Cynthia Snyder Stackpole

The project management plan is the guiding document you'll use to manage, control, and close your project, and it's dynamic — it'll change throughout the project life cycle. The project management plan acts as an input to the initial planning process in each knowledge area. You may ask yourself, "How can this be an input to the initial planning process if outputs from planning processes are inputs to the Develop Project Management Plan process?

You can apply PMP (project management professional) estimating techniques to resources, effort, duration, and costs. PMPs use different methods of estimating, depending on the situation. Estimating method Description Analogous estimating Generally used at the start of the project when not much is known. Compares the current project with past similar projects.

Motivating people is a large part of the project manager’s job. You should know the motivation theories for the PMP Certification Exam. Motivation can be difficult because not everyone is motivated by the same type of reward. Theory X and Theory Y As proposed by Douglas McGregor, Theory X and Theory Y describe two different types of workers and how they should be managed.

Your schedule is one of the most important documents you will produce. It’s important to know for the PMP Certification Exam and is a key component in managing stakeholder expectations. It tells team members when they will be performing work, the type of work they will perform, whom team members will be working with, and how long the work should take.

Experienced project management professionals (PMPs) know that as they plan and execute projects, they'll encounter conflicts and differences of opinion. As you study for your PMP certification exam, become familiar with these six strategies to resolve conflict. Strategy Description Situation Confronting / Pro

Task Outlines allow you to focus on different levels of detail Project 2013. With the invention of computer outlining, the capability to focus on only certain portions of an outline comes into its own, because you can easily open and close an outline to show or hide different levels of information — or entire sections of your outline.

A maxim of project management says that things change: Tasks that you thought you could complete early can’t happen yet because money, people, or materials are in short supply. Or a task that you thought you couldn’t start until next July gets bumped up in priority when your customer changes his mind (again) about deliverables.

When you're ready to take the PMP (Project Management Professional) Certification exam, expect to see up to ten questions dealing with network diagrams, precedence diagramming, and scheduling issues. Here are some PMP details you need to know: FS = Finish-to-start FF = Finish-to-finish SS = Start-to-start SF = Start-to-finish Lead = The amount of time an activity can be advanced with respect to a predecessor activity Lag = The amount of time a successor activity is required to be delayed with respect to a predecessor activity A mandatory dependency is based on the nature of the work.

On the PMP certification exam, you'll see five to ten questions on variances and indexes. Here's fundamental information that project managers need to determine cost and schedule variances and indexes. For variance and indexes, always start with EV. When looking for information on schedule, use PV. When looking for information on cost, use AC.