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

Opening Day!

PM City is now open! After more than 8 months of designing and constructing the best project management online learning experience from the ground up, PM City is now open for business!

PM City is the amazing new interactive online course development exclusively for the 6th edition of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) and the Project Management Professional PMP certification exam. PM City is a production of The Crowd Training http://www.thecrowdtraining.com/pm6 and is available at crowd.myabsorb.com for only $720 for a lifetime subscription. [Or use the coupon code thisistheyear to get the entire course for $201.80 USD]

PM City is fully online and self paced. The e-learning course fulfills the 35 hour project management requirement for the PMP application from PMI. The Project Management Institute accepts the certificate of completion from The Crowd Training’s PM City course.

PM City can be used as your complete course or as a supplement to your other in person training or self study.

Everyone learns differently. As such, not all project management courses should be presented and delivered in all the same ways. This course was envisioned to purposely shake up the project management training industry. The tired method of having PM instructors read over their dull and plain PowerPoint slides is ineffective. Recording someone stand there or sit in front of their webcam talking at you for hours is not much better. Sitting there passively while someone lectures to you for hours is not a pedagogically sound approach to teaching. And in our modern society with the advancements of technology there is no reason to force an approach that is only meaningful to a few onto the masses. That is why The Crowd Training wanted to create something effective for the masses.

As you become more engaged and active in your learning, the more it sticks. That stickiness is extremely important as you are taking a high stakes, high cost exam. There is too much on the line to spend time on training that does not match your learning style. No one wants to retake the exam at any cost. You want to pass the first time and obtain that highly valued Project Management Professional distinction. That is what I set out to make for you.

Beginning with my own study and preparation for the PMP Exam over 13 years ago, I observed how almost every training course or book out there was boring and fairly dry. It consisted primarily of someone lecturing to you for hours. In my case in particular, there were no PowerPoints or whiteboards or flipcharts of any kind. It was hours, upon hours, of someone dumping all that he knew about the PMP exam at us. After 9 – 10 hours a day of dumping information on us, there was not much sticking. Actually, I don’t think much was sticking post-lunch.

To overcome the assaulting barrage of project management talk I drew pictures, made sketches, created mind maps, took notes, and otherwise made sense of the drone of words. As a visual learner, I need to see it. A picture is worth a thousand words. And I had to make a few hundred pictures a day to keep up. Those pictures became the cornerstone of my project management training delivery for years. I still have past students to this day saying how my graphics and drawings have stuck with them years after they passed the PMP exam.

When it came time to finally have the technology to not only present my drawings to PMP learners, but to provide an online manner for learners to engage and control their learning, I was so excited to be able to offer such a product. I dedicated hours and sleep to sketch out my vision of how project management training could be. I wanted it to be accessible and on demand. I wanted online learning not to be a chore or something “they have to get through”. I wanted it to be meaningful and sticky.

After months of laying out all the neighborhoods [a.k.a. knowledge areas and concept blocks of project management] and constructing all their elements, I am proud to announce that PM City is open! It took so much effort to envision new ways of presenting the content, illustrating material, recording audio that was conversational and approachable, animating my drawings and my voice, and bringing the project management content to life. But even more than that, it required the technical capabilities to make the true control and interactivity possible. Every box clicked had to trigger some action or reaction. Voiceovers had to play only when the user wished them to play. Navigation was not to be linear, which requires more code to connect the dots and allow the learner to return to content they wish to repeat as often as they wished without needing to hunt and peek through hours of video footage.

PM City is truly an awesome new way to study and prepare for the Project Management Professional certification exam. And the best practices of learning does not stop there! To meld the best online PMP training with the tried and true success of the in person instructor led classroom, The Crowd Training is offering a series of “Power Prep PMP Weekend” classes. These weekend PMP training sessions augment the online learning content. By combining the advantages of both the online training and the off line face-to-face training, you get the best of both worlds. Best of all, you don’t have to take away any time from work. The online learning is done on demand and on your time and choosing. The in person classroom is only one weekend! A condensed, powerful weekend to meet with instructors and fellow PMP candidates to ask questions, take practice mock exams, and extend your learning.

These Power Prep courses are scheduled in select cities throughout the United States in 2018 starting with San Diego the weekend of March 17 – 18, 2018. Here the link to hold your spot AND get full access to the awesome online PMP prep content: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/6th-edition-pmbok-pmp-exam-power-prep-weekend-course-san-diego-tickets-38457688983

It is a winning combination! What are you waiting for? Don’t live in the Southern California area? There are other options in 2018, as well as getting your key to PM City. Become a PMP Citizen and get learning!

LMS Selected. All Systems Go!

As I getting closer to launching my interactive online project management course called PMP City – www.thecrowdtraining.com/pm6 – I have to prepare for users to access the content, track their learning progress, and authorize their certificate of completion for their PMI Application. To do that and a great deal more, I had to select a Learning Management System (LMS). Then I had to modify and prepare it for my learners. This is what I choose and what I am doing to set it up.

After searching and exploring the literally hundreds of learning management system providers out there, I selected Absorb by Blatant Media out of Canada. I worked with them over 12 years ago and their product has only gotten better.

This system will enable those enrolled in my interactive online PMP certification exam prep course to access the content 24×7. More importantly, it enables my unique interactive presentation of the PMP content to be, well… interactive. There are also randomize quizzes per knowledge area, comment/discussion boards, and resources learners can access.

Beyond enabling users to navigate the project management content at their own pace, they can see their certificate of completion that is valid in case they are audited during the PMI application process to sit for the PMP exam. The PMP City online course fulfills the 35 hours of project management training requirement.

The PMP City online interactive course is only $720 for lifetime access when it launches on February 1, 2018. For those who visit http://www.thecrowdtraining.com prior to that date, you should discover a pre-order discount price.

http://www.crowd.myabsorb.com is the site to access your online PMP course when it launches in February, as well as access to all the project management games and PMP mock exams.

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!

Kickstarter Fell Short But Project Continues

The Kickstarter campaign to help fund the PM City project fell short of its funding target. PM City is my interactive PMP certification course that incorporates animations, interactive lessons, videos, user controls, quizzes, discussion boards, games, and more. Gaining the funding would have made getting the course out to market easier. Nevertheless, the project is going forward!

The full release is slated for the end of January. One of the options I presented in the Kickstarter campaign was a beta version of the course for only $99. The full release of the course will have a list price of $720 USD. Even though the Kickstarter did not succeed, I did want to honor those who supported me by selecting the beta course pledge. As such, I am extending this offer to anyone that would like to get in early. To take advantage of this offer, go to The Crowd Training’s store and grab one of the limited beta spots here: https://www.thecrowdtraining.com/product-page/pmp-interactive-course-pre-order

Those able to grab the $99 beta offer get early access to the course. As additional thank you for supporting the PM City project, those beta users also receive a full 3 month subscription to PM City based on the 6th edition of the PMBOK post release.

Thanks again to everyone’s kind words and support. I have spent months on this project and there are only a couple more until release. I really think you will be impressed with PM City when it is finished. I am quite excited! I shall post some highlights of the final product in future blogs and on my YouTube page.

Reddit Conversation

In discussions on Reddit about my kickstarter project page, some had suggested that I look at reducing my costs and using free or reduced cost offerings. I appreciate the suggestions and the ideas. Alas, I have looked into those options and many do not work. As such, my online project management course is going to a more expensive infrastructure to deliver it to those that enroll.

I looked into many options. If I was building the traditional “instructor-talking-at-the-students” type of online training course, then many of the resources out there would work. I don’t want to deliver that form of instruction. Having professors drone on and on in person rarely works well – especially in highly technical content like the Project Management Professional PMP exam – in person; it is even worse online.

Trying to retain the attention of the learner for 35 – 45 minutes at a time while they passively sit staring at their computer screen may not be the most effective and efficient use of their time and exam preparation. The computer is far too distracting. Facebook, Twitter, instant messages, the web, etc. are just too tempting. They are like sirens begging you to sway. These temptations are hard enough in a classroom when there are others around noticing what you are doing. Remove the instructor or any type of peer pressure or authority, you are kidding yourself if you think the learner is not going to give into any of those temptations. Sure there may be a really dedicated student. But I argue those are rare. They are the minority. They are the most successful and for a reason. The vast majority of others are not going to ignore that email or text that comes in. Few are going to stay focused. Most that shift attention to the email or text that comes in are not going to stop the guy or lady talking on the screen. When they return to the lecture, they may be lost, they are going to need time to catch up. They may even be forced to rewind the video. And scrolling and hassling with a video play bar is not efficient and annoying use of one’s learning time.

Hence, I am passionate about making something – even if just incrementally – better. It takes more thought, energy, and resources [read: costs]. In the end I think it will be worth it for the thousands upon thousands of individuals that study for and attempt to pass the PMP exam every year. Please take a look at my Kickstarter page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thecrowdtraining/interactive-project-management-course

Here is my latest response on the PMP subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/pmp/comments/7acjcr/kickstarter_pmp_interactive_online_course/

I have tried Udemy and it sucks. They take half of your fee. And they give away coupons to lower the value of your work even further without any input of yours. So a PMP class that should be valued at $200 is reduced to $10 by Udemy, then they take half of that! So the person and teams that did all the work only get $5 from a class that is worth far more.
Plus Udemy only has video based lecture courses. I am building something interactive and engaging. The online courses on Udemy are just people talking over their slides or paying actors to read a script (I know because I wrote scripts for some of the other companies out there).
I know that blazing a new trail and trying to bring more dynamic project management online courses to the world is going to cost me more and make my courses cost more, but that is the price of quality and good work. Interactive online courses cannot work with all the options you mentioned – I wish they did, it would save me a lot of money. If I was just going to talk at you thru my video camera for 35 hours straight, then yes I would definitely go with the resources your suggestion. Although, I am aiming to bring out something better and long term. I am building it for 6th edition (I was a contributor to earlier versions of the PMBOK) and plan to support PMP candidates for many years to come.
If you want to see some of the games I made thus far, go to http://www.thecrowdtraining.com/games I’ll give you a 90 day subscription of $10 (like the Udemy pricing you mentioned) if you use code Reddit.
Thank you for the great discussion. I appreciate your input. I am open to more of your thoughts and discussions. It helps make a better product and help more project managers.

New PMBOK 6th Edition Out Now

The Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge 6th edition is official out and available for download. I have been a reviewer of the PMBOK 6th edition for many months now. I have advised many project management training companies seeking to update their 5th edition PMBOK content to the newly released 6th edition. Now it is accessible to the masses.

If you are PMI member, you can download a PDF version of the 6th ed PMBOK by going to http://www.pmi.org and entering your credentials. You are then provided the option of downloading a digital copy of the latest PMBOK to your computer or device. Every time you open the downloaded PMBOK 6th edition on your device you are prompted to enter your PMI member password. So, I recommend you keep your password easy enough to enter frequently. I had a friend who had a very complex password. Very secure, which is normally a good thing. But every time he opened the PMBOK on his Kindle he had to enter the password. And a password with too many symbols and upper/lower cases in various orders was not very convenient.

The hard copy of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide)– Sixth Edition by Project Management Institute is not yet shipping. I have pre-ordered my physical copy from Amazon, here  http://a.co/hN7Zjkd According to Amazon, the book is scheduled to ship out September 15, 2017. Currently, it is priced for $84 US for the English version.

The Crowd Training’s fully interactive PMP certification exam prep course based on the PMBOK 6th edition is planned for release in October 2017. More information on this at https://www.thecrowdtraining.com/pm6

Once complete, the 35 hour project management course will be available on the web and for mobile devices. You can stay up to date by joining the mailing list on http://www.thecrowdtraining.com

Until then, there are 5th edition PMBOK games available. If you order a lifetime subscription, I will give you all the 5th edition versions of the games, plus all the new games that I develop for the 6th edition of the PMBOK. Currently there are over 15 games. A lifetime membership is now only $23 at http://www.thecrowdtraining.com/games

Look for a more thorough breakdown of the differences between 6th edition from 5th edition in this blog soon. Let me know your impressions, if you have taken a look at the new edition.

Another Project Management Game Added to The Crowd Training Game Pack

Designed, developed, and published another project management learning game on my The Crowd Training Games pack. This game is based on travelling to different locations and answering questions at each stop. The questions for the first set are all based on the Project Quality Management knowledge area of the 5th edition of the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). Now that I have the base structure and all the gameplay figured out, I can create multiple versions of the game for the other nine knowledge areas, as well as create updated versions of the game for the 6th edition of the PMBOK once that is formally released.

Currently, the 30 day access to The Crowd Training Games pack for $30.  This newest game release brings the number of games in the pack to 17 games. Since I am working on a full 6th edition project management professional PMP certification exam prep course in addition to more games to include in The Crowd Training Game pack, I am offering a 90 day access and a lifetime access for less than the 30 day access so you may get more games over time. The 90 day access is offered for a limited time for $23 and the lifetime is $25. Obviously, these won’t remain at that price for too long. But since I am just rolling out the new website and the new games, I thought I would extent generous pricing to my early adopters. Thanks and enjoy! Visit: https://www.thecrowdtraining.com/games to start playing!

Created a Windows Phone App of My Whiteboard Drawings

Drawn Out Project Management Windows Phone app

Created a windows phone app from the whiteboard animation drawings I have been producing and posting on YouTube.  You can download the app from your Windows Phone (sorry that is the only OS I know how to work with at the moment) in the Windows store or via this link:

http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=28fa4c24-9f17-4f35-8a35-6f0877398493

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.