PMP® is one of the most popular and globally acknowledged professional certifications available in the field of project management. Enrolling for project management certification courses from a reputed institute followed by clearing your PMP® exam allows you to enhance your PM skills, highlights your ability to handle critical projects, expands your market reach, and helps you bag great career opportunities.
The exam is conducted by the Project Management Institute. The criteria for assessing the candidates is their proficiency in the five project management processes as listed below-
- Initiating
- Planning
- Executing
- Monitoring & Controlling
- Closing
To get your PMP® certification, you need to master all these five processes and develop a strong understanding of the main topics tested in the PMP® exam.
If you’re looking for some guidance on clearing the PMP exam and developing skills for a robust project management process, here are the main topics to concentrate on better PMP® exam preparation.
1. Project Risk Management
The primary focus of project risk management is in controlling risks within the projects. Project managers need to prioritize the below in this process-
- Identifying risk
- Analyzing the risk
- Planning risk responses
- Planning project risk management
- Performing a qualitative and quantitative risk analysis
- Monitoring and controlling risks
While you follow these steps, it is important to always be transparent during the process. Make sure that everyone in the project team knows what is going on so that they can work on the next steps systematically and help manage the process.
2. Project Scope Management
Project Scope Management primarily includes the entire work requirements right from initiating a product to its final delivery. The two essential factors of this phase as discussed below-
- The entire set of work required for finishing and delivering a product or a service during the project lifecycle
- Features and functions characterizing the product or service
Further, the project manager must seek l approval on a clearly defined and well-articulated scope for the project. In order to do this, requirements must be discussed and collected from all stakeholders to lead to an accurate definition of scope.
When all the above said requirements in the project are met, both the quality and effectiveness of the project is maintained and guarantees customer satisfaction. While customers are external stakeholders, it is essential to manage the internal stakeholder
(project team, business heads, etc.) expectations, as well.
3. Project Time Management
It is the process of seamlessly distributing and monitoring time in project management to ensure completion of project within time. Project Time Management also helps the project manager to monitor the time spent over a project along with detailing how much time should be spent on a certain task within a project.
The main processes in project time management include-
- Planning schedule management
- Identifying software or tools to be used
- Assigning responsibility for using the software
- Defining controls that need to be put in place to ensure everyone stays on a defined time schedule
- Defining and sequencing activities
- Estimating duration and developing the project schedule
4. Project Cost Management
Project cost management is the process of using technology to measure cost and productivity throughout the project lifecycle. The areas covered under this include projecting & controlling costs as well as determining a budget.
5. Project Integration Management
This is the process to make sure that all the essential requirements within a project are well-coordinated and executed. Among these include-
- Integration of project plan development process
- Integration of change and control processes
- Execution process
Each of these processes has different sets of tools and techniques to perform the tasks and seamlessly convert the input into an output.
6. Project Communications Management
Project Communications Management is primarily the process that ensures clear and transparent communication between project team members, product owners, stakeholders, and all other parties involved with the project. Among the primary focus area of communications management include-
- Identifying the stakeholders
- Managing stakeholders’ expectations and performance reporting
- Planning the communication
- Distribution of information
To Wrap Up
The role of a project manager is crucial in any organization. Mastering these project management processes helps you improve your chances of clearing the PMP exam substantially. A PMP® certification training from a reputed institute can further help you achieve this as it is among the most popular project management certifications. The certification is most beneficial for project managers with work experience in the for and who have the right knowledge and experience to take on the project manager role.
