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.

Defining Implementation Success or Failure

Sometimes indentifying whether your project or implementation was a success or failure is not as straightforward as just looking at the metrics involved with project management. It’s not always about on time and on budget. And it may not entirely be about customer satisfaction either.

In Henry Lucas’ book “Information Technology for Management” he defines first what an Implementation is and then looks at some of the possible criteria for determing that implementation’s relative success or failure factors.

What Is Implementation?

Implementation is part of the process of designing a system and is a component of change. We develop a new information system to change existing information processing procedures and often to change the organization itself. Implementation refers to the design team’s strategy and actions for seeing that a system is successful and makes a contribution to the organization.

Our definition stresses the long-term nature of implementation. It is part of a process that begins with the very first idea for a system and the changes it will bring. Implementation terminates when the system is successfully integrated withthe operations of the organization. We expect most of implementation to be concerned with behavioral phenomena since people are expected to change their information processing activities. Implementation becomes more important and difficult as systems design becomes more radical. If a firm undertakes a maj or reengineering project, it should make major changes in tasks to reduce costs and improve productivity in the organization.

Success or Failure

How do we know that we have successfully implemented a system? Researchers do not agree on an absolute indicator for successful implementation. One appealing approach is a cost/benefit study. In this evaluation, one totals the costs of developing a system and compares them with the dollar benefits resulting from the system.

In theory, this sounds like a good indicator of success, but in practice it is difficult to provide meaningful estimates. Obtaining the cost side of the ratio is not too much of a problem if adequate records are kept during system development. However, an evaluation of the benefits of an information system has eluded most analysts. There are a number of categories into which we might classify the benefits or value provided by an application of technology. These categories include:

• Infrastructure
• Required applications
• Applications where technology was the only solution
• Applications providing a direct return
• Applications with indirect returns
• Technology initiatives that are a competitive necessity
• Strategic applications
• Transformational information technology

For only a few of these categories are we likely to be able to demonstrate a direct financial return, which makes it difficult to perform a cost/benefit analysis to determine the “success” of a system.

As an alternative, we can choose among several indicators of successful implementation for an individual application, depending on the type of system involved. In many instances, use of a system is voluntary. A manager or other user receives a report but does not have to use the information on it or even read the report. Systems that provide interactive retrieval of information from a database also can often be classified as voluntary. The use of such a system is frequently at the discretion of the user. A manager with a personal computer in his or her office is not required to use it. For the type of system in which use is voluntary, we shall adopt high levels of use as a sign of successful implementation. We can measure use by interviews with users, through questionnaires, or in some instances, by building a monitor into the system to record actual use.

For systems whose use is mandatory, such as a production control system or a computer that provides stock market quotations for a broker, we shall employ the user’s evaluation of the system as a measure of success. For example, onecan examine user satisfaction, although it will probably be necessary to measure several facets of satisfaction, such as quality of service, timeliness and accuracy of information, and quality of the schedule for operations. An evaluation might also involve a panel of information processing experts reviewing the design and operation of the system. We should also note that managers might well consider a system to be successful if it accomplishes its objectives. However, to accomplish its objectives, a system must be used. We would also hope that one objective of a system would be extensive use and a high degree of user satisfaction.

Finally, though it is difficult to do, we can try to estimate the impact of a system on individuals and the organization. How has a system affected personal productivity and output quality? Can the organization point to added sales or increased revenues from a competitive application? Can we show that IT has had an impact on performance, either for individuals or the organization?

Taking the PRINCE2 exam?

The PRINCE2 exam, whether you are taking it for the first time or doing the re-certification exam, is in ‘objective testing’ format, which is a type of complicated multiple choice paper.  Whether you are taking the 2005 syllabus (which is being phased out as training companies update their manuals and courses) or the 2009 syllabus, these five study tips will help you revise for and pass the exam.

1.  Answer the question!

It sounds simple – but read the question and make sure you are answering the right thing.  If the question asks you to tick the three things that are most relevant, only choose three.  Don’t tick four.  If you can only work out two, take a guess at the third. The questions are not there to trick you!   With the assertion questions, don’t make stupid mistakes by not selecting the right answer.  There are a lot of answer options to choose from so make sure the letter you choose actually matches up with the answer you want to give.  It’s very easy – in the pressure of the exam – to select the wrong box on the answer form by accident.

2.  Know your way around the manual

You are allowed to take the PRINCE2 manual into the exam.  It’s over 450 pages, so you can’t rely on the index when you need to get to something quickly.  Put sticky tabs in the key sections, especially:

• Each process section
• The product descriptions (in Appendix A in the 2005 manual)
• Each technique section
• Each component section

This will help you flick to a section quickly.  The manual is the only paperwork you’ll be allowed to take into the exam, but you can write in it.  If you have your own notes or diagrams, put them in the back – there are blank pages, or use the inside covers.  Use highlighters, or whatever works for you to make sure that when you flick through you can get to what you need quickly.

3.  Do some past papers

It’s really important to understand the format of the exam before you sit it.  Do any past papers that you can get your hands on.  Work through the sample questions from your training provider.  Search on the internet.  Practise!  It’s the kind of exam that you will get better at once you have cracked how to respond to the questions, like Sudoku.

Work through the sample Foundation questions even if you are only taking the Practitioner exam.  It’s a good refresher for the basics and will help you feel more confident about taking Practitioner.

4.  Learn the process model

Webopius recommends copying the process model into your manual, so you have a copy to hand.  This is excellent advice – I did it the first time I took the exam and I’ll be doing it for recertification.  You need to know the process model inside out, and the manual doesn’t have a complete picture.  In addition, you can annotate your own drawing with inputs and outputs to the processes, what techniques are used, who is involved at the various handoffs and anything else.  You can get the whole of PRINCE2 into one diagram (kind of) and the very fact of copying out the process model helps stick it in your mind.

5.  Watch the time

Time goes quickly when you are trying to work through an exam paper.  Don’t get caught short – you really do need to make sure that you have enough time to answer every question and give it the attention it deserves.  If something is too hard, move on.  Get as many of the easy points as you can before tackling the questions that you find harder.  It really isn’t worth giving a stonking answer to one part only to find out that you have run out of time to answer the rest of the paper.

Equally, look out for the number of points each question is worth.  It’s not sensible to spend a whole lot of time on a question worth only 3 marks, when some of the more complicated multi-part questions will help you rack up lots of marks.

Good luck!

What’s the value of Project Management?

It took three years, but the ‘Researching the Value of Project Management’ study commissioned by PMI is producing tangible results.  Conducted by researchers Janice Thomas and Mark Mullaly, PMP, through Athabasca University in Athabasca, Alberta, Canada, the research looked at more than 65 case studies from a globally dispersed array of industries.

The study has been written up as a book and there have been a number of spin-offs as a result.  The most interesting of these is a practical, online guideline tool which discusses how best to get value from the project management activities in your organisation.

I have seen a demo of the tool and it’s my understanding that PMI will make it more widely available soon.  At the moment it is only available to people who buy the book.  Keep an eye out for it, as it is worth running for your company.

The tool is designed to help operationalise the findings of the study and provide some guidelines for practice based on the results of the Researching the Value of Project Management study.    More than 65 organisations from all industries around the world participated in the case study component of this research. The study found that there are multiple types of quantifiable value, ranging from better business outcomes to improved strategic alignment, derived from PM implementations, ranging from establishing a PMO to conducting training or hiring a trained expert. The goal of this tool is to help align desired value with appropriate implementation.

It’s a web-based survey that asks a variety of questions relating to different project management topics. It takes you through a series of comparisons between the different types of value that the study identified. For example, you will be asked if “strategic alignment” is more or less important to your organisation than “improved project results”.

When you have completed the survey, the tool then analyses your answers to produce ‘top tips’ about where you should be focusing your efforts to ensure that project management generates the most value for you as possible.  It uses the findings of the research study to calculate project management implementation suggestions for your organisation.

As you might expect, PMI warns that determining the most appropriate project management implementations for each organisation requires strategic thought and the ability to prioritise what each organisation wants to achieve. While this process cannot be shortcut by completing the online tool, suggestions can be made of implementations that might be appropriate based on the needs identified.  They go on to say:

Please be aware that the output of this tool is directional – a suggestion – which is based on the practices of the studied organizations. In the end, the implementation of project management must “fit” the organization it serves, or there can be no value generation. And remember that there is no silver bullet. As interesting as these suggestions may be, project management work that provides value to an organization can only be done by a competent, skilled project manager.

These suggestions cover a wide range of topics (I went through the tool several times with various responses) including project management training, embedding the PMO function, stakeholder relationships and so on. When you know you could do better but don’t know exactly where to start this will help you identify where to spend your effort.