Project Management All-in-One For Dummies

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Foolish Assumptions 2

Icons Used in This Book 2

Beyond the Book 3

Where to Go from Here 3

Book 1: In the Beginning: Project Management Basics 5

Chapter 1: Achieving Results with Project Management 7

Determining What Makes a Project a Project 7

Understanding the three main components that define a project 8

Recognizing the diversity of projects 10

Describing the four phases of a project life cycle 10

Defining Project Management 12

Starting with the initiating processes 13

Outlining the planning processes 14

Examining the executing processes 15

Surveying the monitoring and controlling processes 16

Ending with the closing processes 17

Knowing the Project Manager's Role 17

Looking at the project manager's tasks 18

Staving off excuses for not following a structured project-management approach 18

Avoiding shortcuts 19

Staying aware of other potential challenges 20

Chapter 2: Involving the Right People 23

Understanding Your Project's Stakeholders 24

Developing a Stakeholder Register 24

Starting your stakeholder register 25

Ensuring your stakeholder register is complete and up to date 28

Using a stakeholder register template 30

Determining Whether Stakeholders Are Drivers, Supporters, or Observers 31

Distinguishing the different groups 32

Deciding when to involve your stakeholders 33

Using different methods to involve your stakeholders 36

Making the most of your stakeholders' involvement 37

Displaying Your Stakeholder Register 38

Confirming Your Stakeholders' Authority 39

Assessing Your Stakeholders' Power and Interest 40

Chapter 3: Developing Your Game Plan 43

Divide and Conquer: Breaking Your Project into Manageable Chunks 43

Thinking in detail 44

Identifying necessary project work with a work breakdown structure 45

Dealing with special situations 53

Creating and Displaying Your Work Breakdown Structure 57

Considering different schemes to create your WBS hierarchy 57

Using one of two approaches to develop your WBS 58

Categorizing your project's work 60

Labeling your WBS entries 61

Displaying your WBS in different formats 62

Improving the quality of your WBS 66

Using templates 66

Identifying Risks While Detailing Your Work 68

Documenting What You Need to Know about Your Planned Project Work 70

Book 2: Steering the Ship: Planning and Managing a Project 71

Chapter 1: You Want This Project Done When? 73

Picture This: Illustrating a Work Plan with a Network Diagram 74

Defining a network diagram's elements 74

Drawing a network diagram 76

Analyzing a Network Diagram 77

Reading a network diagram 77

Interpreting a network diagram 79

Working with Your Project's Network Diagram 84

Determining precedence 84

Using a network diagram to analyze a simple example 87

Developing Your Project's Schedule 92

Taking the first steps 92

Avoiding the pitfall of backing in to your schedule 93

Meeting an established time constraint 94

Applying different strategies to arrive at your destination in less time 95

Estimating Activity Duration 102

Determining the underlying factors 103

Considering resource characteristics 103

Finding sources of supporting information 104

Improving activity duration estimates 104

Displaying Your Project's Schedule 106

Chapter 2: Starting Your Project Team Off on the Right Foot 111

Finalizing Your Project's Participants 112

Are you in? Confirming your team members' participation 112

Assuring that others are on board 114

Filling in the blanks 115

Developing Your Team 116

Reviewing the approved project plan 117

Developing team and individual goals 118

Specifying team-member roles 118

Defining your team's operating processes 119

Supporting the development of team-member relationships 120

Resolving conflicts 120

All together now: Helping your team become a smooth-functioning unit 123

Laying the Groundwork for Controlling Your Project 125

Selecting and preparing your tracking systems 125

Establishing schedules for reports and meetings 126

Setting your project's baseline 127

Hear Ye, Hear Ye! Announcing Your Project 127

Setting the Stage for Your Post-Project Evaluation 128

Chapter 3: Monitoring Progress and Maintaining Control 129

Holding the Reins: Project Control 130

Establishing Project Management Information Systems 131

The clock's ticking: Monitoring schedule performance 132

All in a day's work: Monitoring work effort 138

Follow the money: Monitoring expenditures 143

Putting Your Control Process into Action 147

Heading off problems before they occur 147

Formalizing your control process 148

Identifying possible causes of delays and variances 149

Identifying possible corrective actions 150

Getting back on track: Rebaselining 151

Reacting Responsibly When Changes Are Requested 151

Responding to change requests 152

Creeping away from scope creep 153

Chapter 4: Bringing Your Project to Closure 155

Staying the Course to Completion 156

Planning ahead for your project's closure 156

Updating your initial closure plans when you're ready to wind down the project 157

Charging up your team for the sprint to the finish line 158

Handling Administrative Issues 158

Providing a Smooth Transition for Team Members 159

Surveying the Results: The Post-Project Evaluation 160

Preparing for the evaluation throughout the project 161

Setting the stage for the evaluation meeting 162

Conducting the evaluation meeting 163

Following up on the evaluation 165

Book 3: Helping Out: Using Tools on a Project 167

Chapter 1: Considering Checklists and Templates 169

Using Checklists Properly 170

Understanding Checklist Types 171

Trying Templates 172

Reviewing Project Structure 173

Kicking off the project 173

Doing the planning 175

Delivering project products 175

Closing the project 176

Evaluating the project 176

Chapter 2: The Key Documents for Managing a Project 179

Kicking Off 180

Project Planning 180

The major planning documents 180

The logs 181

Control checklists 182

Controlling a Project 183

Thinking About What You Need 184

Chapter 3: Working with Microsoft Project 2019 185

Connecting Project 2019 to Project Management 186

Defining "project manager" 187

Identifying what a project manager does 187

Introducing Project 2019 188

Getting to Know You 189

Opening Project 2019 189

Navigating Ribbon tabs and the Ribbon 191

Displaying more tools 194

An Updated Feature: Tell Me What You Want to Do 196

Chapter 4: Surveying Cool Shortcuts in Project 2019 197

Task Information 197

Resource Information 198

Frequently Used Functions 199

Subtasks 200

Quick Selections 200

Fill Down 200

Navigation 200

Hours to Years 201

Timeline Shortcuts 201

Quick Undo and Repeat 202

Book 4: A New Method: Agile Project Management 203

Chapter 1: Applying the Agile Manifesto and Principles 205

Understanding the Agile Manifesto 205

Outlining the Four Values of the Agile Manifesto 208

Value 1: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools 209

Value 2: Working software over comprehensive documentation 210

Value 3: Customer collaboration over contract negotiation 212

Value 4: Responding to change over following a plan 213

Defining the 12 Agile Principles 214

Agile principles of customer satisfaction 216

Agile principles of quality 218

Agile principles of teamwork 220

Agile principles of product development 222

Adding the Platinum Principles 226

Resisting formality 226

Thinking and acting as a team 227

Visualizing rather than writing 228

Seeing Changes as a Result of Agile Values 229

Taking the Agile Litmus Test 230

Chapter 2: Defining the Product Vision and Product Roadmap 233

Agile Planning 234

Progressive elaboration 236

Inspect and adapt 237

Defining the Product Vision 237

Step 1: Developing the product objective 239

Step 2: Creating a draft vision statement 239

Step 3: Validating and revising the vision statement 241

Step 4: Finalizing the vision statement 242

Creating a Product Roadmap 243

Step 1: Identifying product stakeholders 244

Step 2: Establishing product requirements 245

Step 3: Arranging product features 245

Step 4: Estimating efforts and ordering requirements 247

Step 5: Determining high-level time frames 250

Saving your work 250

Completing the Product Backlog 251

Chapter 3: Planning Releases and Sprints 253

Refining Requirements and Estimates 253

What is a user story? 254

Steps to create a user story 256

Breaking down requirements 260

Estimation poker 262

Affinity estimating 265

Release Planning 267

Preparing for Release 271

Preparing the product for deployment 271

Prepare for operational support 272

Preparing the organization 273

Preparing the marketplace 274

Sprint Planning 275

The sprint backlog 276

The sprint planning meeting 277

Chapter 4: Working throughout the Day 285

Planning Your Day: The Daily Scrum 285

Covering important topics 286

Ensuring an effective meeting 287

Tracking Progress 289

The sprint backlog 289

The task board 292

Understanding Agile Roles in the Sprint 294

Keys for daily product owner success 295

Keys for daily development team member success 296

Keys for daily scrum master success 297

Keys for daily stakeholder success 298

Keys for daily agile mentor success 298

Creating Shippable Functionality 299

Elaborating 300

Developing 300

Verifying 301

Identifying roadblocks 304

Implementing Information Radiators 305

Wrapping Up at the End of the Day 307

Chapter 5: Showcasing Work, Inspecting, and Adapting 309

The Sprint Review 309

Preparing to demonstrate 310

The sprint review meeting 311

Collecting feedback in the sprint review meeting 314

The Sprint Retrospective 315

Planning for retrospectives 317

The retrospective meeting 317

Inspecting and adapting 319

Book 5: A Popular Agile Approach: Running a Scrum Project 321

Chapter 1: The First Steps of Scrum 323

Getting Your Scrum On 323

Show me the money 324

I want it now 325

I'm not sure what I want 326

Is that bug a problem? 327

Your company's culture 327

The Power in the Product Owner 327

Why Product Owners Love Scrum 329

The Company Goal and Strategy: Stage 1 331

Structuring your vision 332

Finding the crosshair 333

The Scrum Master 333

Scrum master traits 334

Scrum master as servant leader 335

Why scrum masters love scrum 335

Common Roles Outside Scrum 336

Stakeholders 336

Scrum mentors 337

Chapter 2: Planning Your Project 339

The Product Roadmap: Stage 2 339

Take the long view 340

Use simple tools 341

Create your product roadmap 342

Set your time frame 343

Breaking Down Requirements 345

Prioritization of requirements 345

Levels of decomposition 346

Seven steps of requirement building 346

Your Product Backlog 347

The dynamic to-do list 349

Product backlog refinement 349

Other possible backlog items 353

Product Backlog Common Practices 354

User stories 354

Further refinement 357

Chapter 3: The Talent and the Timing 359

The Development Team 360

The uniqueness of scrum development teams 360

Dedicated teams and cross-functionality 361

Self-organizing and self-managing 362

Co-locating or the nearest thing 364

Getting the Edge on Backlog Estimation 365

Your Definition of Done 365

Common Practices for Estimating 367

Fibonacci numbers and story points 368

Velocity 374

Chapter 4: Release and Sprint Planning 377

Release Plan Basics: Stage 3 378

Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize 380

Release goals 382

Release sprints 383

Release plan in practice 384

Sprinting to Your Goals 386

Defining sprints 386

Planning sprint length 387

Following the sprint life cycle 388

Planning Your Sprints: Stage 4 389

Sprint goals 389

Phase I 390

Phase II 391

Your Sprint Backlog 392

The burndown chart benefit 392

Setting backlog capacity 394

Working the sprint backlog 395

Prioritizing sprints 397

Chapter 5: Getting the Most Out of Sprints 399

The Daily Scrum: Stage 5 400

Defining the daily scrum 400

Scheduling a daily scrum 402

Conducting a daily scrum 402

Making daily scrums more effective 403

The Team Task Board 404

Swarming 406

Dealing with rejection 407

Handling unfinished requirements 408

The Sprint Review: Stage 6 409

The sprint review process 410

Stakeholder feedback 411

Product increments 412

The Sprint Retrospective: Stage 7 412

The sprint retrospective process 413

The Derby and Larsen process 414

Inspection and adaptation 416

Chapter 6: Inspect and Adapt: How to Correct Your Course 417

The Need for Certainty 417

The Feedback Loop 418

Transparency 419

Antipatterns 421

External Forces 421

In-Flight Course Correction 422

Testing in the Feedback Loop 423

A Culture of Innovation 423

Book 6: The Next Level: Enterprise Agility 425

Chapter 1: Taking It All In: The Big Picture 427

Defining Agile and Enterprise Agility 427

Understanding agile product delivery 428

Defining "enterprise agility" 431

Checking out popular enterprise agile frameworks 432

Practicing as much agile as your organization can tolerate 434

Achieving Enterprise Agility in Three Not-So-Easy Steps 435

Step 1: Review the top enterprise agile frameworks 435

Step 2: Identify your organization's existing culture 436

Step 3: Create a strategy for making big changes 437

Chapter 2: Sizing Up Your Organization 443

Committing to Radical Change 444

Understanding What Culture is and Why It's So Difficult to Change 445

Figuring out why culture is so entrenched 445

Avoiding the common mistake of trying to make agile fit your organization 447

Identifying Your Organization's Culture Type 447

Running with the wolf pack in a control culture 450

Rising with your ability in a competence culture 452

Nurturing your interns in a cultivation culture 454

Working it out together in a collaboration culture 456

Laying the Groundwork for a Successful Transformation 458

Appreciating the value of an agile organization 459

Clarifying your vision 460

Planning for your transformation 461

Chapter 3: Driving Organizational Change 463

Choosing an Approach: Top-Down or Bottom-Up 464

Driving Change from Top to Bottom with the Kotter Approach 465

Step 1: Create a sense of urgency around a Big Opportunity 466

Step 2: Build and evolve a guiding coalition 467

Step 3: Form a change vision and strategic initiatives 468

Step 4: Enlist a volunteer army 469

Step 5: Enable action by removing barriers 470

Step 6: Generate (and celebrate) short-term wins 471

Step 7: Sustain acceleration 471

Step 8: Institute change 472

Improving your odds of success 472

Driving a Grassroots Change: A Fearless Approach 473

Recruiting a change evangelist 474

Changing without top-down authority 474

Making change a self-fulfilling prophecy 476

Looking for change patterns 476

Recruiting innovators and early adopters 477

Tailoring your message 477

Steering clear of change myths 478

Overcoming Obstacles Related to Your Organization's Culture 480

Seeing how culture can sink agile 480

Acknowledging the challenge 481

Prioritizing the challenge 482

Gaining insight into motivation 482

Chapter 4: Putting It All Together: Taking Steps toward an Agile Enterprise 485

Step 1: Identifying Your Organization's Culture 486

Step 2: Listing the Strengths and Challenges with Changing Your Culture 488

Step 3: Selecting the Best Approach to Organizational Change Management 491

Step 4: Training Managers on Lean Thinking 491

Step 5: Starting a Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE) 493

Step 6: Choosing a High-Level Value Stream 494

Step 7: Assigning a Budget to the Value Stream 496

Step 8: Selecting an Enterprise Agile Framework 497

Step 9: Shifting from Detailed Plans to Epics 499

Step 10: Respecting and Trusting Your People 500

Book 7: Making It Official: PMP Certification 503

Chapter 1: Introducing the PMP Exam 505

Going Over the PMP Exam Blueprint 506

Knowledge and skills 506

Code of ethics and professional conduct 506

Exam scoring 507

Digging into the Exam Domains 507

Initiating the project 507

Planning the project 508

Executing the project 509

Monitoring and controlling the project 509

Closing the project 509

Applying for and Scheduling the Exam 510

Surveying the application process 510

Scheduling your exam 512

Taking the Exam 512

Arriving on exam day 513

Looking at types of questions 514

Trying some exam-taking tips 516

Getting your results 516

Preparing for the Exam 516

Chapter 2: It's All about the Process 519

Managing Your Project is a Process 519

Understanding Project Management Process Groups 521

Before the Project Begins 523

Initiating processes 523

Planning processes 525

Executing processes 529

Monitoring and Controlling processes 531

Closing processes 532

The Ten Knowledge Areas 534

Project Integration Management 534

Project Scope Management 535

Project Schedule Management 535

Project Cost Management 536

Project Quality Management 536

Project Resource Management 536

Project Communications Management 537

Project Risk Management 537

Project Procurement Management 538

Project Stakeholder Management 538

Mapping the Processes 539

Chapter 3: Reviewing the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct 541

Beginning with the Basics of the Code 542

Responsibility 543

Responsibility aspirational standards 543

Responsibility mandatory standards 544

Respect 545

Respect aspirational standards 545

Respect mandatory standards 546

Fairness 547

Fairness aspirational standards 547

Fairness mandatory standards 548

Honesty 549

Honesty aspirational standards 549

Honesty mandatory standards 550

Keeping Key Terms in Mind 551

Index 553