Book review: PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide

I recently got a copy of the 5th edition of PMP Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide, which is the partner text to the Review Guide and has been fully updated for the 4th edition of the PMBoK. Kim Heldman’s book is a weighty text, coming in at over 600 pages and with another two hours of audio on the included CD. It needs to be, as it covers the whole PMP syllabus in massive amounts of detail, with exam tips thrown in along the way.

I really like the way that Heldman writes, and she does a good job of describing the rather boring concepts that form the project management processes in a way that makes it interesting for the reader. Of course, you need to be at least vaguely interested in project management to find the book interesting, and it does help to be a PMP candidate, but it isn’t as dry as the Review Guide – this book is aimed at the beginner who needs to learn the concepts from scratch.

The book covers the basics of the project environment and the project charter before spending a fair amount of time discussing scope and requirements gathering. Chapters 4 and 5 cover scheduling and budgeting. With those out the way, Heldman goes on to write about risk management, resource planning, running a team, monitoring and controlling work and how to close down a project. There are also sections on procurement management and professional responsibility, which is a hot topic in the PMP exam.

Each section includes real world scenarios, exam hints and a final section on how the theory applies to the next project (or your current project, I suppose).

Heldman writes articulately about team management, which is unsurprising given that she says these topics are some of her favourites.

Although rewards and recognition help build a team, she writes, they can also kill morale if you don’t have an established method or criteria for handing them out. Track who is receiving awards throughout the project… Consider individual preferences and cultural differences when using rewards and recognitions. Some people don’t like to be recognized in front of a group; others thrive on it. Some people appreciate an honest thank-you with minimal fanfare, and others just won’t accept individual rewards as their culture doesn’t allow it. Keep this in mind when devising your reward system.

If this book was smaller and lighter I would seriously consider carrying it around with me, but unfortunately that isn’t practical. However, the entire book is available as a .pdf file on the CD, so you could print off a couple of pages to review on the train, or carry the thing around with you on your laptop if you wanted to study while you are on the road.

Overall, if you are after an interesting, comprehensive book and CD package to help you study for the PMP exam, this is it.

Book review: PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Review Guide

PMP Project Management Professional Exam Review Guide has a practical, descriptive title – and it’s a practical, descriptive book.  Kim Heldman and Vanina Mangano have written this book specifically for those project managers aiming to sit their PMP exam.  It’s structured logically, taking you through the project lifecycle.

The book starts with a review of the foundations of a project: all the basics about what constitutes a project and the project environment.  Then it gets into the detail of what PMPs need to know to manage a project from start to finish.  It covers Initiating, has a large section on Planning, followed by Executing, Monitoring and Controlling and Closing.  Finally, the book ends with an interesting section on social and professional responsibility – something all project managers, regardless of whether they choose the PMI accreditation route or not, should be interested in.

Each chapter finishes with review questions so that you can test yourself against what you have learned.  I also liked the ‘Exam Essentials’ boxes that are scattered throughout the text and highlight key pointers essential for exam success.

Overall, the book is graphically very interesting and the authors use a lot of diagrams, graphs and charts to make learning the PMP syllabus more appealing.  However, a lot of the book is made up of lists, especially inputs and outputs of processes.  This is because the book is essentially a review guide, not a comprehensive study tool by itself.  It is a partner text to the Sybex PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide, which is twice as fat.  As a result, the Review Guide covers the topics in exactly that – review format.  It’s not the most comprehensive of texts, but it is concise, which is perfect if you don’t want to carry your copy of PMBoK or the Study Guide around with you all the time.

It’s difficult to read the Review Guide from start to finish, and it probably wasn’t designed to be used that way.  This is perhaps why it has a fabulous index.  It’s not a habit of mine to praise the index in books, but I did find this one really good!

Overall,  my experience of this book is that it is solid but dry, and the review questions at the end of each chapter are the only place where you’ll find any reference to scenarios or real life.  The bulk of the text focuses squarely on getting a candidate through the exam, and it wiill certainly help do that.  It also comes with a CD, which is another learning aid.

If you are studying for the PMP exam and need a handy reference guide to the key processes, this could be a good book for you.  However, if you want to learn how to manage a project and put those skills to work in the real world, don’t start with this book.  It is good, but only for the right audience – and that’s prospective PMP candidates.

The Misconception of PMP Certification

I can’t get in to the PM Tips site at the moment due to a server issue in order to post comments, so I’m just going to write an article on the subject…since I think I can post an article through the login.

There have been great comments and discussions on the article I wrote entitled “Project Management: Is PMP Certification Worth It?” In fact, there have been nearly 100 comments posted on this article – by far the most of any on the site. I appreciate everyone’s comments and I think it’s been an incredible discussion – and it’s probably convinced many non-certified PMs to just go ahead and get certification.

The Premise

Remember, the premise of the article is that HR departments and hiring managers are becoming lazy in this job market by requiring PMs to have certification to even be considered for a position – it is happening on many jobs that are up for grabs out there. However, the overall perception is, it’s a game…if you want to play you probably should get certified. I agree.

Direction of Recent Comments

The comments are still coming through, but now they’re only trickling in. And what’s coming through now is equating PMP certification to an MD, or a CPA, or a certified CPR. I’d like to get my two cents in on these comparisons. I think they’re crazy.  (The comparisons, I mean…not the people making them.)

While all of those are important, they don’t equate to what a PM does. First, it’s not illegal for a PM to practice project management without certification. No one’s life is at stake. It is, however, very illegal to practice medicine without the degree. And sure, a person can administer CPR without being certified and a person can do taxes or manage your finances without being a CPA, but you’re probably more comfortable with a CPA doing your taxes. And as one comment suggested, if two people are standing over you when you’re choking and one is certified in CPR and the other isn’t but just knows it, you’d probably choose the certified CPR person if you’re given the choice. I would too.

Applicable to PMP?

How does this compare or apply to PMP certification? It doesn’t at all. PMP certification indicates you have a minimum amount of experience and passed a test so you know the fundamentals of PM and the PMI methodologies. What it doesn’t indicate are the soft skills that a PM must have to be very successful. A CPA or a person who is CPR-certified really doesn’t have to have the same interpersonal skills. They wife of a choking victim doesn’t care if the CPR responder can negotiate with someone or interact with the crowd of bystanders. They have one job to do and that’s it. The person having their taxes done by a CPA doesn’t care if that individual knows how to massage a customer and smooth over bad news. Or lead a team of project resources every day to accomplish all of the behind the scenes tasks. Not at all. They only care if their taxes are done correctly. And the CPA is pretty much a one-man show and he does the taxes correctly and that’s it. No song and dance.

For the PM, things are different. The work is not more critical or more important, just different. The PM must be able to inspire a team, bring confidence to a customer, manage a multi-million dollar project, answer to executive management, keep the CEO happy and do this on several projects at once. Again, not more important, just very different. And lots of soft skills that no test can ever validate. You either have it or you don’t. Some of these things you can’t get no matter how much experience you have, but experience usually can help you get there on most of them. Pass a test and getting certified won’t get you there.

I’ve been called in to fix projects where the customer was dissatisfied with the way the project was going so many times that I’ve lost count. A test doesn’t validate leadership, confidence, and that kind of experience.

Final Thought

So, yes, we all probably should be certified because that’s just the nature of how things are going. But, in my opinion, it’s very short-sighted to equate the PMP to an MD, a CPA, or CPR certification. It’s apples and oranges.

The Job Market, Project Management, and Other Thoughts

I’ve written – and you’ve commented – about the state of project management, current hiring practices by employers, and the relevance of the PMP certification through the Project Management Institute (PMI) as it pertains to finding your next project management gig.

What I found eye-opening…maybe even eye-popping…was some findings I read about recently concerning job boards and their ability to help individuals find positions.

PMP Certification

First, let’s cover the PMP certification – briefly again – and what we’ve discussed already so far. It’s a given that more and more postings are requiring PMP certification for prospective project managers. Nearly all others state PMP certification as being highly preferred or that first consideration goes to PMP candidates. And even on some of those candidates have been told by recruiters that company ‘X’ won’t even talk to you if you’re not certified.

Good or bad, employers are eliminating the need to wade through thousands of good resumes of experienced individuals by having their HR departments do initial screenings – in many cases – on the existence or non-existence of PMP certification for the candidate. I’ll maintain again that this is a bad and lazy practice, in my opinion, but I’ve already beaten this one to death, so I won’t go into it any further.

Most of the rest of the information for this article comes from August Cohen’s very comprehensive article entitled “Need a Job? Then Don’t Waste Time on Job Boards.”  You can read his full article here.

Job Board Findings

Now on to the recent job board findings. CareerXroads recently conducted their 8^th Annual Source of Hire Study and the findings for external hires were astounding…downright disappointing, I guess. If you’re looking for a job right now, brace yourselves because this is very surprising information…but there’s light at the end of the tunnel in the form of job board advice so keep reading on.

According to the study, CareerBuilder is accountable for 3.95% of all external hires, Monster is accountable for 3.14%, and HotJobs is accountable for 1.35%. Granted, Craigslist isn’t mentioned – it’s a flaky job search site at best – but this means that the Big 3 right now account for only 8.44% of all external hires. I never would have guessed it.

What does this mean to job seekers? At the very least it means don’t rely only on those three job boards – be sure to incorporate other sources (yes, including Craigslist), but also utilize sources like Twitter and LinkedIn and network as much as possible. And when you are using the job boards, be sure to keep your information fresh because that gets the attention of hiring organizations. Be careful on this one if you are currently employed and just looking or keeping your information updated – it also gets the attention of your own HR department. I can attest to that as I did a CareerBuilder refresh one time at CareerBuilder’s request and had to have a discussion with the PMO Director and HR. Geez.

Ways to Aid Your Search

As I mentioned, keep your job board info fresh. Just as you look for recent postings, HR departments are looking for recent resumes and if you keep yours updated, it looks new.

Here are a few ways you can help your online search process:

• Make sure your resume is uploaded in the exact format requested, e.g., .doc or .txt. Note that .docx is not widely accepted.

• Refresh your resume every week or two so it looks like a new submission and doesn’t get stale. Just as you search by date of position posted, sourcers search by date of resume posted.

• Use job board aggregators like Indeed.com or SimplyHired.com. These sites are great time savers as they provide an easily searchable database for thousands of boards in one location.

• Take advantage of industry association and niche job sites. And, don’t forget LinkedIn’s exclusive job postings.

• Apply directly to the company career board if possible. LinkUp.com is a nice website that features jobs aggregated exclusively from more than 22,000 company job boards.

• Create a resume that is rich with keywords that are reflected in the position description. This means you have to modify your resume for each specific position, every time.

• Label your resume document as “lastnamefirstname,” or “lastnamefirstname_position” to make it easier for the recipient to identify and remember you.

• Don’t put a date on your resume file (“resume_05-08”), as you don’t want to accentuate how long you may have been looking.

Process Trumps Technology

The concept I was going for when I came up with this title is loosely based on what I, for some reason, remembered was a Bible verse, but it is really a Chinese proverb.  “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

The Method, Not the Means

I believe the same holds true for process vs. technology.  Right now somewhere there is a wife buying her husband some cool new tool to entice him to do a job around the house that can be done a number of different ways with a number of different materials.  I know it worked for me…but in the long run it didn’t really motivate me beyond the initial task at hand.

No amount of cool software will replace good sound fundamentals when it comes to creating repeatable processes that can be taken to the masses in an organization and help take it to the next level.  For example, there are nice requirements management tools out there, but if a customer or a project team has no clue how to capture requirements and can’t follow a process to get from requirements definition to actually developing a solution, then the project will fail no matter what requirements capture method or methodology is use.

PMI and PMP promoters would say this is where like-mindedness and common dialogue helps an organization create those repeatable processes and helps keep all project managers in an organization traveling down a similar path.  It allows the organization to put the same face on each project, remain consistent and create the same type of customer experience for each customer and for returning customers…and thus, likely creating greater customer satisfaction.

I don’t disagree with that statement, though I also don’t think it is the only way to get there.  Experienced project managers bring invaluable knowledge to the table and can also easily adapt to sound project management methodology and principles.

Enough about that though…I’m heading down the wrong path again.  What I’m trying to say here is that when managing a project, know the following:

• What the end solution needs to accomplish – this will help the team determine the best technology to use to accomplish the end goal

• What information needs to be captured and presented – this will enable the project manager to utilize the best software or technology to deliver information in a timely and understandable manner

When I was serving in the role of Sr. Project Manager at Rockwell Collins, I was required to present larger, more visible projects to a Technology Council comprised of leaders within the organization.  The goal of the council was to help ensure that the proper technology was being used for the solution because many customers pushed for a particular technical solution that may not be in the best interest of the project or the corporation (these were internal projects for internal business units, for the most part).  By presenting a high-level view of the project and a proposed solution to the council, we could jointly decide on these larger projects what the proper solution should be.  We had a good process in place, which allowed us to utilize the best technology for each project.  Process first, technology second.

Summary

If the proper process and practices are in place and skilled resources – such as an experienced project manager and skilled project team members – are leading the effort, then the technology is almost an afterthought.  If you allow technology to drive the solution, then the possibility of delivering a solution to the customer that does not fully meet their needs is infinitely higher thus increasing the likelihood of customer dissatisfaction overall.