Entire Series Posted!

The entire Drawn Out Project Management series is posted to YouTube!

After many months, The Crowd Training has finished drawing out and explaining the 49 processes of the Project Management Body of Knowledge PMBOK 6th edition! You can now access the entire playlist or view the processes you need the most support on.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZdjZVoQFYUOOFnLr2R3E4A

The Crowd Training’s Drawn Out Project Management YouTube series takes all the processes from the 6th edition PMBOK and presents them in a simple, visual way. Similar to a whiteboard, the processes are explained and illustrated much like I have done for hundreds of PMP and CAPM candidates in in-person instructor led courses over the last 14 years. The drawings I did for those students were very effective in aiding their grasping of the various project management processes and concepts, as well as putting the nomenclature and PMI organization of the processes and knowledge area. As you know, we as project managers – or inspiring project managers – do not walk around spewing PMI terms like, “Hey Joe, today I am performing the Identify Risks process as part of the Risk Management area. How about you today?” No, we don’t. At least, I hope you don’t. That would be a bit weird and pretentious.

Nevertheless, for the exam at least, we must memorize and internalize the structure, naming, and flow arranged and codified by the Project Management Institute over that last 40+ years. That is the objective of these whiteboard animations: to give you an easy, free way to memorize and internalize the vast amount of knowledge and terms you are expected to know and apply from the PMBOK 6th edition and project management in general. I hope it helps you in your studies as much as it helped me and my many PMP and CAPM students. Enjoy!

Here is a list of all the 49 PM processes and links to their videos.

Initiation

Develop Project Charter

Identify Stakeholders

Planning

Plan scope management

Plan schedule management

Plan cost management

Plan quality management

Plan resource management

Plan communications management

Plan risk management

Plan procurement management

Plan stakeholder management

Develop project management plan

Collect requirements

Define scope

Create work breakdown schedule

Define activities

Sequence activities

Estimate activity durations

Develop schedule

Estimate costs

Develop budget

Estimate activity resources

Identify risks

Perform qualitative risk analysis

Perform quantitative risk analysis

Plan risk responses

Executing

Manage project knowledge

Manage quality

Manage team

Manage communications

Manage stakeholder engagement

Direct and manage project work

Acquire resources

Develop team

Implement risk responses

Conduct procurements

Monitoring and Controlling

Monitor and control project work

Monitor communication

Monitor risk

Monitor stakeholder engagement

Control scope

Control schedule

Control cost

Control quality

Control resources

Control procurements

Validate scope

Perform integrated change control

Closing

Close Project or Phase

Manage Project Team Whiteboard

Another whiteboard animation explaining the processes of the 6th edition of the Project Management Body of Knowledge or PMBOK has been posted to YouTube. This time on the Manage Team process.

As part of the Drawn Out Project Management series, I am attempting to draw out the inputs, outputs, tools and techniques of the 47 processes of the PMBOK to help explain them and make sense of the overall process. I used this technique when I was preparing for my PMP exam about 14 years ago when it was the 3rd edition of the PMBOK. Today, the PMBOK and the PMP exam is on its 6th edition; nevertheless the drawing of the components of the processes stills works just as well today as it then. In some respects, it works better today because the process inputs, outputs, and tools/techniques are more condensed and universal. There are fewer details to remember and less precision needed in the drawings since the drawings can represent more broad, high level concepts. 

The Manage Team process whiteboard illustrates the ITTOs of the process as it exists in the 6th edition. There is not much different in this process compared to when I created a similar video for the 5th edition. Really the only major item of note is that it resides in the Project Resource Management knowledge area and not the Project Human Resource Management knowledge area – mind blown, I know!

Hope this helps you understand this and the other processes more. I shall keep updating The Crowd Training YouTube channel with new videos. When they will post depends on my time and motivation. I am about 3/4ths of the way through the processes. After I complete the processes, I may move onto explaining other project management concepts and best practices on a whiteboard or with my animated character PM Guy I use for my PM City online courses. But not making any promises yet. I do want to do more with the agile project management and the book and courseware I have recently finished.

https://youtu.be/x261NvcsP_Q 

Take the 5th Edition Exam or Wait for the 6th?

I get the question regularly, “Should I rush and sit for the 5th edition of the PMP exam or should I wait for the 6th edition? Everyone is telling me to take the PMP exam now because it is changing.”

As this is a common inquiry, I decided to type up one of my responses here in this blog to hopefully help others with the same question.

In short, whether you obtain your PMP via the 5^th edition or 6^th you should be ok. The reason that a changeover gathers so much attention is that when the PMBOK changed from 2nd to 3rd and 3rd to 4th they were relatively drastic. The exams also got more difficult – more situational, less memorization. And in terms of the 4th edition, the structure of the naming conventions got more logical and consistent, but drastically different for those who learned it in previous editions. Now the exam changes are more subtle. I would even argue that the changes are for the betterment of everyone and not overbearing. So now the rush to take an exam is more for those people who have been studying and want to test on the edition they have been working off of, as well as training companies wanting to capitalize on reason to push classes.

I have been thru many changeovers. I got my PMP on the 3^rd edition. I started instructing with the 3^rd edition. Was a contributor to the 4^th and 5^th editions of the PMBOK [so if you get a 5^th edition, you will see my name on p501, but if you get a 6^th you will not].  Have created courses for 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th editions. Now I am building a 6^th edition online course in the way that I would have liked – interactive, visual, and engaging. Point being, whether you cram and take a weekday or weekend in person class (which is the way I got my PMP 13 years ago) or online or a combination of them in either 5^th or 6^th, you will be fine. My recommendation to people is to choose study options that fit your learning style and your timing. Are you better at reading… sitting in a class with an instructor… talking with others… going at your own pace or the pace of others… visual learner or prefer lectures… like to do a little each day or fully immersed days…etc.

Do you have a time crunch or just want to get it out of the way? The quickest way is to buckle down and do nothing but prepare and sit for the exam. If not able to afford the high costs, the time off work, and the hours of dedication in short order, then get online courses like mine and other resources and carve out a plan that is realistic AND hold yourself to it! Schedule your exam early and hold yourself to it. Having a deadline set and telling yourself you cannot move it makes you more focused and motivated. It is too easy to pushback something that is not rooted or set. Much harder to deprioritize the exam when you are committed to a date and time.

There are a lot of options out there. Many people use many options. Really it comes down to you. Are you disciplined to study on your own? Are you disciplined to focus for 2-5 days in a class and sit for exam soon after while everything is still jiggling around in your brain?

Let me know what you decide. I am curious about your story. You can enter your stories and thoughts in the comment section.

If you would like to take advantage of my training offering, snagging it now is definitely financially advantageous [only $99 if pre-order; $720 if post-launch in January]. If your plan is to time it for the 6^th edition, then using The Crowd Training course on its own or in combination with any other type of course puts you in good hands. If you plan to go for the 5^th edition, I do have some games that you could play to help you prepare!

Best of luck!

Created Videos of My PMP Whiteboard Drawings

When I have instructed project management professional (PMP) certification exam prep courses over the last 10 years, an aspect all my students really appreciated were my illustrations of the concepts as I discussed them. I would at a minimum draw out the processes included in a knowledge area prior to my lesson on the topic.

The illustrations would be drawn on the whiteboard for every class.  Some students would take pictures of the board or attempt to sketch their own versions in their notepads.  I must have had drawn them hundreds of times over the 10+ years instructing the classes.  Starting with my own studying for the PMP exam.  As a visual learner, I prefer to ‘think in pictures’.  It helped me prepare and pass the exam, as well as helping many others in my training sessions, I thought they may be beneficial to more people.  And with YouTube, it is possible!

The videos of my whiteboard animations are only of my drawings at this point.  I did not care my voice as I was drawing.  Plus I would like to record my voiceover with a better quality microphone and get rid of any ums and ahs 🙂  Once I have the audio explaining the processes, inputs, outputs, and tool and techniques as I draw them, they will be uploaded to https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZdjZVoQFYUOOFnLr2R3E4A

The series is called Drawn Out: Project Management

Currently there are only project management topics of knowledge areas, processes, ITTOs, and process groups according to the Project Management Body of Knowledge PMBOK (r) 5th edition.  As I complete the PMBOK concepts, I may recreate my illustrations for ITIL/ITSM and Agile project management and the PMI-ACP exam.

Please let me know what you think!  Thanks.