PMP Exam Tips: Know How the PMBOK Guide is Organized

From now I will try to share with you my personal experience of taking the PMP exam. I will try to make a relevant post each week on this topic. Certainly, you can ask me specific questions by email me at nguyen.longson@gmail.com or just leave a comment from my articles.

The single most important thing to take the PMP exam is understanding the PMBOK Guide. Although this sounds simple, many people forget about it, seeking for instructors, preparation courses etc. Instructors and preparation courses are also important, off course. However, your main goal is embracing the PMBOK Guide, its construction, logic and terminologies. While taking courses, you should always refer back to the PMBOK Guide, creating a “link” from what you hear on courses back to the definitions and terminologies in the PMBOK Guide.

The PMBOK Guide is not a course work designed for students. As a result, reading and understanding it on your own may seem difficult. In my experience, the best way to overcome these obstacles is understanding the organization of the PMBOK Guide at first. Only after that you may concentrate on the details.

The PMBOK Guide, 4th Edition, includes 12 chapters. However, I would group them into 2 parts.

Part 1 includes chapter 1 and chapter 2.

Part 1 is about what is project, project management, project manager and how they fit together into an organization. There are also some key terminologies of the PMBOK Guide mentioned in this part: project life cycle, project phase, enterprise environmental factors, organizational process assets etc.

Tips for the exam: READ VERY CAREFULLY part 1. There are many questions on the exam relating to these chapters. Unfortunately, many people are so much focused on the part 2 (including chapter 3-12 and will be mentioned after in this article), forgetting about the key terminologies and definitions in part 1. As a result, they may answer incorrectly up to 10% questions on the exam.

Part 2, including chapter 3-12, is about project management processes. Totally there are 42 processes. Before reading part 2 from chapter 3 to chapter 12, you should take a look at page 43 of the PMBOK Guide, 4th Edition. I even have it printed and take with me everywhere. This table on page 43 not only summarizes all project management processes, but also, and this is the most important, show you how theses processes are organized according to the PMBOK Guide, 4th Edition.

There are two ways of organizing theses processes: by Project Management Process Groups and by Knowledges Areas. Each process belongs to one and only one process group, and one and only one knowledge area. Hence, each process has it unique position on this table.

There are 5 Project Management Process Groups: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring & Controlling and Closing. They are mentioned in chapter 3.

There are 9 Knowledge Areas, each of them being described in a chapter, from chapter 4 to chapter 12.

And that is all the PMBOK Guide, 4th Edition is about!

Having this structure in mind, you will find studying the PMBOK Guide much more easier,

Good luck on your exam,

See you next time.