It’s important for projects to produce a valuable product, but value isn’t really a part of quality. That’s why earned value is part of Cost Management, not Quality Management.

In the Perform Quality Control process, the team inspects the product for defects and uses the seven basic tools to analyze them. Since the defects came from inspection, you know it’s Perform Quality Control.

Cost of Quality is the time and money that you spend to prevent, find, or repair defects

The Perform Quality Assurance process is all about how well your company meets its overall quality goals.

A manufacturer that uses Just In Time management is relying on its suppliers to deliver parts exactly when they’re needed. This saves costs, because they don’t have to warehouse a lot of spare parts.

Your project team needs to inspect ALL of the deliverables! That means every single thing that gets produced needs to be reviewed by team members, so they can find and repair defects.

A Pareto chart divides your defects into categories, and shows you the percentage of the total defects each of those categories represents. It’s really useful when you have a limited budget for Plan Quality and want to spend it where it’s most effective!

Keep your eye out for questions asking you about Ishikawa or fishbone diagrams. When you use those tools to analyze defects, you’re in quality control.

A run chart is one of the seven basic tools of quality. It’s a long line graph that shows you the total number of defects that were found over time.

Inspection is when your team examines something that they produced for defects… and every single deliverable needs to be inspected! That’s what “prevention over inspection” means: if you produce a deliverable that’s needed later in the project today, it’s a lot cheaper to fix defects in it now than it will be when that deliverable is used later on in the project.

A lot of people get Quality Control and Verify Scope confused because they seem really similar. Both of them involve looking closely at deliverables to make sure that they meet requirements. But they serve really different purposes! You use Quality Control to find defects that you’re going to repair. Verify Scope happens at the very end of the Executing phase; it’s when you work with the stakeholder to get their formal acceptance for the deliverables.

Benchmarking is when you use previous projects to set quality guidelines for your current project. You can always find the results of the past projects in the Organizational Process Assets.

The rule of seven tells you that when seven consecutive data points on your control chart come out on the same side of the mean, you’ve got a process problem. That sounds a little complicated, but it’s actually pretty straightforward. Defects tend to be scattered around pretty randomly; in any project that makes a lot of parts, even if they’re all within the specification, you’ll get a couple of parts that are a little bigger, and a couple that are a little smaller. But if you have a bunch of them in a row that all run a little big, that’s a good indication that something’s gone wrong on your assembly line!

Going back and repairing defects can be a pretty risky activity, because it’s really easy to introduce new defects or not fully understand why the defect happened in the first place. Answer C says exactly that: you go back and review the defects to make sure they’re fixed.

A lot of times it’s impractical to check every single product that rolls off of your assembly line. Statistical sampling is a great tool for that; that’s when you pull out a small, random sample of the products and inspect each of them. If they’re all correct, then there’s a very good chance that your whole product is acceptable!

This is really a question about the order of the processes. Determine Budget and Control Costs both use the Cost Performance Baseline, so it has to be created before you get to them. Cost Baselining isn’t a process at all, so you should exclude that from the choices right away. The main output of Determine Budget is the Cost Performance Baseline and supporting detail, so that’s the right choice here.

This one is just testing whether or not you know the formula for schedule variance. Just plug the values into the SV formula: SV = EV – PV and you get answer A. Watch out for negative numbers, though! Answer B is a trap because it’s a positive value. Also, the test will have answers like C that check if you’re using the right formula. If you use the SPI formula, that’s the answer you’ll get! You can throw out D right away—you don’t need to do any calculation to know that you have enough information to figure out SV!

When you’re using the past performance of previous projects to help come up with an estimate, that’s called Analogous Estimation. This is the second time you saw this particular technique—it was also in the Time Management chapter. So there’s a good chance that you’ll get an exam question on it.

The formula for SPI is: SPI = EV ÷ PV. So you just have to fill in the numbers that you know, which gets you1.2 = EV ÷ $56,733. Now flip it around. You end up with EV = 1.2 x $56,733, which multiplies out to $68,079.60.

If you see a question about opportunity cost of selecting one project over another, the answer is the value of the project that was not selected! So even though the answers were all numbers, there’s no math at all in this question.

This is one of those questions that gives you a definition and asks you to pick the term that’s being defined. So which one is it? Try using the process of elimination to find the right answer! It can’t be Benefit Cost Ratio, because you aren’t being asked to compare the overall cost of the project to anything to figure out what its benefit will be. Depreciation isn’t right—that’s about how your project loses value over time, not about its costs. And it’s not Net Present Value, because the question didn’t ask you about how much value your project is delivering today. That leaves Lifecycle Costing.

When you see an SPI that’s lower than one, that means your project is behind schedule. But your CPI is above one, which means that you’re ahead on your budget!

Use the formula: EV=BAC x Actual % Complete. When you plug the numbers into the formula, the right answer pops out!

You might not have recognized this as a TCPI problem immediately, but take another look at the question. It’s asking you whether or not a project is going to come in under budget, and that’s what TCPI is for. Good thing you were given all of the values you need to calculate it! The Actual % Complete is 57%, the BAC is $1,500,000 and the AC is $950,000. You can calculate the EV = BAC x Actual % Complete = $1,500,000 x 57% = $855,000. So now you have everything you need to calculate TCPI: TCPI = (BAC-EV)/(BAC-AC) = ($1,500,000-$855,000)/($1,500,00-$950,000) = 1.17 This means he needs a TCPI of 1.17 in order to come in under budget. Since he knows that he can’t get better than 1.05, he’s likely to blow the budget.

Some of these calculation questions can get a little complicated—but that doesn’t mean they’re difficult! Just relax—you can do them! The formula you need to use is: SPI = EV ÷ PV. But what do you use for EV and PV? If you look at the question again, you’ll find everything you need to calculate them. First, figure out Earned Value: EV = BAC x Actual % Complete. But wait! You weren’t given these in the question! OK, no problem—you just need to think your way through it. The project will cost $52/meter to lay 4 km (or 4,000 meters) of cable, which means the total cost of the project will be $52 x 4,000 = $208,000. And you can figure out Actual % Complete too! You’ve laid 1,800 meters so far out of the 4,000 meters you’ll lay in total… so that’s 1,800 ÷ 4,000 = 45% complete. All right! Now you know your earned value: EV = $208,000 x 45% = $93,600. So what’s next? You’ve got half of what you need for SPI—now you have to figure out PV. The formula for it is: PV = BAC x Scheduled % Complete. So how much of the project were you supposed to complete by now? You’re 5 weeks into an 8 week project, so 5 ÷ 8 = 62.5%. Your PV is $208,000 x 62.5% = $130,000. Now you’ve got everything you need to calculate SPI! EV ÷ PV = $93,600 ÷ $130,000 = .72

You’ll run into a lot of questions like this where a problem happens, a person has an issue, or the project runs into trouble. When this happens, the first thing you do is stop and gather information. And that should make sense to you, since you don’t know if this change will really impact cost or not. It may seem like a huge change to the programmer, but may not actually cost the project anything. Or it may really be huge. So the first thing to do is figure out the impact of the change on the project constraints, and that’s what answer B says!

What formula do you know that has AC and EV? Right, the CPI formula does! Take a look at it: CPI = EV ÷ AC. So what happens if AC is bigger than EV? Make up two numbers and plug them in! You get CPI that’s below 1, and you know what that means… it means that you’ve blown your budget!

This question gave you a definition and is checking to see if you know what it refers to. You should take a minute to look at each of the four possible answers and see if you can think of the definition for each of them. It’s definitely worth taking the time to understand what each of these formulas and variables represents in real life! It will make the whole exam a lot easier.

This is a classic Red Herring question! The money you’ve spent so far is the actual cost. It’s a simple definition question, wrapped up in a whole bunch of fluff!

When you plug a bunch of values into a formula or computer program, and it generates an estimate, that’s called parametric estimation. Parametric estimation often uses some historical data, but that doesn’t mean it’s the same as analogous estimation!

You’ve been given a net present value (NPV) for each project. NPV means the total value that this project is worth to your company! It’s got the costs—including opportunity costs—built in already. So all you need to do is select the project with the biggest NPV.

The Rough Order of Magnitude estimate is a very preliminary estimate that everyone knows is only within an order of magnitude of the actual cost (or ±50%). That means it can be anywhere from half the actual cost to one and a half times the actual cost!

You should definitely have a pretty good idea of how change control works by now! The change control system defines the procedures that you use to carry out the changes. And Control Costs has its own set of procedures, called the cost change control system.

You use the project Cost Performance Baseline to measure and monitor your project’s cost performance. The idea behind a baseline is that when a change is approved and implemented, the baseline gets updated.

You should have the hang of this by now! Plug the numbers into the formula (CPI = EV ÷ AC), and it spits out the answer. Sometimes the question will give you more numbers than you actually need to use—just ignore them like any other red herring and only use the ones you need!

If your TCPI is above 1, you need to manage costs aggressively. It means that you need to meet your goals without spending as much money as you have been for the rest of the project.

If you are just starting to work on your project charter, it means you’re just starting the project and you don’t have enough information yet to do analogous, parametric, or bottom-up estimates. The only estimation technique that you can use that early in the project is the Rough Order of Magnitude estimate. That kind of estimate is not nearly as accurate as the other kinds of estimate and is used just to give a rough idea of how much time and cost will be involved in doing a project.

This question may have seemed a little wordy, but it’s really just a question about the definition of TCPI. You’re being asked to figure out where you need to keep your project’s CPI in order to meet your budget. And you know it’s the EACbased TCPI number, because the question specified that you already gave him a forecast, which means you gave him an EAC value already. So now you can calculate the EAC-based TCPI number to figure out where you need to keep your CPI for the rest of the project.

You’ll definitely get some questions that ask you about crashing and fast-tracking, and it’s important to know the difference between them. When you crash the project, it means that you add resources to it, especially to the critical path. There’s no real risk in doing that—in the worst-case scenario, the extra people just sit around!—but it does cost more. Fast-tracking means adjusting the schedule so that activities overlap. The same resources are doing the work, so it’s not going to cost more, but it’s definitely riskier, because now you’ve eliminated buffers and possibly broken some dependencies! And remember that crashing or fast tracking won’t always work to make the project go faster!

Calculating the early start (ES) of an activity isn’t hard. All you need to do is look at the early finish (EF) of the previous activity and add one. If there’s more than one predecessor, then you take the largest EF and add one. In this case, the predecessors to activity F are D, with an EF of 9, and E, with an EF of 12. So the ES of F is 12 + 1 = 13.

It’s just as easy to calculate the late finish (LF). Look at the following activity, take its LS (late start), and subtract one. If there’s more than one following activity, use the one with the lowest LS. So for activity F in the question, the following activities are G, with an LS of 17, and H, with an LS of 11. So the LF of F is 11 - 1 = 10.

Don’t let the jargon fool you! You don’t need to know anything about software testing to answer this question. When you have two activities, and the first activity has to be timed so that it finishes before the second one starts, then you’ve got a Finish-to-Start relationship, or FS.

This is a Which-is-next question that describes a project that’s completed the Define Activities, Sequence Activities, Estimate Activity Resources, and Estimate Activity Durations processes. The next process in Time Management is Develop Schedule, which means that the next thing you do is create the schedule!

The schedule baseline is an output of the Develop Schedule process, not an input. You should definitely know what goes into the schedule baseline: it’s a specific version of the schedule that you set aside and use for comparison later on, when you want to know if the project is running late.

You always want to be honest with your estimates. Every project has unknowns and risks, and there’s no way to estimate any activity exactly! Luckily, we have tools to deal with this. You can use reserve analysis, a tool of Estimate Activity Durations, to come up with a contingency reserve that you can use to plan for these risks.

Critical chain method is a technique that’s part of Develop Schedule that lets you figure out how to handle the problems that come with having limited resources. You use it to shuffle both activities and resources on your critical path. One important aspect of the critical chain method is that you can use it to add buffers to the schedule to reduce the risk of certain activities.

When you draw out a network diagram for the activities in the table, you end up with four paths. And you definitely should draw out the activity diagram for a question like this! You’re allowed to use scratch paper on the exam, and this is one place where you should definitely do it. Of the four paths, only one has the longest duration: Start‑A‑B‑C‑Finish, which has a duration of 6+ 4 + 8 = 18. That’s the critical path.

Activity F is in the path Start-A-D-E-F-Finish. This path has a duration of 6 + 1 + 1 + 2 = 10. The float of an activity is the longest time it can slip before it affects the critical path. In this case, activity F can slip by 8 without causing the path that it’s on to go beyond the critical path. But any more than that, and its path becomes the new critical path!

This is the definition of fast-tracking, and you’re probably getting the hang of this one by now. You may get a question like this, but you’ll almost certainly see fast-tracking as an incorrect answer to several questions!

Remember that when you see “slack,” it’s the same thing as float. Either term could appear on the exam!

This question is asking about the Estimate Activity Durations process. Take a look at the answers—there’s only one answer that’s used in that process: you need to start with the activity list in order to do the estimates for the activities! The other answers are things that are inputs, tools, or techniques for other processes.

It’s not hard to remember the order in which the Time Management processes are performed. If you use a little common sense, you can reason your way through a question like this. You need to define your activities before you can sequence them, you need to know who’s going to be doing an activity before you can estimate how long it’s going to take, and you need to do all of that before you can build a schedule!

You’ll have to know the different kinds of estimating techniques for the exam. You don’t necessarily have to be good at doing them, but you should recognize which are which. Parametric estimating is when you plug values into a formula, program, or spreadsheet and get an estimate. Analogous estimating uses similar activities from past projects to calculate new estimates. Three-point estimating uses an optimistic, pessimistic, and realistic estimate.

This question is asking you to apply the PERT three-point estimation formula: (Optimistic Time + 4 x Most Likely Time + Pessimistic Time) ÷ 6. When a question gives you these values directly, it’s easy. But in this case, to answer the question you had to figure out the values for the Optimistic Time and Pessimistic Time, which meant that you needed to look at the assumptions that the team was making. The most likely time was given: 27 weeks. The best case scenario would come in two weeks earlier, at 25 weeks, and the worst case would come in five weeks late, at 32 weeks. So the estimate is (25 weeks + 4 x (27 weeks) + 32 weeks) ÷ 6 = 27.5 weeks.

The path Start-E-D-C-End has a duration of 8 + 2 + 4 = 14, which is the longest total duration in the entire network.

Activity A is on three different paths: Start-A-B-C-End (13), Start-A-D-C-End (12), and Start-A-D-G-End (9). To calculate its float, you take the longest path’s length and subtract it from the lenth of the critical path: 14 - 13 = 1.

Since activity E is on the critical path, its float is zero, because the float of any activity on the critical path is zero

The schedule management plan tells you how changes to the schedule are to be handled. Any time there’s a change, the first thing you should do is consult the plan to see how it should be handled.

The organizational process assets contain historical information about past projects. When you write up your lessons learned, or create work performance information, you store it in your company’s organizational process asset library! Also, did you notice that answer B was the wrong definition of parametric estimation?

Crashing the schedule is the form of schedule compression that increases cost. This is a difficult question because all of the answers sound good, and one or two are a little misleading! Don’t fall into the trap of choosing an answer because you recognize a valid tool or technique in it. Reserve analysis and three-point estimates are very useful techniques, but they’re not the answer to this question.

The critical path is the path in the network diagram where any delay will cause a delay in the schedule. These are the activities that cannot slip without making the project late!

This question was really about the definition of “duration,” and the key to answering it is to understand how duration is different from effort. The correct answer talks about “calendar time,” which is what a duration is: it’s a measurement (or estimate) of how long the activity will take in real life, taking into account the number of people who will be doing the work, the availability of the people and other resources, everyone’s vacation time, time taken away from the schedule because people are pulled off of the activity to work on higher priority activities, and other real-world factors. That’s different from effort (which is often measured in person-hours), and it’s different from resource estimating (which involves estimating how many people and what other resources will be used for the activity).

The work breakdown structure is all about breaking down the work that your team needs to do. The WBS is graphical and hierarchical, not linear and unstructured. Did you notice that answer B was about product scope, not project scope?

There are two ways you can get to the right answer for this question. You can recognize that the WBS Dictionary, Change Requests, and Accepted Deliverables are all Scope Management process outputs. (You’ll see Change Requests in every knowledge area!) But you can also recognize that the Business Case was created by the Develop Projct Charter which is part of the Initiating process group.

Did you recognize that answer A was describing the scope management plan? Once you know what the WBS is used for and how to make one, questions like this make sense.

You’ll need to know what order processes come in, and one good way to do that is to think about how the outputs of some processes are used as inputs for another. For example, you can’t create the WBS until the scope is defined, which is why A is wrong. And you can’t do change control until you have a baseline WBS, which is why B is wrong.

An important tactic for a lot of exam questions is to be able to recognize a particular tool, technique, input, or output from a description. What have you learned about that tells you who is responsible for a work package, what control account to associate with it, and describes the work associated with it? That’s a good description of the WBS Dictionary

There are some questions where you’ll just have to know what a process is all about, and this is one of them. That’s why it’s really helpful to know why Verify Scope is so helpful to you on a project. You use Verify Scope to check that all of the work packages were completed, and get the stakeholders and sponsor to formally accept the deliverables.

It’s easy to forget that Organizational Process Assets is more than just an input. It’s a real thing that’s part of your company. Take a second and think about what assets are in your organization that help you with carry out each process. Get it? Good! So what is historical information, anyway? It’s stuff like reports and data that you or another project manager wrote down on a previous project and stored in a file cabinet or a database. That’s an asset you can use now! What are lessons learned? Those are lessons you wrote down at the end of a previous project and stuck in a file cabinet or a database. And now those lessons are another asset you can use.

One thing to remember about change control is that if you want to make the sponsor and stakeholders happy with the project in the end, sometimes you have to tell them “no” right now. When you’re doing Control Scope, the most important tool you use is the change control system. It tells you how to take an approved change and put it in place on a project, and there’s no other way that you should ever make a change to any part of the baseline. That means that once everyone has approved the scope statement and WBS, if you want to make any change to them, then you need to get that change approved and put it through the change control system.

The Requirements Traceability Matrix is a tool that you use to trace each requirement back to a specific business case, and then forward to the rest of the scope deliverables (like specific WBS work packages), as well as other parts of the project: the product design (like specific levels in Cows Gone Wild) or test strategy (like test plans that the Ranch Hand Games testers use to make sure that the game works).

When you’re getting the sponsor and stakeholders to formally accept the results of the project, you’re doing scope verification. There’s only one tool for it: inspection. That means carefully checking the deliverables (in this case, what the workers built on the highway) to make sure they match the WBS.

This question is a little tricky. The most important thing about a WBS is that if your Scope Management Plan says it should be there, then your project absolutely cannot be done without it. And a general rule is that if you ever find that there is no WBS, you should always check the Scope Management Plan to find out why.

This is another question that is testing you on the definition of a specific document, in this case the Scope Management Plan, which is one of the subsidiary plans of the Project Management Plan. Think about what you use a Scope Management Plan for. It gives you specific procedures for defining the scope, breaking down the work, verifying the deliverables, and managing scope changes—which is what this question is asking. All of the other answers don’t have anything to do with managing changes.

Here’s another example of how there are two correct answers but only one BEST one. Answer C is true – you are doing scope definition. But is that really the best way to describe this situation? Alternatives analysis is part of scope definition, and it’s a more accurate way to describe what’s going on here.

This question is an example of how you need to rely on more than just common sense to pass the PMP exam. All four of these answers could be good ways to handle a terminated project, but there’s only one of those answers that corresponds to what the PMBOK® Guide says. When a project is terminated, you still need to complete the Verify Scope process. That way, you can document all of the work that has been completed, and the work that has not been completed.

Are you starting to get the hang of how this change control stuff works? The baseline isn’t etched in stone, and you need to be able to change it, but you can’t just go ahead and make changes whenever you want. You need to document the change request and then put that request through change control. If it’s approved, then you can update the baseline so that it incorporates the change.

When a question asks you about what a particular document, input, or output contains, be on the lookout for answers that talk about a different document. What document do you know about that gives the project manager authorization to do the work? That’s what the project charter is for.

Sometimes Control Scope is easiest to think about if you think of it as a kind of machine that turns approved changes into updates. It sucks in the approved changes and all of the other Scope Management stuff (the Scope Statement, WBS, and WBS Dictionary), does all the stuff that it needs to do to update those things, and then spits out updates. And sometimes it spits out new requested changes because when you’re making changes to the WBS or Scope Statement you realize that you need to make even more changes.

Scope Identification is a made-up process. It didn’t appear in this chapter, and even though it sounds real, it’s wrong.

WBS templates are a great way to speed up creating the WBS, and the easiest way to create a template is to use one from a previous project. It is not a good idea to cut out deliverables, skip important outputs like the WBS Dictionary, or make the sponsor do your job for you.

This question asked you about the Define Scope process, but all of the answers describe various outputs. Which of these outputs matches Define Scope? Well, the main output of Define Scope is the Scope Statement, and answer C is a good description of the scope statement.

This question asked you where you defined the procedures for doing all of the Scope Management Processes. Where do you find those procedures? You find them in the Project Management Plan—specifically, the Scope Management Plan sub-plan. And you build that in the Develop Project Management Plan process.

There’s only one document you’ve seen that shows you details of individual work packages and contains a control account, a statement of work, and a resource assignment. It’s the WBS Dictionary.

When you read the question, it looks like the team really helped the project, right? But think about what happened: the team abandoned the plan, and then they made a change to the project without getting approval from the sponsor or stakeholders. Maybe they discovered a useful shortcut. But isn’t it possible that the shortcut the team found was already considered and rejected by the sponsor? That’s why change control is so important

Some questions are just definition questions. When that definition is a “Which-is-BEST” question, there could be an answer that makes some sense, and it’s tempting to stop with it. In this case, answer A sounds like it might be right. But if you read answer D, it’s much more accurate.

The question asked about the tools and techniques for Collect Requirements, and answer A is the only answer that has to do with the Create WBS process. The rest of the answers were descriptions of Collect Requirements tools and techniques: Interviews (answer B), Prototypes (answer C), and Observations (answer D).

The three outputs of Collect Requirements are Requirements Documentation, the Requirements Management Plan, and the Requirements Traceability Matrix. “Requirements Observations” isn’t really an output.

This is really a question about inputs and outputs. There’s only one process that takes “requested changes” as an input, and that’s Integrated Change Control.That’s where your changes get approved. The other answers all refer to other processes: A is about building a baseline (which is part of Develop Project Management Plan), while B and D are both about Direct and Manage Execution.

The project management plan is created in the Develop Project Plan process, which happens after Develop Project Charter. Develop Project Charter is the very first process on any project, and the inputs in answers A, C, and D exist before the project started. The Project Managemet Plan is created during the project.

The whole reason for the Direct and Manage Execution process is to actually do the project work, and the deliverables are the products or services that are created by the project. Don’t get fooled by answer D—even though the work is performed in “Direct and Manage Execution,” the information about how that work is performed is turned into forecasts in “Monitor and Control Project Work.”

When you get a question about communication, look for the answer that provides the most complete, honest, and up-front information, even if that information won’t necessarily solve the problem or make everyone happy.

All changes must be handled using the change control system, which is a set of procedures that is contained in the project management plan. There is no way to tell from the question what specific steps will be in that change control system— answers A, C, and D are all possible ways to deal with changes, depending on the situation. The only way to know for sure what to do is to follow the change control procedures in the project management plan.

This is a “just the facts” question, and answer A is the actual definition of the work authorization system from the PMBOK® Guide. After you’re done with these questions, look it up—it’s on page 452. Underline or highlight it, and then read it out loud. Once you’ve read about it in the chapter, answered this question about it, and then looked up the definition, you’ll never forget it!

The first thing you do after a change is approved is to update the baseline. If you chose answer C, don’t feel bad—it’s easy to get a little mixed up about what a baseline is used for. The whole purpose of the baseline is to figure out whether your project has deviated from the plan. But a change isn’t a deviation from the plan! A deviation is accidental, while a change is done on purpose. That’s why it’s so important to get the change approved: that way, everyone knows about it, which means that you can plan for it. And updating the baseline is how you do that planning.

When your company has a policy, you need to follow it and not try to work around it. Also, don’t get fooled by answer D—the question said that a change request was submitted, so it’s already documented. The exam could contain tricks like that!

This is a Business Case—it describes the benefits of doing a project and can be used to decide whether it’s worth it for your company to do the work. Sometimes the benefits will be about gaining capablities, not just money.

Defects do not need to be documented in the project management plan. Take a look at the other answers—do you understand why they are correct? Answer A is simply the definition of the project charter; it doesn’t have anything to do with the defect, but it’s still true. When you’re performing the Monitor and Control Project Work process, you need to make sure defect repairs are approved before you change the deliverables, so answer B is true as well. And as far as answer C goes, that’s the whole purpose of the Integrated Change Control process: to approve defect repairs, changes, and preventive and corrective actions!

This is the definition of the project management plan!

Even when a project is terminated, you still need to close it out.

If a resource is not available to you, it doesn’t matter what’s in your project charter or what your sponsors and stakeholders want. You need to figure out how to move forward from here, and the first step in doing that is evaluating the impact that this new problem will have on your project.

The project manager must decide the priority of the changes. If the changes need to be made, that means that they were approved. So you can’t simply deny them. And you can’t call the team in for a meeting, because they need to do the work. Some people may think that the stakeholders need to be involved—but since the change was already approved, you’ve gotten their buy-in. Now it’s up to you to decide the order in which they’re implemented.

When you get a change request, you need to consult the project management plan and follow the procedures defined in the change control system. It is generally not a good idea to involve the entire team in evaluating each change that comes in—there may be many changes, and if you pull your team off the job for each one, they’ll never get their job done!

Once a change is requested, all of the work that you do with it falls under Perform Integrated Change Control, right up until it’s approved and you can implement it.

The work authorization system is defined by the company, and it’s external to the project. You can think about it as the rules that you are told to follow in order to assign work in your company. They are part of the Enterprise Environmental Factors, an input to Develop Project Charter.

The work performance information is documented as part of Direct and Manage Execution. By the time the project closes, it’s too late to use the work performance information! That’s why it’s an input to Monitor and Control Project Work—so you can take corrective action if the work is not being performed well.

The Project Charter authorizes the project manager.

Forecasts are used to help predict whether the project will come in on time and within budget. If not, preventive or corrective actions will be needed! But you don’t need to know that to know they’re not an output of Direct and Manage Project Execution.

Historical information is an important input into Develop Project Charter, which is the first process that you perform when you start a new project. Historical information is very important, because it’s how you learn about past projects’ successes and failures. It’s not actually listed as its own input. It’s a part of Organizational Process Assets—and it really is a huge asset to any organization!

The project manager may be consulted when the project charter is created, but that’s not always the case. It’s possible that the project manager for a project is not even known when the charter is created!

While you may employ good judgment in developing your project management plan, Expert Judgment is not an input. It’s a tool/technique used in the various processes.

Make sure the stakeholders know that you’re open to change, and tell them to talk to the project sponsor

If you’re having trouble remembering what the inputs and outputs are for Monitor and Control Execution and Perform Integrated Change Control, one way to think about it is that change control is all about deciding whether or not to do something. Monitor and Control Execution is where you spot the problems—that’s why all of the RECOMMENDED actions and changes are outputs of it, and inputs into Perform Integrated Change Control. Perform Integrated Change Control is where those recommendations get evaluated turned into APPROVED actions and changes. The ones that are not approved are REJECTED. Then they go back to Direct and Manage Project Execution, where they are IMPLEMENTED, because that’s project work and all project work happens in that process.