

• Affinity diagrams
• Process decision program charts (PDPC)
• Interrelationship digraphs
• Tree diagram

But while these four tools are specifically listed, the seven basic quality tools from the Plan Quality Management process (which are included in the Planning Process Group Part 3) and the tools and techniques from the Control Quality process (which will be covered in the Monitoring and Controlling Process Group post next week) can also be used in this process.

Exam pro tip!

I, for one, think that this can make some of those questions asked on the exam quite tricky. Project managers will have to analyze HOW the tool is being used to determine which process is actually being performed. For example, if you are using the tool to create performance baselines, you are probably working in the Plan Quality Management process. If you use the tool to measure actual performance for comparison against the baselines, you are probably working in the Perform Quality Assurance process. Finally, if you take the results from using the tool and adjust certain work areas to eliminate poor work, you are probably working in the Control Quality process.

The outputs of the Perform Quality Assurance process have not changed.

Changes to the Acquire Project Team process

The Acquire Project Team process still has three inputs. However, the project management plan input from the PMBOK 4th Edition has been changed to the human resource management plan to more properly reflect the subsidiary plan that is actually used by this process. This process also has a new tool: multi-criteria decision analysis, which selects criteria on which the prospective team members should be analyzed. The criteria usually include availability, cost, experience, ability, knowledge, skills, attitude, and international factors.

The outputs of this process have not changed.

Changes to the Develop Project Team process

Like the Acquire Project Team process, the Develop Project Team has only a single change to its inputs list: the project management plan input from the PMBOK 4th Edition has been changed to the human resource management plan to more properly reflect the subsidiary plan that is actually used by this process.

The new tool listed for this process is personal assessment tools, which includes surveys, assessments, interviews, and focus groups.

The outputs of this process have not changed.

Changes to the Manage Project Team process

The Manage Project Team process has several major changes to its inputs and one minor change. The inputs to this process are as follows:

• The human resource management plan – new to this process in the PMBOK 5th Edition. This input replaces the project management plan that was listed in the PMBOK 4th Edition.
• Project staff assignments
• Team performance assessments
• Issue log – listed as a tool for this process in the PMBOK 4th Edition
• Work performance reports – referred to as simply performance reports in the PMBOK 4th Edition
• Organizational process assets

This process has the same tools and techniques. However, the conflict  management techniques have been edited a bit to expand the explanation of each technique. In addition, each technique now has two names. For example, the compromise technique is also referred to as the reconcile technique, and the force technique is also referred to as the direct technique. Finally the collaborate technique was combined with the problem solving technique.

One new output was added to this process: project management plan updates. It includes updates to the issue log, roles description, and project staff assignments.

Changes to the Manage Communications process (formerly the Distribute Information process)

According to PMI, a name change occurred in the PMBOK 5th Edition for this process: Distribute Information was changed to Manage Communications. However, there were so many changes to this process that I feel we need to totally review all of this process.

The Manage Communications process has four inputs:

• The communications management plan (new to this process in the PMBOK 5th Edition)
• Work performance reports  – referred to as work performance information and work performance measurements in the PMBOK 4th Edition
• Enterprise environmental factors (EEFs) (new to this process in the PMBOK 5th Edition)
• Organizational process assets (OPAs)

The Manage Communications process has five tools and techniques:

• Communications technology (new to this process in the PMBOK 5th Edition)
• Communication models (new to this process in the PMBOK 5th Edition)
• Communication methods
• Information management systems (new to this process in the PMBOK 5th Edition)
• Performance reporting – referred to as reporting systems in the PMBOK 4th Edition

The outputs of this process are as follows:

• Project communications – new in the PMBOK 5th Edition
• Project management plan updates (new to this process in the PMBOK 5th Edition)
• Project document updates (new to this process in the PMBOK 5th Edition)
• Organizational process assets updates

Changes to the Conduct Procurements process

The Manage Project Team process has one revised input and one new input. The project management plan listed as an input in the PMBOK 4th Edition has been changed to the procurement management plan, which is the subsidiary plan that actually affects this process. Procurement statement of work is a new input to this process.

The qualified seller list and teaming agreements inputs were removed from this process.

The Internet search technique for this process was changed to analytical techniques, which broadens the types of analytics that can be performed to obtain possible vendors.

The procurement contract award output is now referred to as agreements in the PMBOK 5th Edition. All other outputs are the same.

Changes to the Manage Stakeholder Engagement process

In this PMBOK 4th Edition, this process was referred to as Manage Stakeholder Expectations and was part of the Project Communications Management Knowledge Area. The Manage Stakeholder Engagement process is now part of the new Project Stakeholder Engagement Knowledge Area.

In the PMBOK 5th Edition, this process now has four inputs:

• The stakeholder management plan (new to this process in the PMBOK 5th Edition)
• The communications management plan (new to this process in the PMBOK 5th Edition)
• The change log
• Organizational process assets

No changes were made to the tools and techniques used by this process.

This process has one new output: the issue log.

That covers all the processes in the Executing Process Group.

We’d love your feedback…

With the popularity of our project management blog posts, we are considering following  up with a few more PMBOK 5th Edition posts (after we finish this series, of course.) Some of the possible subjects include: 1) using the critical path method in the Develop Schedule process, 2) using earned value management in the Control Schedule process, 3) using earned value management in the Control Costs process, 4) using forecasting in the Control Costs process, and 5) measuring the to-complete performance index (TCPI) in the Control Costs process.

Are any of these of interest to you? Please feel free to comment on this post and let us know, or suggest your own topic. In the meanwhile, watch in the coming days for the posts covering the changes to the Monitoring and Controlling and Closing Process Groups.

Drop  me a line if you have any questions! I would love to hear from you….

-Robin

My PMP Journey: Bad News, Good Advice, and the Dire Warnings You Should Heed

While I do manage projects in my daily work, I’d never thought of myself as an actual project manager. Being a take-action, Active Directory kind of guy, I primarily develop Microsoft practice exams and leave products like Project+ and CAPM to the professionals (aka Robin Abernathy). But last year several of my co-workers began suggesting that I take PMI’s Project Management Professional (PMP) exam. Then my supervisor softly “suggested” that I take the PMP exam. Even my sister, a project manager, got in the game and encouraged me to take the exam. Furthermore, my sister said the exam was easy and did not take a whole lot of work to prepare for.

Well, she was wrong.

Since I am a veteran trainer, exam developer, and test-passer, my initial plan of attack was to fill out the application, take a practice test to identify gaps in my knowledge, do self-study to close those gaps, schedule the exam, take the exam, and pass it. BOOM! PMP-ville.

The Bad News

Not so fast. First, it took forever and a day to detail all of my project work experience for the application. Yes, you have to document 4,500 hours of project management experience (7,500 hours if you don’t have a bachelor’s degree). They also require 35 hours of formal project management training, which I didn’t have. The training materials was not actually a problem, as I was able to take a Skillsoft e-learning course that my company offers, but I did have to stop and find time for 35 hours of training in my schedule.

Once I finished the training and completed the application, back in June 2012, I got the go-ahead from PMI to schedule my exam. Next, I tested my existing knowledge by taking the Transcender PMP practice test. I failed that practice test miserably, and I emphasize: miserably.

I appealed to my friends and Dr. Internet for advice. One friend suggested a book that turned out to be a lifesaver: PMP Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide by Kim Heldman. Meanwhile, Dr. Internet suggested that I read the book chapter by chapter, then go through some practice tests after I’d finished the whole thing.

The More Bad News

Great plan, except for the part where it didn’t work. I would read one chapter, then another chapter, and then life would get in the way. I would put in one week of good study, then put the PMP info down for about 10 days. Unfortunately, a lot of the information that I’d studied seemed to float away. This process continued all the way through fall. By the time September rolled around, I was still not able to pass the practice tests that came with the book. Worse, the actual PMP exam is four hours long, but I had to take lots of breaks to finish each practice test. I just could not sit through all 200 questions. I felt like I was in high school taking the SAT test again. Augh!

I soon figured out what everybody and their mother has already posted on the Internet: you need to know every process, every input for that process, every tool and technique for that process, and every output for that process. By the way, there are a whole lot of processes. I tried to memorize them with repeated reading, but was never successful.

Finally, I tried using the audio CDs that came with Heldman’s book. Since my office recently relocated to East Tumbleweed, I had plenty of driving time to listen to someone else describe each process. Although this sounds like this would be outlawed by the Geneva Convention as torture, it actually helped a lot. I was able to memorize most of the processes and their information in this way. More importantly, I was able to do significantly better on the book’s practice tests, and started to make headway on the Transcender practice test as well.

The very last thing I did to prepare was to actually read the PMBOK guide. Not exactly a page turner, but it had to be done. I wasn’t too far into the PMBOK when I realized that Heldman’s book has done such a great job of explaining the abstract terminology with real-life examples, that I didn’t need to spend a lot of time with the PMBOK itself. I might owe dinner to the buddy that recommended Heldman’s book.

The Dire Warnings

Scheduling, or rather the impossibility of RE-scheduling the PMP exam, was no walk in the park. I strongly suggest that you do not schedule your exam too many months in advance. In fact, you might want to make sure your test date is carved in stone. If you need to reschedule your exam within 30 days of the exam date, you will have to pay a $70 fee.  Worse, if you need to reschedule within 48 hours, you lose the entire testing fee ($405 for PMI members, $555 for non-PMI members). Ouch! Just be mindful, if you schedule the exam months in advance, life might get in the way, and you will risk losing your $70.

All warnings aside, I do recommend you set a goal date. I decided on the date that I wanted to take my exam and scheduled the exam only a few days out from that date.  Set a target date for when you want to take the exam, and then try to schedule the exam two weeks out from the target date.

The test center where I took the exam reminded me of the gulag in the movie “Stripes” where the East Germans held John Candy, Judge Reinhold and the gang, before Bill Murray and Harold Ramis busted them out.

The lighting was so bad that I could barely see what I was writing on the scrap paper they gave me. As promised, the exam had 200 questions and blocked out four hours. My sister said that it would only take me two hours, tops. As I may have mentioned before, my sister was wrong. It took nearly the whole four hours for me to finish. It was comprehensive and really a tough exam. After staring at a screen for four hours, I could barely see to drive home.

Finally, the Good Advice

The exam was not impossible. Looking back, there are some things that I would have done differently. For starters, former Transcender team member Jennifer Wagner gave some really good advice on the application process in her blog post from 2009. Like she mentions, you should start documenting your project hours as soon as you start thinking about the PMP exam to cut down on the time spent sorting out the application requirements.

After I finished the application process and got the approval to take the exam, I would have tried to take the test within 6 weeks. I would have taken several days off from work and buckled down to go through all the material and practice tests on a continual basis, instead of trying to dedicate 90 minutes to studying five days a week.  PMI uses specific terminology to describe things that seem obvious or intuitive when you’re actually managing a project. If you do not know that terminology backwards and forwards, which I didn’t at first, it will be tough to pass the exam, even if you apply those principles every day at your job.

For me, the best way to get the knowledge about the processes was to go through as many practice test questions as I could to cement the information about the processes in my brain. There are about 800 practice test questions and over 1000 flash questions in the Trancender PMP practice test. I also went through the 400 practice test questions in the Kim Heldman’s book. With my work/life schedule, it took about two weeks to go through all those questions. Going through the questions highlighted my deficiencies. This was the key to the whole process, since after I identified the weak areas, I concentrated on the processes that I was weak on. I got better and better at the flash cards and practice questions until I felt ready to schedule my exam.

The more that you space the studying out, the less you’ll retain. Dedicate some time to the process and knock it out of the park while it’s still fresh. Hope this insight into my experience helps set your expectations & project management goals. Good luck!

–George Monsalvatge