Episode 483: Project Performance Domains 5-8 (Free)

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This webinar is the second of two in which Cornelius Fichtner explores the following four Project Performance Domains that were introduced by the PMBOK® Guide Seventh Edition:

1. Project Work - Managing project tasks
2. Delivery - Transferring project results
3. Measurement - Understanding project progress
4. Uncertainty - Risk is uncertainty that matters

The webinar is based on our original article 8 Project Performance Domains - The Project Management Expert's Guide and is neither a rehash nor is it a derivative of the PMBOK® Guide. Instead, you can expect to go beyond. Illustrated with quotes from experts and examples from real life not found in the guide, you will learn the concepts behind the domains in terms you need to understand as you prepare for your PMP exam. We even review one sample PMP exam prep question (taken from the PrepCast Simulator) for each of the domains and give you a chance to see if you can spot the correct answer.

You can learn more about the PMP certification and how you can prepare better for it by visiting The PM PrepCast website here: https://www.project-management.prepcast.com/

Need an exam simulator for your review? Try The PrepCast PM Exam Simulator here: https://www.pm-exam-simulator.com/

This episode was recorded live and, as usual, we got some insightful questions and comments from the audience!

Project Management Professional (PMP)® Exam: PMP Exam prep

Episode Transcript

Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only.

Video Introduction

Cornelius Fichtner: In this episode, we look at remaining four of our eight project performance domains.

Hello, and welcome back to The Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com. I’m Cornelius Fichtner. This is Episode 483. And just like the previous one, it was recorded live on YouTube and Facebook. And it is part of the PM PrepCast, which is my Project Management PrepCast (PMP) Exam prep training course.

I’m sharing this one with you here again on The Project Management Podcast™ as a followup to the 12 principles and a completion of the 8 project performance domains that you see here on the screen, so that you can keep on top of the developments in project management theory. In that way, you don’t have to necessarily read the complete PMBOK® Guide.

And as always, as in episodes like this one here, it is a video episode. If you are not seeing the video then please visit http://www.pm-podcast.com/483 where you can play the video. Let’s begin!

Video Presentation

Cornelius Fichtner: Hello, everyone! And, welcome to The Project Management PrepCast™. I am your instructor, Cornelius Fichtner. And this lesson is recorded with a live audience on Facebook and YouTube. And we are going to take a look at the project performance domains.

In fact this here is part two of two. In part one on the left, we looked at stakeholders, team, development approach and life cycle, as well as the planning domain. And right now here in part two, we are going to take a look at project work, delivery, measurement and uncertainty that you can see on the right.

But as always with these lessons that we are basing on the PMBOK® Guide, I am not going to be reading the PMBOK® Guide to you. That would be awfully bring. Hello, everybody! Instead, what we have done is, we have taken the PMBOK® Guide as a starting point. We did our own research and we wrote an article, which is called, which would be called, there we go! There we are! It is called the “8 Project Performance Domains – The Project Management Expert’s Guide.” And in this article, like I said, we follow the PMBOK® Guide, the structure of the domains. We used the same names. But it’s by no means a derivative. This is based on our own research.

Here is our agenda for today. We are going to be reviewing performance domains five to four. Oh my! Five to eight is what this is supposed to read here. Slide number three and we are already finding a typo, wonderful! Ah, this is what live presentation is all about. I’ll do a quick summary at the end and also a take action for you. So, let’s start with domains five to four here. Let’s get going!

So, the four domains, five to eight obviously, the first one that we are going to be looking at is five, project work, that is all about managing project tasks. In particular, this domain, the project work domain, it covers everything that is involved with ensuring that our project can operate within our organization. This domain, it touches on and it defines the processes for running a project in your company.

It also talks about resource management. That’s also part of this. But also creating a culture of project delivery within the organization by making sure that we project managers and our colleagues have the option to learn from each other and from the other projects around us.

Let’s jump into the first expert quote that I have here from you. This is from Antje Lehmann at www.antjelehmann.com. She is a project manager, PMP trainer at Germany. The project work gets done by the team. So, these two domains work together. And yes, it goes pretty much without saying that a happy effective and high-performing team will do better project work.

I’m even taking this one, one step further and I’m saying that it’s not only the team domain but also the team principle from the ANSI standard that is also part of the PMBOK® Guide, that goes hand in hand in hand here. So, the team principle, we’ve looked at that when we discussed the 12 principles from the PMBOK® Guide. The Team domain here and the project work, it all goes hand in hand because we have to make sure that everything that we do, the team is at the core. Without the team, the project work won’t get done. And you need to follow the principles. You need to understand the domain in order to get this really done.

Alright! When it comes to the project work, oftentimes, we project managers are being told how a project needs to be run. And you can see this here at the bottom, we’re already starting early with our audience participation here. I would like to know from you, when you run a project, who tells you how you are supposed to run the project? Who defines your project management processes in your company? Do you have PMO? Do you just have a project management methodology? Do you have a grassroots movement with your colleagues? Please use the chat on Facebook and on YouTube and tell me who defines how you do your project work and we’ll bring them up, right?

Because it’s where strategic alignment plays a big part in project work If you have a PMO as we are suggesting here on this slide, their work will shape this domain from choosing the right performance metrics, to making sure that you have resources available on your project to actually deliver what you are supposed to deliver and understanding the strategic priorities. There is a lot to consider if your organization wants to achieve its goals.

Marjorie is here again. She was here in the previous lesson as well. And she says that in my case the “PMO provides the guidelines” on how we manage our projects. Alright! Thank you very much, Marjorie! I don’t have anybody else at this point who is talking about this in the chat. So, we are moving on. But you get the idea generally, right? We need to deliver the work and we need to somehow define how that work is processed, what the methodologies are.

Here we go! Our next quote. This comes to us from Shiv Shenoy at www.pmexamsmartnotes.com and he says, ask this question here: “Do we have the capability, or do we need external help for the project work?” You’ll get some very important insights by asking this very question at the beginning of your project.

I asked this question at the beginning of the project, which is seeing a result right now. When we embarked on The Project Management PrepCast, I asked who on our team is going to be the project manager for this huge project? It's usually the largest project in our company at any given time. And I quickly realized, we don’t have anybody available. We don’t have a resource with the available time, right. And capability? Yes, definitely. Everybody on our team could do this but they are not available. So, we had to bring in a new project manager that turned out to be Jeannine Farrelly, whom we hired, in particular to manage this project here of delivering and creating our next PMP Exam prep course, which you are watching right now.

Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Please subscribe to our Premium Podcast to receive a PDF transcript.