Seminar Philosophy

Mastering a set of terms and factoids has two fundamental problems. First, it’s a lousy way to prep for the exam since cramming a bunch of unrelated facts into your brain has a very low retention rate. Second, you’re robbing yourself of the opportunity to really learn some important concepts and master some critical concepts. Certainly, any Body of Knowledge that requires consensus, consolidation and compilation into exams will be somewhat behind the latest issues of the day.  We can use the most timely and relevant issues to teach best practices and foundation concepts in a way that will make them relevant. Note that when information is relevant, retention is extremely high.

About the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK)

The PMBOK Guide is an internationally recognized standard (IEEE Std 1490-2003) that provides the fundamentals of project management as they apply to a wide range of projects, including construction, software, engineering, automotive, etc.The Guide is process-based, meaning it describes work as being accomplished by processes. This approach is consistent with other management standards such as ISO 9000 and the Software Engineering Institute’s CMMI. Processes overlap and interact throughout a project or its various phases. Processes are described in terms of:

• Inputs (documents, plans, designs, etc.)
• Tools and Techniques (mechanisms applied to inputs)
• Outputs (documents, products, etc.)

The Guide recognizes 44 processes that fall into five basic process groups and nine knowledge areas that are typical of almost all projects.

The five process groups are:

1. Initiating,
2. Planning,
3. Executing,
4. Controlling and Monitoring, and
5. Closing.

The nine knowledge areas are:

1. Project Integration Management
2. Project Scope Management
3. Project Time Management
4. Project Cost Management
5. Project Quality Management
6. Project Human Resource Management
7. Project Communications Management
8. Project Risk Management
9. Project Procurement Management

Each of the nine knowledge areas contains the processes that need to be accomplished within its discipline in order to achieve an effective project management program. Each of these processes also falls into one of the five basic process groups, creating a matrix structure such that every process can be related to one knowledge area and one process group.The PMBOK is meant to offer a general guide to manage most of projects most of times. A specialized standard was developed as an extension to the PMBOK to suit special industries for example PMBOK Construction Extension and PMBOK Government extension.