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Project Management Professional (PMP) Fundamentals

What are the characteristics of a functional organization?

  • Project Manager has very little authority
  • Resource availability for the project depends on many factors and all the resource (including Project Manager) is allocated part-time or for a short duration of time
  • Functional Manager controls the project budget
  • Team member reports to functional manager and provides easier management of specialties
  • Team members have clearly defined career paths in areas of work specialization

    • What is projectized organization?

    Projectized Organization

    In a Projectized organization, team members are often collocated. Most of the organization's resources are involved in project work and project Manager's have great deal of authority and independence.

    What are the characteristics of projectized organizations?

  • Project Manager has highest authority
  • All resources are 100% allocated for the projects and are available at any given point
  • Project Manager controls the project budget
  • All team member reports to project manager (even if they are from different groups)
  • Eases the communication during the project life cycle

    • What is matrix organization?

    Matrix organizations are a blend of functional and projectized characteristics. They can be classified as further

  • Weak Matrix - Project Manager role is more of a coordinator role.
  • Strong Matrix - Project Manager has considerable authority.
  • Balanced Matrix - A project Manager is allocated but does not have full authority over the project and the project funding.
    • Refer to PMBOK 3rd Edition - Chapter 2 - fig 2.9, 2.10 and 2.11 for the graphical representation.

    What is plan-do-check-act cycle?

    In any industry to successfully implement any project, as a project Manager you need to Plan, Do, Check and Act. Let's say you want to build a website,

  • Plan - First you need to identify the audience and understand the market, competition, popularity etc.
  • Do - Now once the plan is identified, act on it. Take necessary steps like registering the domain name, register the website with any hosting company, build the website pages with required contents etc.
  • Check - During the development phase, periodically check the performance with your expectations. If they are not matching, identify the root cause etc.
  • Act - Based on the root causes, act on those. Expedite the process to develop more pages, modify the web page contents, change your marketing plans etc.

    • What are Project Management's five process groups?

  • Initiation - Defines and authorizes the project or a project phase
  • Planning - Defines and refines objectives, plans the course of action and defines the scope
  • Execution - Integrates people and other resources to carry out the project management plan
  • Monitor and Control - Frequently measure and monitors progress to identify variances from the plan
  • Closure - Accept the product and close the project

    • What are Project Management's nine Knowledge Areas?

    Each Knowledge area has further Processes and each process has inputs, outputs and "tools and techniques" (ITTO).

    Process High level description
    Integration Management coordinate various elements of the project
    Scope Management includes all the work required, to complete the project successfully
    Time Management to ensure timely completion of the project
    Cost Management to ensure successful implementation of the project within the approved budget
    Quality Management to ensure that project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken
    Human Resource Management to make the most effective use of the people involved with the project
    Communications Management to ensure timely and appropriate generation, collection, dissemination, storage, and ultimate disposition of project information
    Risk Management to identifying, analyzing, and responding to project risk
    Procurement Management to acquire goods and services required for the project from outside the performing organization

    We will learn all the above nine knowledge areas in detail.

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