Certification Insider

Today’s workforce is made up of more generations than ever before. You might find yourself working with five generations on your project team. So on today’s modern it’s imperative for you to apply generational sensitivity and diversity-awareness to your project teams.

In this article I’ll show you what that means and how it affects your projects. We’ll also look at how cultural sensitivity has an impact on Human Resource Management, Communications Management and Stakeholder Management on your projects: Three large areas of content in A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK^® Guide).

This article is based on an interview that I recorded with Margaret Meloni, PMP. We did the interview because “Generational Sensitivity and Diversity” was recently added to the Project Management Professional (PMP)^® Exam Content Outline and she is a respected expert on soft skills. Also, those currently studying for their exam have to expect questions around this topic not only in their PMP Exam Prep but even on the actual exam.

WHAT IS GENERATIONAL SENSITIVITY AND DIVERSITY?

Let’s break down our topic and define it.

‘Generational’ means coming from different generations; born during different eras. This could be marked by the time periods in which team members were born or by the significant events that have shaped their thoughts and opinions.

Sensitivity is awareness combined with respect.

Diversity is ‘lack of sameness’ -- different people coming together in the same place.

GENERATIONAL DIVERSITY IN THE WORKPLACE

So why is any of this relevant to how you manage your projects?

Due to the fact that people are getting older and staying active longer, they are also staying in the workforce longer. It’s more and more common for different generations to be working side by side.

In addition, our ideas about aging have changed. There are financial reasons to stay working longer, and many people choose to continue working for the social networking it offers them, as well as being personally rewarding. The retirement age is moving steadily upwards and some people are even coming out of retirement to move back into project work – often at their company’s request!

CULTURAL SENSITIVITY: THE WIDER DIVERSITY PICTURE

The concept of generational sensitivity and diversity is part of the wider picture of cultural sensitivity. If you look at our cultural history, you’ll see there was a time when diversity was about women. Then there was a time when it was about race, or religion, and those cultural paradigms still exist today. But the noticeable difference today is that the workforce is now also made up of people from different age groups.

Cultural sensitivity in the wider sense is essential in the workplace because it’s always important to treat each other with respect and not to treat somebody differently or to make them feel uncomfortable because they are of a different age, race, or gender preference.

GENERATIONAL DYNAMICS AND PROJECT RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Let’s get practical. How do generational dynamics come into play when we are putting together project teams? Project Resource Management is a crucial skill for a project manager and a significant part of the PMBOK^® Guide, so it’s important to be informed and to make the right choices.

Think about fairness in hiring and the assumptions you might make when you’re on boarding new project team members. You want to hire the best resource for the job. Sometimes, as a project manager, you don’t get to do the hiring but you do have a say in who’s on your team.

Build a team that represents different perspectives. You don’t want to build a team strictly based on the fact that they are in the same age group. Practice fairness and equality when hiring new personnel by choosing the person who is right for the position, no matter what their age.

Put aside thoughts of, “I don’t want to give that person an important role on the project because they are older and they’re going to retire soon.” Maybe somebody you know who’s 35 is going to win the lottery and retire! That’s not the right way to make smart decisions about the people on your project team.

PROJECT COMMUNICATIONS MANAGEMENT AND THE MULTI-GENERATIONAL WORKPLACE

Project Communications Management is another area of the PMBOK^® Guide where it benefits you to consider a multi-generational workplace.

Be flexible in your communications and try not to judge. Others on the team, both older and younger than you, may have different communications preferences, and as the project manager you should do what you can to accommodate these preferences. For example, some people on the team might prefer a text message to get their attention prior to a long conversation or phone call. Others might prefer instant messaging. Others might prefer you to book a meeting. And yes, generational experiences and what people are used to can often guide communications preferences.

Consider the methods of receiving and sending formal and informal communications on your projects. You might even be prepared to adjust your style for individual team members. For example, it may be okay for a person who communicates well and efficiently to send you formal communications by text. If that doesn’t work on your project, you should outline and present your approach to formal communication and make it clear to all what is acceptable – and what is not.

All of these should be built into your Project Management Communications Plan.

GENERATIONAL SENSITIVITY AND STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT

Two common tools and techniques for Stakeholder Management are expert judgment and meetings. They are both areas where you can use generational sensitivity to plan your stakeholder engagement activities.

First, use your expert judgment to sit down and develop approaches based on knowing who your project stakeholders are. Someone’s age is just a small part of who they are and their age may or may not actually dictate how they behave. Bring your expert judgment to understand the situation, and to help make effective decisions with the group based on your expert judgment.

Second, think about how you are going to get the best out of the meetings you run, and consider meetings as a method of keeping people engaged. How can you do this with some creativity? Does it have to be that everybody must show up in a conference room with chairs at a certain time? Can it be virtual? Can it be something where you all get together and it’s team building – you can have some fun and talk business? And if so, think carefully about what “fun” means to different people on your team.

HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR CULTURAL DIVERSITY AWARENESS

Awareness can be built and improved upon over time. Pay attention to your thoughts. When you look at someone, listen to your internal monologue and be aware of what you’re saying to yourself. Listen for that internal voice that says “Oh, look at that gray hair, I can’t have them work on this new technology project,” or “When I was that age, tattoos weren’t a thing.” If you are younger do you look at somebody older and think, “Wow, they’re just set in their ways, they don’t get it.”

Your thoughts influence how you treat someone, so start with those. Try to pick out your own limiting beliefs and challenge your own preconceptions. Aim to look at each person on your project team as a unique individual with something valuable to contribute to the project.

Use The PM PrepCast as a springboard for challenging your perceptions about project management and project teams. By covering everything you need to know about Human Resource Management, Communications Management and Stakeholder Engagement on your projects, plus detailed coverage of ethics and team leadership, you will become a culturally sensitive and generationally aware project manager. And it will help you pass the PMP Exam at the same time!

The one thing that I really like about project management is how unpredictable my days can sometimes be. I come to the office in the morning with a clear plan of what I’m going to do and then something happens. I love this challenge because as a project manager, I now have to re-evaluate the situation and change my plans accordingly.

But there is more to it than just responding with a knee-jerk reaction. These times demand situational awareness, and you need skill and finesse to handle changing demands effectively. Situational awareness is an important skill to build as a project manager and in this article we’ll look at what it is and how you can use it on your projects.

This article is based on an interview that I recorded with Oliver Lehmann, MSc., PMP. We did the interview because “Situational Project Management” was recently added to the Project Management Professional (PMP)® Exam Content Outline, and Oliver has published a book on the topic (see link at end). So if you are currently in the middle of your PMP exam prep, then you can expect to see questions about situational project management on your exam. Therefore the article is not intended as a book review but as an introduction to the topic.

What is Situational Awareness?

Situational awareness builds on a very simple observation: the tools, practices, behaviors, and approaches that are successful in one situation may fail in another. Simple best practices may sometimes match the situation you find yourself in and create a great outcome, and other times sometimes they might lead to disaster.

You should always ask yourself: Am I doing the right thing for the situation, the moment and the environmental context that I am in now?

Situational project management begins with the same observation. One behavior, tool or technique may lead to success on a project in a specific situation and fail on a different one. The best project managers can analyze the situations and make adjustments as needed.

What is Situational Leadership?

Situational leadership is also something you’ll use on your projects. It refers to applying your leadership skills in a way that is relevant to the situation. Use the situational awareness principle of the right tool for the right situation and make your leadership calls appropriately.

You might have to do that because it’s impossible to plan ‘right now’ on your project. Maybe you are taking things step by step and making decisions as you go, based on the results of your actions.

Some leadership situations are the opposite, where you can see far into the future and perform considerable a long-term project planning. Essentially, you have to flex your style to suit the project and the moment.  

How To Apply Situational Awareness

What this really means in practice is that slavishly following a methodology isn’t the most effective route to success. You are applying your professional judgment to every project decision, ensuring that you’re making the best choices at that time, given the circumstances.

You probably do this already, perhaps not methodologically but by instinct, or based on your ‘gut feelings’. In order to do this you have to be aware of the context of your project and the situation you are working in.

Let’s look at an example. Two recent rail projects in Germany involved building two new mainline stations: one in Berlin and one in Stuttgart. One project was a huge success; the other ran into deep difficulties. The projects were run by the same organization, Deutsche Bahn (German Railway). They used the same methodologies and approaches and even the same project manager. So why was the work successful in one city and unsuccessful in another?

The Berlin main station was a green field project using open space that used to signify the gap between East and West Berlin. It was possible to build there without having to take local stakeholders into much consideration. Stuttgart station was built in the middle of a city, where it was necessary to heavily involve local stakeholders, especially as people became afraid for their homes when the tunneling started. The project manager was not prepared to engage with local stakeholders and essentially that is what caused the crisis for that project. A lack of situational awareness and situational leadership led to local disruption that cost the project significantly.

How to Make A Situational Assessment

If you find yourself in a situation that is changing on your project, take a moment to ground yourself and reflect. Ask yourself:  What is the situation that I’m currently in? Think about the project, the problem you are facing and the wider project environment. Consider the requirements of the situation on you as the project manager, on the project sponsor and on other important stakeholders.

Can you explain your behavior? Make sure that if someone asked you to write down why you made those choices and used that behavior that you could justify it. It’s especially important to check that you aren’t emotional and to consider the causes and purposes of your behavior.

Are these choices compliant with the needs of the project? Finally, check that you are making decisions in this situation that are allowed within the context of your work. Consider regulation, the requirements of your customer and manager, and the normal practices that would be expected in this situation.

Situational Leadership: Team Development

Situational leadership is a great way to develop your team as well. Think about how you are going to support the learning needs of your project team members, the ones that make up your core team. Like any other team manager, these people are your leadership team.

Leadership team development is about giving your core project team the skills they need to perform their assigned activities on the project, and you as a situational leader will be able to judge what is required at any given moment in time.

One of the primary things to focus on is helping to reduce complacency across the team. When they have done something before and have been successful, a situational leader will challenge them by asking if it be successful this time. Don’t let your team fail because they fail to be situationally aware.

Making An Ethical Situational Assessment

Assessing the situation on a project means being aware of shades of gray, which you have probably experienced on your own projects.

There’s one moment where you have to be very firm in your beliefs and that’s when the situation is about your professional integrity. When it comes to questions of bribery, corruption, or discrimination based on gender, on skin color, religion, or whatever it is, you should be “unsituational”.

Use your knowledge of the Project Management Institute (PMI)® Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct to help guide you in making the right decision, or talk to your mentor or another professional associate you trust for advice.

Developing Your Situational Awareness

The more experience you have as a project manager, the easier it will be for you to make appropriate judgments when dealing with changing situations on your projects. However, solid training is a good shortcut for this when you don’t have time to wait until you’ve gained 30 years of practical experience.

The Book Situational Project Management: The Dynamics of Success and Failure written by Oliver Lehmann is available at Amazon.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor your emotions or the emotions of others and use this to guide your actions. A shorter way to say this is to recognize or regulate emotions in ourselves and others. 

As project managers, we deal with people all day, every day, and we rely on them to get the job done. In this article, I’ll show you how you can use your emotional intelligence in the different project management knowledge areas and how you can improve your skills. But first, let’s take a look at how this branch of management thinking first started.

The History of Emotional Intelligence

Research into emotional intelligence can be traced back to about 1964 when Michael Beldoch first wrote a paper on the subject. In 1989 Stanley Greenspan created a model to help describe what emotional intelligence was, which was then expounded on by Peter Salovey and John Mayer.

Then we get to Daniel Goleman, who you will probably see more of in search results about Emotional Intelligence than any of the other authors. He’s often the go-to resource for emotional intelligence in the business world because he writes articles for Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and other periodicals on a regular basis.

“EQ”, “Emotional Intelligence”: Which Is Right?

You might hear emotional intelligence called EQ, which stands for emotional quotient. Generally, they are used to mean the same thing, so you can use either one. However, my reading has found that one researcher has used them to mean slightly different things. He used EI to discuss the potential that we are born with and EQ to talk about our actual practical application of these skills. The difference is very slight so feel free to use either of these terms and you will never be incorrect. In this article, we’ll use EQ (emotional quotient) and EI (emotional intelligence) interchangeably.

Emotional Intelligence and Project Management

Why is emotional intelligence important to us as project managers? It’s important because it is a significant differentiator in our success. Travis Bradberry, who is also a researcher in this area, says that 58% of our success ties to our ability to be emotionally intelligent. If you look at people who are top performers, 90% of them rate high in EQ or higher than their colleagues. Having said that, being highly emotionally intelligent as a project manager doesn’t negate the need for you to have excellent technical skills.

EQ is the ultimate integration of soft skills and technical skills. You can use your emotional intelligence to make the best judgment calls for the team and to communicate effectively about what you’ve used your technical skills to calculate, such as earned value and schedule dates.

Emotional Quotient and the Project Management Knowledge Areas

My primary goal in writing this article is to give students who are preparing for their Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification a basic understanding of how EQ plays into the exam. But even if you are not currently in the middle of your PMP Exam Prep, this should still be a helpful guide.

So how do the components of emotional intelligence relate to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) project management knowledge areas? Well, we don’t have space here to go through them all in detail but here are some high-level examples of how you can apply emotional intelligence to your daily project management activities.

Scope Management: Oftentimes people feel pressured to sign off on project scope that isn’t exactly what they want because they don’t want to hold up the process. EI can help you notice this and do something about it. An emotionally intelligent project manager will follow up afterwards because they’ll recognize that this will cause a problem later on.

Time Management: When your team faces time pressures, knowing how they think and how to get the best out of them can help you work out a solution to help them deliver more. Being emotionally intelligent can help you frame a request to a sponsor in a way that gets you more time or more money to pay for extra resources.

Cost Management: Incorrect estimates can cause headaches on projects and emotional intelligence gives you the tools to deal with them. Do you just not use the incorrect estimates and hope the estimator doesn’t notice? Do you sit down with them privately? Do you need to bring another estimator into the conversation or is that going to embarrass the original expert? EI gives you an insight into what is going to work best.

Quality Management: Working with auditors can involve difficult negotiations. EI can help you balance the needs of the team and the auditor and get the audit completed successfully.

Human Resource Management: This is perhaps the most obvious area to apply EI. You can use it for conflict resolution, negotiations and building good working relationships with your colleagues and peers.

Communications Management: You should always adjust your communication method to what the recipient needs, not what you need. EI helps you identify what they need and therefore makes your communications more successful.

Risk Management: EI is a tool to assist in risk brainstorming and is especially useful when you have to prioritize risks and the team cannot come to a consensus on the highest priorities.

Procurement Management: If you haven’t had much experience negotiating contracts or facilitating the process, your own self-awareness will come into play here. Being aware of deadlines and the role of others on the team will help you navigate the procurement timelines.

Stakeholder Management: EI lets you work through challenges with stakeholders. Think office politics!

Integration Management: EI is the thread that ties together all of your working relationships. It’s the basis behind how you present information, how you work with someone who’s experiencing challenges, and how you choose to communicate. It’s at the core of everything we do because I don’t see a world where we can truly separate our soft skills from our technical skills. We use them to support one another.  

Improving Emotional Intelligence

Improving emotional intelligence is possible. Here are 4 things you can do to improve your emotional intelligence.

First, observe those who you see being successful. Note how they behave, and understand what it is they do. Then find your own way to do the same thing: Imitation will come across as insincere.

Second, be self-aware. Talk to others about how you come across. Take an emotional intelligence assessment. This can highlight areas where you can improve.

Third, keep a journal. I don’t mean that you have to keep a personal diary, but keeping track of conversations can be incredibly useful. If you know that on this date, during this conversation, this occurred, you can then go back and see if you can find a pattern of where sometimes things don’t go as smoothly as you may have thought. That might let you trace it to a specific behavior or trigger.

Finally, develop a broad range of project management skills. It’s often easier to be confident at using your EI if you are already confident with the technical skills of project management, because you can use those and your facts to support difficult conversations. 

Recently we’ve seen a trend: The Project Management Institute (PMI)® appears to be doing more Project Management Professional (PMP)® audits. That’s where they review your application in detail prior to approving you to take the PMP® Exam.

But there’s another part to this trend: we are seeing more people failing audits and reaching out for help. If that’s you, don’t worry: I’ve got you covered with this article. And if you are in the middle of your PMP training and preparing your application right now, read on: I have some great tips to help you avoid the headaches audits can bring.

Why PMI® Does Audits

First, you should know that being selected for an audit is random. There’s nothing on your application that flagged it as being worthy of a second look. PMI does, however, reserve the right to audit any candidate at any time – that’s clear in the PMP Handbook.

PMI does audits to ensure the standing of the PMP credential. The application team wants to make sure that their policies are fair and that they are only moving people to the next stage of the process who are eligible for the credential.

In other words, audits protect you because they ensure the value of the PMP credential stays high. As PMI can’t subject every application to an audit, they select a proportion to review.

The Audit Ensures That You Are a Project Manager who Leads & Directs Projects

One reason that the PMP credential has such a high regard around the world is the fact that it is reserved for a very particular group of people: project managers who lead and direct projects. And the audit ensures that you - the applicant - meet this qualification. So let’s make sure of that:

• You are a project manager if you are the person who has been assigned to lead the project team responsible for achieving the project objectives.
• You are leading and directing if you are ultimately responsible for the tasks as well as have the knowledge and skills specified in the PMP Examination Content Outline.
• And finally it is only considered a project if it is a temporary effort (with a clear beginning and end) undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.

If you or the work you are responsible for do not meet all of these criteria then you should not apply for the exam.

Where the PMP Audit Fits Into the Application Process

If you are selected for a PMP audit you’ll find out by email after your payment has been processed.

You’ll have 90 days to provide the information that the audit team needs. Once you’re successfully out the other side of the audit, your one-year examination eligibility period starts.

How You Can Fail The PMI Audit

There are 3 ways that your application could result in an audit failure:

1. No Fault
This is where the audit team can’t verify your education or experience – you either don’t have the experience or education required or it isn’t clearly enough described in your application.

2. Non-Compliance
This is the outcome if you choose not to go through with the audit process at all. If you don’t respond to the audit you’ll receive a one year suspension period before you can apply again.

3. Fraud
If PMI identify that you have provided false information on your application then you will be permanently suspended from taking any PMI exams. Forever.

Top Reasons For Failing The Audit (And How To Avoid Them)

So what could result in your application failing the audit process? Here are some of the top reasons we have gleaned from students and what you can do to avoid them happening to you.

Your experience entries do not meet the requirements of the PMP credential

The work experience you’ve listed is not aligned with the project management process areas (initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling and closing). It might not be possible for PMI to see what role you took on the project. They need to see that you lead and directed the project.

They also need evidence that you have experience in each of the process areas. You don’t have to show experience in every area for every project but the totality of your application should document that you have experience that stretches across the whole of the Exam Content Outline.

Considerations:

• Make sure your application covers all process areas.
• Use PMI terminology to describe what you did and the tools and techniques you used.
• Try to show your experience across different knowledge areas.
• Focus on what was most important for each project.
• Talk about what you did and how you did it, not what you were responsible for. Describe your contribution in concrete terms.

You’ve submitted experience that wasn’t on projects

PMI doesn’t care about the work you do outside of projects. If you are not clear enough to determine whether they are truly projects, PMI may deem that experience inadmissible.

Considerations:

• Write clear descriptions for your projects.
• Describe the project objective in a sentence.
• Summarize project deliverables by process area (for example, state the project management documents you were personally responsible for in each process)
• Add a single sentence to describe the outcome.

You’ve grouped information about multiple projects

PMI wants to review what you did on each individual project and your application will be rejected if you group information about multiple projects.

Considerations:

• Do not combine your small projects into one.
• List each project separately.

You included voluntary projects

While working on projects unpaid can give you considerable experience, for the PMP® application PMI only wants to see projects that “represent professional and compensated work.” If you include voluntary work this could cause you to fail.

Considerations:

• Only include projects that you were compensated for.

You didn’t submit all the required audit information in one go

PMI requires that you send all your audit information back in one bundle. If they receive an incomplete submission from you, that’s an automatic fail.

Considerations:

• Making sure you have everything required before you respond to the audit.

Boost Your Chances of Success

Going through an audit isn’t the end of the world. If your application is solid, the audit process doesn’t take long and you can start preparing for your exam. If you want to avoid the extra steps and stress that an audit might bring, it helps to have an experienced PMP coach review your application. This can give you confidence and ensure that your investment in your application has the best possible chance of success.

You might also choose to use a PMP coach if you’re preparing a new application after failing an audit. They can help you select appropriate, different projects that are new for PMI’s review: the audit team may not pass projects that previously failed.

If you’ve been audited once you should expect to be audited on your next application. It might not happen: but it’s highly possible. Using the tips in this article you’ll be well prepared in case that happens.

About the author: Cornelius Fichtner, PMP is a noted PMP expert. He has helped over 40,000 students prepare for the PMP Exam with The Project Management PrepCast at http://www.pm-prepcast.com and The PM Exam Simulator at http://www.pm-exam-simulator.com.

If you are studying for or plan to study for the Project Management Professional (PMP)^® Exam you have likely heard you need to read A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK^® Guide) at least three times. But, did you know that reading the PMBOK^® Guide is not enough to pass the PMP^® Exam? One popular misconception concerning the PMP Exam is that it is based solely on the PMBOK^® Guide. It is a great study tool but there is material on the PMP Exam that is not covered in the PMBOK^® Guide so you need to locate and select quality supplemental resources to cover this additional material. The PMP Exam covers a variety of questions to include those that are based on the PMBOK^® Guide, situational type questions and those that cover other project management concepts not necessarily included in the PMBOK^® Guide. Here we will look at some additional resources you can use to help ensure you are as prepared as possible for the PMP Exam.

Why Should Supplemental Resources Be Used?

The PMBOK^® Guide is a wonderful study tool that contains the majority of the content you need to learn for the PMP Exam. However, it does not cover all of the content you will encounter while taking the exam. One place to start is to read the Project Management Professional (PMP)^® Examination Content Outline, which is published by the Project Management Institute (PMI)^®. It provides detailed information pertaining to what the PMP Exam covers but also includes skills, knowledge and tasks that are not covered within the PMBOK^® Guide. Let’s take a look at an example of question that could appear on the PMP Exam that would not be covered by the PMBOK^® Guide:

The team members do what the project manager tells them because she has the authority to provide negative feedback in their appraisals. Which of the following types of power describes this situation?
A. Referent Power
B. Formal Power
C. Technical Power
D. Coercive Power

Correct answer is D
Explanation: This is an example of coercive power. The project team is afraid of the power that the project manager holds and therefore does what she tells them to do because of this fear.
Reference: French and Raven's Five Bases of Power

If you knew the answer to the sample question above, that’s great! If you didn’t there is no need to panic. Just follow good testing techniques by first reading the question and available choices then making your best educated guess. Don’t spend too much time on a single question. Mark it if you need too, then return to it once you finish the rest of the exam.

What Are Supplemental Resources?

What types of supplemental resources are available that cover additional skills, knowledge and tasks? There are several options available to you. One option is a PMP Exam study guide, also called PMP Exam prep books. These cover much of the same content as what is in the PMBOK^® Guide but are worded and explained in a manner some find much more relatable and easier to understand.

Other possibilities include PMP^® Exam simulators and free practice questions. Not only do they provide for an opportunity to practice answering questions but they also help you identify the knowledge areas where you are strong and those in which you are weak. This is a good way to help you determine where you need to spend your valuable time studying. Just make sure you use a simulator or questions professionally produced or one from a PMI^® Registered Education Provider.

Then there are the more portable options such as flashcards, mobile apps and podcasts. PMP Flashcards are an easy study tool that can be used just about anywhere or anytime; they are small and can be used to test your knowledge in your spare time; and there are even electronic flashcards that can be accessed on your phone. PMP^® Apps are also becoming increasingly popular and there are many to choose from, some of which are games and others that use alternative methods to teach concepts. PMP Podcasts are also a great portable PMP Exam training option that allow you to listen to or watch PMP-related lessons wherever you are and whenever you have a few spare moments.

Finally, if you are looking for a more traditional face-to-face type of resource, check out your local PMI chapter. There you can find motivation to study for the PMP exam, possibly a study group, or even formal PMP^® Exam prep classes. Many students also find that formal PMP Exam training or PMP Exam coaching is often an effective method of receiving this supplemental information.

Where Can I Find a PMBOK^® Guide Free Download?

If you were to order a hard copy of the PMBOK^® Guide from Amazon you could expect to pay over $50.00 U.S. plus shipping. If you are, or become, a member of PMI you can access a free electronic PDF version of the PMBOK^® Guide. This can be downloaded to your computer and opened using your PMI password. In case you were wondering, yes you should read the PMBOK^® Guide multiple times. That is a given because it is the basis for a large portion of the PMP Exam content. You should also look at other resources that cover those concepts not discussed within the PMBOK^® Guide but mentioned in PMI’s Project Management Professional (PMP)^® Examination Content publication.

As you can probably see, supplemental resources can come in a various formats, so select the format that is most convenient for you and your study plan. The body of PM knowledge is vast and it is impossible to predict exactly what will be covered on the PMP Exam. However, you can increase your probability of success by being completely prepared for the exam. Don’t stress or go overboard when studying these additional concepts; but keep in mind, it is often that while studying these additional concepts that the PMBOK^® Guide topics become more clear or more easily understood. Also, as you are studying these concepts, remember that they not only help you pass the PMP Exam, but will also help you be a better project manager.