Last fall, PMI announced that on August 31, 2011, thirty percent of the questions on the PMP exam will be changing. The changes are being made to make the test align more closely with the most recent “Roles Delineated Study” completed last year. See – http://www.pmi.org/Certification/Project-Management-Professional-PMP/Updates-to-PMP-Certification-Exam/PMP-Role-Delineation-Study.aspx

Even though the test will also still be based on version four of the PMBOK Guide, there are going to be important changes in the types of questions, and changes in what students need to study to prepare for the PMP exam. (Bottom line: students will need to be prepared for all the materials in version four of the PMBOK Guide – as they do today – and additionally, they’ll need to be very familiar with the current “Roles Delineated Study.”)

First of all, starting on August 31, the Professional Responsibility questions will now be spread across all the five process groups and nine knowledge areas, instead of being a separate domain. This makes sense, and students even today have to be prepared that many questions on the exam will mix topics from multiple knowledge areas in one question. Thus, students have to follow intense PMP exam preparation.

The Roles Delineated Study spells out the key tasks project managers must perform in all five “domains:” Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring & Controlling and Closing. (They do not say so directly, but it appears these domains map very closely to the five “process groups” defined in the PMBOK Guide.) However, the tasks defined in the RDS for the domains do not exactly match the processes in version four of the PMBOK Guide for the five process groups! Also, the more detailed descriptions of the key roles, knowledge and skills defined for these tasks do not always directly map onto the tools & techniques defined for processes in the process groups. Here are several examples:

­ In the RDS in the Initiating Domain, one of the tasks is “Identify and document high-level risks, assumptions and constraints … “ If you only looked at the PMBOK Guide, you might think that because Identify Risks is a planning process completely distinct from the initiating process Develop Charter that we wouldn’t identify risks as part of the initiating domain. On the other hand, the Charter is going to contain an initial list of Risks – especially Business Risks – so thinking a little more flexibly, it does make sense it would occur here.

­ A second example: in the RDS in the Planning Domain, - there is no task specifically called Define Scope, or one which creates a Scope Statement. This activity seems to be included solely in “Assess detailed project requirements, constraints, and assumptions … ”

­ Lastly, - in the RDS, it appears the three baselines are mingled with management plans. For example, Task 3 in the planning domain says, “Develop a budget plan based on project scope using estimating techniques, in order to manage project cost.” The PMBOK Guide goes to extra lengths to distinguish between the cost management plan and the cost baseline. (See pps. 165-166 which discuss elements of the cost management plan, and p. 178 which discusses the cost performance baseline.)

Conclusions: So, as we said, starting on August 31, students need to know both the tasks defined in the RDS for the domains, as well as the processes defined in the process groups in the PMBOK Guide. Also, they need to think “out-of-the-box” and think little more broadly beyond what is defined in the PMBOK Guide. In the PMBOK Guide, in the introductory section for each knowledge area, there is always a paragraph that reads, “Although the processes are presented here as discrete components with well-defined interfaces, in practice they will overlap and interact in ways not detailed here.” So, the addition of the Roles Delineated Study materials to the exam appears to be reinforcing and emphasizing this point. The 42 processes are not meant to function like well-defined subroutines of a tested, debugged program.

Secondly, REPs and companies teaching PMP exam prep courses need to include extra materials reviewing the RDS, and highlight the areas where the RDS diverges from the PMBOK Guide. For my company, Best Practices PMP Training, LLC – (http://www.bestpractices-pmptraining.com ), we will add a specific section of two to four hours to go over the areas where the two documents overlap, and especially highlight areas where they diverge.

Mark Tolbert, PMP

mark@bestpmptraining.com

About the Author:
Kathy Green is a dedicated social worker who while serving the disabled people in Ireland, came across the very common issue of effective disability equipments, especially in case of stairlifts. She has also performed market research on the equipment providers and the stairlifts rentals.