Many of you who read this blog are already certified PMPs. As a practicing project manager, I believe we have the responsibility to stay abreast of the changes that the Project Management Institute makes to the PMBOK® Guide as well as the PMP® Exam.
Did you know that the PMP® exam will be changing after August 31, 2011. Over the next couple months we’ll explore the changes to the exam to help those of you considering taking your PMP as well as for those who already have it and have a NEED to know.
A sample of the changes in the Planning Process include:
- Assess vs. record requirements. Incorporate lessons learned into requirements gathering.
- HR Management plan includes additional emphasis on guidance regarding how resources will be utilized and managed.
- Objective of the WBS is to specifically “manage the scope of the project” vs. allowing the creation of subsidiary plans.
- Objective of the Quality Management Plan is to prevent defects and reduce the cost of quality (vs. applying the quality policy).
- Focus of the Change Management Plan is to track and manage changes (vs. in order to handle risk).
Risk Management Plan scope broadened to include “identifying, analyzing, and prioritizing project risk and defining risk response strategies”.
Let’s talk about requirements gathering. Do you have a standard template that you use to create requirements? Do you have large group requirements gathering sessions? From my experience, requirements gathering best practices are where you manage the expectations of the audience to JUST focus on the requirements and NOT spend any time solutioning. In addition, smaller groups are usually better than larger groups for initial requirements gathering. Large groups are prone to having side-discussions that take away from gathering the actual requirements. What are your best practices?
How about the Change management Plan. Although having a change management plan DOES help manage risk on the project, it DOES set the framework for the project manager to track and manage all changes. Project teams that can’t manage changes well tend to complain about scope creep. From my experience the project charter and the change management plan are critical documents. If you do not have a clear charter for the project and do not have a mechanism to manage changes well, there will be huge opportunity for both the team members as well as the customer to include items in the project deliverables that truly were not meant to be within the actual project scope. What are some of the things you do to better manage changes in your organization?
*Note that these changes are NOT changes to the PMBOK® Guide. They are changes to the Role Delineation Study (RDS). PMI conducts a role delineation study (RDS) for the Project Management Professional (PMP)® credential every five to seven years to ensure the credential reflects contemporary practice and evolves to meet current needs in the profession, and to comply with the PMP’s accreditation under the ISO 17024 standard.
Diane Altwies
Diane
Altwies is the Chief Executive Officer of Core Performance Concepts
Inc. (CPC), a training and consulting firm with a proven track record of
delivering completed projects to the marketplace through effective
leadership of multi-disciplinary teams with a strong customer focus.