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 

LavaCon Presentation – There Has Got to Be a Better Way for Project Management Training

Earlier this week I was asked to quickly put together a presentation at the LavaCon conference in Portland, Oregon.

I decided to speak about the need to view things from different perspectives and angles. I provided the examples of experiences with project management training and being a student in a very dry, boring PMP exam prep course about 13 years ago and how I set out to change it. There is no reason that more people out there should have to relive the mundane project management training I endured simply because that is the way it has always been done. So many people I have talked to said that they too sat through PMP prep classes that were boring, mind-numbing experiences. In many cases the instructor simply lectured or read the slides to the participants.

Sadly, the trend in online project management training is to take that same, ineffective method and transfer it to the online delivery.

I argue that video in this approach only makes things worse. If things were meh before, they are even worse now. Without any way to interactive with the content and the instructor and fellow students, all the onus of the learning and retention is placed solely on the student. Too often I hear and read stories of others who were forced to take on numerous modalities of learning – such as in person classes, audiobooks, books, flashcards, and many others – simply to get the PMP content to stick. Since so many had to rely on so many different methods tells me that their first plan of just watching videos in an elearning course to prepare for the PMP exam was insufficient.

My goal is to disrupt the current PMP training options. I have a Kickstarter project launch in effort to create and offer something new. The Kickstarter project page is Http://kck.st/2hubLhS

At Http://kck.st/2hubLhS you can pre-order the PMP online interactive training course for only $99. Once the PMP exam prep course is fully launched, the course will retail for $720. Offering is so low at $99 is to thank the early supporters and to help the infrastructure costs that must be taken to make it possible.

Thanks in advance! You can find out more about The Crowd Training and the project management courses and learning opportunities offered at www.thecrowdtraining.com

In this video, I also reference the new book by Anthony Brandt and David Eagleman called “Runaway Species”. More about their book is at their book’s website https://runawayspecies.com/

The video is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mkzlfFkabY&feature=youtu.be

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.