PMP Exam is changing in July, 2021 – Part 3 – Domains & Tasks in The PMP Exam Content Outline
What are the contents of PMP Exam Content Outline and how do they drive PMP Exam and changes in it?
In the last post PMP Exam is changing in July, 2020 – Part 2 – The PMP Exam Content Outline, I described what PMP Exam Content Outline is and how it impacts the changes that PMI has proposed in PMP Exam effective from 1th July, 2020. Now let’s deep dive into PMP Exam Contents Outline and study each domain and task described in it so that we can better prepare for PMP Exam and save our self from any kind of confusion.
PMI’s recent survey has proposed to categorize the work of project managers into three domains –People, Process and Business Environment (Earlier or better say so far it was categorized in 5 domains (Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitoring & Control and Closure). PMP Exam Questions will be distributed according to new categories
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PMP Exam Content Outline is in a table form briefly state what all tasks (Task column) a project manager does (the work project managers do or expected to do) and what these tasks mean (Enablers column). Here is the table providing domain wise tasks list. I have explained each task in simple language for easy and better understanding (Explanation Column). Understanding these tasks is important because PMP Exam Questions are based on these tasks.
Domain – I – People (42% of PMP Exam Questions will be from this domain) |
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| Task | Enablers | Explanation |
| Task 1-
Manage conflict |
· Interpret the source and stage of the conflict
· Analyze the context for the conflict · Evaluate/recommend/reconcile the appropriate conflict resolution solution |
Discover the root cause of the conflict, identify the context and at what stage it is, analyze the conflicts, workout options by consulting involve parties, propose solution and help parties to resolve it. |
| Task 2 –
Lead a team |
· Set a clear vision and mission
· Support diversity and inclusion (e.g., behavior types, thought process) · Value servant leadership (e.g., relate the tenets of servant leadership to the team) · Determine an appropriate leadership style (e.g., directive, collaborative) · Inspire, motivate, and influence team members/stakeholders (e.g., team contract, social contract, reward system) · Analyze team members and stakeholders’ influence · Distinguish various options to lead various team members and stakeholders |
Set a clear vision and mission for the team. Aspire for diversity and promote inclusiveness. Understand different leadership styles and appreciate/adopt servant leadership. Understand & Help create team charter. Understand basic characteristics of a good reward system and setup a reward system. Analyze individual team members’ influence on the projects and adopt different strokes for different folks approach. |
| Task 3 –
Support team performance |
· Appraise team member performance against key performance indicators
· Support and recognize team member growth and development · Determine appropriate feedback approach · Verify performance improvements |
Set key performance indicators (KPIs) for each team member. Determine right approach to appraise and provide feedback to team members against KPIs. Recognize good work done by team members and its growth. Help/support team members to improve performance. Verify improvement in the performance and help taking corrective measures. |
| Task – 4
Empower team members and stakeholders |
· Organize around team strengths
· Support team task accountability · Evaluate demonstration of task accountability · Determine and bestow level(s) of decision-making authority |
Identify and recognize team members’ strengths and weaknesses. Assign roles and responsibilities according to team members’ strengths and weaknesses. Include team members in decision making and empower them to make better decisions. |
| Task – 5
Ensure team members/stakeholders are adequately trained |
· Determine required competencies and elements of training
· Determine training options based on training needs · Allocate resources for training · Measure training outcomes |
Determine skills/competencies required by project and identify skills gaps considering current skills of team members. Determine training needs based on skills gap. Allocate resources to training. Measure performance and training effectiveness post training. |
| Task – 6
Build a team |
· Appraise stakeholder skills
· Deduce project resource requirements · Continuously assess and refresh team skills to meet project needs · Maintain team and knowledge transfer |
Optimize project resource requirements. Continuous skill development. Retain knowledge by knowledge transfer. |
| Task – 7
Address and remove impediments, obstacles, and blockers for the team |
· Determine critical impediments, obstacles, and blockers for the team
· Prioritize critical impediments, obstacles, and blockers for the team · Use network to implement solutions to remove impediments, obstacles, and blockers for the team · Re-assess continually to ensure impediments, obstacles, and blockers for the team are being addressed |
Identify road blockers ahead in time that can impact the performance of team members and project progress. Assess their impact on the project and prioritize them. Workouts options and implement suitable solutions to resolve them in time. Ensure continuous detection and resolution of road blockers. |
| Task – 8
Negotiate project agreements |
· Analyze the bounds of the negotiations for agreement
· Assess priorities and determine ultimate objective(s) · Verify objective(s) of the project agreement is met · Participate in agreement negotiations · Determine a negotiation strategy |
Analyze and understand limits within which agreement is to be negotiated. Define objectives and prioritize them that are to be achieved through negotiations. Understand various negotiation strategies and select an appropriate strategy. Ensure that negotiated agreement is a win-win for both the parties and not win-lose. Participate in negotiations and finalize the agreement. Verify if the objectives are achieved. |
| Task – 9
Collaborate with stakeholders |
· Evaluate engagement needs for stakeholders
· Optimize alignment between stakeholder needs, expectations, and project objectives · Build trust and influence stakeholders to accomplish project objectives |
Through stakeholder analysis, understand stakeholder engagement and communications needs. Set expectations to stakeholders and engage them in appropriate activities to build trust and influence them to support project and achieve project objectives. |
| Task – 10
Build shared understanding |
· Break down situation to identify the root cause of a misunderstanding
· Survey all necessary parties to reach consensus · Support outcome of parties’ agreement · Investigate potential misunderstandings |
Strive to build consensus and avoid any future conflicts. Discover current and potential misunderstandings. Discuss and take inputs from all parties involved to identify root cause of misunderstanding and removing the same. Bring all parties on same understanding. |
| Task – 11
Engage and support virtual teams |
· Examine virtual team member needs (e.g., environment, geography, culture, global, etc.)
· Investigate alternatives (e.g., communication tools, colocation) for virtual team member engagement · Implement options for virtual team member engagement · Continually evaluate effectiveness of virtual team member engagement |
Understand geography, culture and environment in which different virtual team members are working and find ways for better communication among them. Look for possibilities of their co-location. If co-location is not possible, create opportunities for their face to face interaction on a regular basis for better engagement. Continuously examine effectiveness of virtual team engagement and take corrective and preventive measures. |
| Task – 12
Define team ground rules |
· Communicate organizational principles with team and external stakeholders
· Establish an environment that fosters adherence to the ground rules · Manage and rectify ground rule violations |
Work with the team and stakeholders to form ground rules. Create an environment that support and encourage team members to follow ground rules. Ensure that team adhere to ground rules and violations are managed to maintain the discipline. Understand the root cause of violations and take corrective measures. |
| Task – 13
Mentor relevant stakeholders |
· Allocate the time to mentoring
· Recognize and act on mentoring opportunities |
Create a system for mentoring. Identify team members that requires mentoring and allocate appropriate guide who can mentor. Examine effectiveness of mentoring and take corrective measure as required. |
| Task – 14
Promote team performance through the application of emotional intelligence |
· Assess behavior through the use of personality indicators
· Analyze personality indicators and adjust to the emotional needs of key project stakeholders |
Use personality indicators using personality assessment tool like MBTI and DISC. Understand individuals’ behavior using these tools and assign appropriate work align with their personalities. |
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Domain – II – Process (50% of PMP Exam Questions will be from this domain) |
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| Task | Enablers | Explanation |
| Task – 1
Execute project with the urgency required to deliver business value |
· Assess opportunities to deliver value incrementally
· Examine the business value throughout the project · Support the team to subdivide project tasks as necessary to find the minimum viable product |
A little high level work mainly focus on Direct and Manager Project Work process of Integration Management. PM should explore opportunities of using iterative or agile methodology to deliver value incrementally. Continuously examine to ensure delivery of business value. Help team to divide the project deliverable in smaller pieces so that they can executed and assigned properly to team members. |
| Task – 2
Manage communications |
· Analyze communication needs of all stakeholders
· Determine communication methods, channels, frequency, and level of detail for all stakeholders · Communicate project information and updates effectively · Confirm communication is understood and feedback is received |
While making stakeholder register, identify communication needs of stakeholders. Determine number of channels, communication methods, modes, frequency and level of details for all stakeholders and prepare a communication plan. Communicate project information effectively as per communication plan. Monitor communication, ensure feedback and confirm that communication is properly understood. |
| Task – 3
Assess and manage risks |
· Determine risk management options
· Iteratively assess and prioritize risks |
Identify risk by involving various stakeholders, analyze risk probability and impact, determine risk consequences if risk materialize. Based on risk analysis, prepare various options to respond to risks to reduce their probability or impact or both. Implement risk response. Assess, analyze and priorities risk on a regular basis to monitor risks. |
| Task – 4
Engage stakeholders |
· Analyze stakeholders (e.g., power interest grid, influence, impact)
· Categorize stakeholders · Engage stakeholders by category · Develop, execute, and validate a strategy for stakeholder engagement |
Identifying all stakeholder and analyzing their characteristics using Power/Interest Grid and their influence/impact on the project. Categorize stakeholder in Keep Satisfied, Keep Informed, Manage Closely and Monitor categories. Identify their state – Unaware, Neutral, Resistive, Supportive and Leading. Prepare a stakeholder register to maintain their information and develop strategies as per their category and state. Execute strategies to engage stakeholders. Continuously review and update the information and strategies in the register. |
| Task – 5
Plan and manage budget and resources |
· Estimate budgetary needs based on the scope of the project and lessons learned from past projects
· Anticipate future budget challenges · Monitor budget variations and work with governance process to adjust as necessary · Plan and manage resources |
Refer lesson learned from past similar projects, collect cost related data, estimate resource requirements for each activity and estimate the total cost of the project. Based on estimated cost, prepare project budget and forecast project funding requirements. Assess other challenges in managing the cost. Prepare S Curve. Implement EVM and track project cost throughout project lifecycle. Prepare resource allocation plan, staffing plan, assign task to resources, prepare on-board & off-board dates for each resource, prepare Roles and Responsibility Chart, Prepare hierarchical chart depicting team relationship. Execute resource plan and deploy physical and human resource on the project and manage them throughout project. |
| Task – 6
Plan and manage schedule |
· Estimate project tasks (milestones, dependencies, story points)
· Utilize benchmarks and historical data · Prepare schedule based on methodology · Measure ongoing progress based on methodology · Modify schedule, as needed, based on methodology · Coordinate with other projects and other operations |
This is the process of scheduling and managing the schedule throughout project. Use historical data of past projects and use various estimation techniques such as analogous, parametric, story points, benchmarking etc. to estimation activity duration. Establishing dependencies among activities. Prepare schedule based on methodology in line with selected project lifecycle. Use techniques like critical path analysis, resource leveling, simulation etc. to optimize and finalize schedule. Monitor the schedule using EVM and scheduling tools and take corrective measures. Coordinate with other project and operations as per interdependencies. |
| Task – 7
Plan and manage quality of products/deliverables |
· Determine quality standard required for project deliverables
· Recommend options for improvement based on quality gaps · Continually survey project deliverable quality |
Determine and establish quality standard and requirements that project needs to meet. Manage quality to identify gaps in process and deliverables. Suggest option to improve the quality. Continuously measure quality of process and products and take corrective measures. |
| Task – 8
Plan and manage scope |
· Determine and prioritize requirements
· Break down scope (e.g., WBS, backlog) · Monitor and validate scope |
Collect, finalize and prioritize the requirements. Define scope in clear terms what is in scope and what is out of scope both for product of the project and project activities. Prepare a Work Breakdown Structure representing the work to be done or deliverables to be delivered as part of project. Understand what is backlog in agile. Monitor & Control & Validate Project Scope. |
| Task – 9
Integrate project planning activities |
· Consolidate the project/phase plans
· Assess consolidated project plans for dependencies, gaps, and continued business value · Analyze the data collected · Collect and analyze data to make informed project decisions · Determine critical information requirements |
Take plans from all knowledge areas such as scope management plan, schedule management plan etc. and prepare an integrated project management plan. Ensure that integrated project management plan take care of all interdependencies. During execution, collect actual data and analyze it for taking corrective and preventive measures and future steps. Determine changing requirements critical for stakeholders. |
| Task – 10
Manage project changes |
· Anticipate and embrace the need for change (e.g., follow change management practices)
· Determine strategy to handle change · Execute change management strategy according to the methodology · Determine a change response to move the project forward |
Appreciate changes and understand the changes are bound to occur during project. Welcome changes that aligned with objectives and resist changes that are not in line with objectives. Prepare a strategy to handle changes and establish a Change Management Process. Recognize that a change has occur and take through Change Management Process. Prevent scope creep. |
| Task – 11
Plan and manage procurement |
· Define resource requirements and needs
· Communicate resource requirements · Manage suppliers/contracts · Plan and manage procurement · Develop a delivery solution |
Identify resource requirements and make a decision whether to make or buy from outside to address the requirement. In case of buy, document decision, prepare SOW, prepare procurement documents and plan, decide contract type, receive proposal from suppliers, select a supplier using a well-formed selection criteria, manage supplier throughout procurement to ensure compliance to contract by both parties, and close the procurement on completion by giving a formal notice to supplier. |
| Task – 12
Manage project artifacts |
· Determine the requirements (what, when, where, who, etc.) for managing the project artifacts
· Validate that the project information is kept up to date (i.e., version control) and accessible to all stakeholders · Continually assess the effectiveness of the management of the project artifacts |
This task mainly focus on configuration management. Identify project artifacts (either soft or hard). Prepare a configuration plan for their safe keeping and management (keeping mind what, when, where and why) to keep them up to date. Manage the changes in the artifacts (version control), define their accessibility on need to know basis. Control the configuration for its effectiveness in managing the artifacts. |
| Task – 13
Determine appropriate project methodology/ methods and practices |
· Assess project needs, complexity, and magnitude
· Recommend project execution strategy (e.g., contracting, finance) · Recommend a project methodology/approach (i.e., predictive, agile, hybrid) · Use iterative, incremental practices throughout the project life cycle (e.g., lessons learned, stakeholder engagement, risk) |
Based on project needs, complexity and size, recommend appropriate project life cycle whether to follow predictive (Waterfall), Agile (Iterative/incremental) or Hybrid (mix of waterfall and iterative) life cycle. Understand fundamentals and nuances of each agile (incremental) and hybrid life cycle and practice them in the project. |
| Task – 14
Establish project governance structure |
· Determine appropriate governance for a project (e.g., replicate organizational governance)
· Define escalation paths and thresholds |
Establish a governance model and structure for the project to give an oversite to the project. Provide directions. Define an escalation path to project governance team. |
| Task – 15
Manage project issues |
· Recognize when a risk becomes an issue
· Attack the issue with the optimal action to achieve project success · Collaborate with relevant stakeholders on the approach to resolve the issues |
Recognize an issue, document issue in Issue Log, work out a resolution, work and collaborate with relevant stakeholders to implement resolution and closure of issue. |
| Task – 16
Ensure knowledge transfer for project continuity |
· Discuss project responsibilities within team
· Outline expectations for working environment · Confirm approach for knowledge transfers |
Prepare a knowledge documentation plan, assign responsibilities to individual team members for documenting and transferring knowledge, organize knowledge management activities, ensure knowledge is getting captured and not lost |
| Task – 17
Plan and manage project/phase closure or transitions |
· Determine criteria to successfully close the project or phase
· Validate readiness for transition (e.g., to operations team or next phase) · Conclude activities to close out project or phase (e.g., final lessons learned, retrospective, procurement, financials, resources) |
Determine the success criteria (documented in charter), demonstrate success criteria met or how much % success is met, handover the product to operation team, ensure lesson learned and other documents of entire projects are archived. Settle any open issue or dispute. Do the financial closure and closeout the project. |
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| Domain – III – Business Environment (8%) | ||
| Task | Enablers | Explanation |
| Task 1 – Plan and manage project compliance | · Confirm project compliance requirements (e.g., security, health and safety, regulatory compliance)
· Classify compliance categories · Determine potential threats to compliance · Use methods to support compliance · Analyze the consequences of noncompliance · Determine necessary approach and action to address compliance needs (e.g., risk, legal) · Measure the extent to which the project is in compliance |
Understand compliance requirements as per company policy and local & international law.
Categorize them like security, safety, regulatory etc. to manage them. Understand repercussions of non-compliance. Make team aware of compliance requirements and repercussions of non-compliance Prepare a strategy and plan out the activities required for compliance. Engage the team and other stakeholders to comply with requirements. Measure the compliance throughout the project |
| Task 2 – Evaluate and deliver project benefits and value | · Investigate that benefits are identified
· Document agreement on ownership for ongoing benefit realization · Verify measurement system is in place to track benefits · Evaluate delivery options to demonstrate value · Appraise stakeholders of value gain progress |
Understand the value that is being created by project and list down project benefits to various stakeholders such as customer, own organization etc. Ensure that benefits are well documented and ownership is agreed upon.
Lay down measurements to ensure project creates value and deliver stated benefits. Keep stakeholder appraised of progress Ensure measurement system is in place and capable of tracking benefits. |
| Task 3 – Evaluate and address external business environment changes for impact on scope | · Survey changes to external business environment (e.g., regulations, technology, geopolitical, market)
· Assess and prioritize impact on project scope/backlog based on changes in external business environment · Recommend options for scope/backlog changes (e.g., schedule, cost changes) · Continually review external business environment for impacts on project scope/backlog |
Connected with task 1, understand external factors that influence project like market conditions, regulatory requirements, geographical influence, local and global politics, availability of technology and resources, local political and social environment etc. and their influence on the project’s results/benefits.
Proactively plan and suggest required changes to influence these factors to have positively impact on the project or reduce negative impact. |
| Task 4 – Support organizational change | · Assess organizational culture
· Evaluate impact of organizational change to project and determine required actions · Evaluate impact of the project to the organization and determine required actions |
Understand the organizational culture, its structure and impact of the same on project execution.
Prepare project structure and plan for smooth execution within organizational constraints. Keep an eye on organizational changes happening time to time, evaluating impact on the project and plan to maximize positive impact and minimize negative influence. Also determine project’s impact on the organization and pursue necessary action. |
I hope this information will be helpful in understanding PMP Exam requirements. Should you have any question, please ask in the comment section, I will try to reply at the earliest.