The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Here is a Breakdown of the New 2021 PMP Exam Domains | PPP #22

Episode Date: May 21, 2020

I love the 2021 PMP Exam Changes the Project Management Institute (PMI) has made to the focus areas of the PMP exam. In this episode, I provide an overview of the new 2021 PMP exam domains and my $.02 on their practical application in the real world.

Hey everybody, Kevin Pinnell, host of the People Process Progress podcast. Thanks for coming back, subscribing, rating, reviewing, listening to the last episode with Jill Grumbine, a public health nurse. I think that was very informative, particularly in these pandemic times. If you haven't subscribed, please do so. We appreciate it. Today I'm going to go over what I think is an outstanding change. So the Project Management Institute has updated the Project Management Professional or

PMP exam content. That will change January 2021. For those that are recently tested or are going to in the near future, you know, they're doing online testing now, which is pretty awesome, given our current state and COVID-ville. And who knows when that will change, but the exam content is going to change, and I think for the better. So among the changes, there's categories, there's domains, tasks, and enablers. And it's almost like karma that I'm a PMP. I have a podcast called the People Process Progress Podcast, and the new domains are people, process, business environment. So close, but no cigar there. Almost the same. So what I'm going to cover in this episode is what is the breakdown, the quick breakdown. You can get this from the PMP exam content outline, January 2021 from PMI's website, pmi.org.

So check that out to get more detail than I'll go into. But what I'm going to do is cover what's the breakdown percentage of the exam? What are the domains, some tasks? And then what are the enablers in my two cents? I'm not going to read all the enablers, which are the kind of specifics. So there's a domain that's a high-level thing, right? So that's the people.

There's a task, an example, like lead a team. And then there's all these enablers, like suggestions and things. So instead of giving you the PMI version, I'm going to give you the Kevin Pinnell PMP of how you practically apply these in the business world and healthcare and IT and wherever you are when you think about it. Because that's another conversation I have a lot is, hey, Kevin, I want to learn about project management. Should I get my PMP? Right? So anyone that's taking the exam that's worked in project management, program management, change management, whatever management knows there's book stuff, there's exam studying and passing, and then there's actually applying it in the field.

And I know some folks that are PMPs that maybe are not the best in areas in project management, and I know folks that are fantastic in project management that aren't PMPs. So again, the certification doesn't make you a project manager. It is a professional credential that enhances your resume. It certainly has great information in the project management body of knowledge, the methodologies. Yes,

yep, absolutely, we use them. But one does not equate evenly to the other. All right then, so we are almost three minutes in. So what's the deal? What's the breakdown? So here's the deal. So for people, there is 42% of items on the test are focused on people on that domain. Process, 50%. And again, we'll get into kind of what those are. And then business environments, 8%. So not a ton. I think also of note on this same page, this is page two from the exam content outline, is half of the exam will represent predictive project management approaches like waterfall type stuff. And the other half is going to have agile or hybrid. Right. So waterfall do this, this, then that start, finish, finish, start all that kind of pin box stuff.

Agile. Right. We do sprints. We scrum all that stuff. And then hybrid like waddle waterfall agile. I have found myself practically probably doing some waddle, especially when it's a software or a device you test then you have to change something and come back You know integrating different things and so as you all know Projects don't go according to the document you make early on exactly. So it's great to see that that Change and a lot of work, particularly in the IT space, has already gone agile or hybrid or certainly will go that route. And there are instances when predictive makes sense. If you're building things, you have to have the wiring and the infrastructure in place before you can do the

furniture and all that. So pretty straightforward when it comes to software development and user acceptance, testing, all those things. I think you can be a little more flexible and a little more agile. So that's the breakdown. People, 42%, process, 50%, business environment, 8%. In these domains, tasks, enablers to the domain, high-level task, what are we going to do? What's the PM going to do in each area? And then the enabler. So what are some suggestions, as they say in this document, to do?

Instead of reading you the many bullet points, I'm just going to go over them quick, make this a quick, simple, hopefully helpful episode to give you an idea of what they are and how to apply them. So here we go. Task number one, domain one under people, manage conflict, right? A project manager's job, you're going to have to de-conflict people arguing on meetings, less face-to-face these days, so I guess on calls. So that'll be, you know, getting the read of the room when it's a Zoom meeting or Skype or whatever you're using, you know, is different than seeing and feeling the emotion in a room. So that's a new kind of skill going forward, but you're going to have to understand how to analyze, you know, for context

and, you know, looking at what people are doing and their language. And maybe if you do have visuals, body language and stuff like that on the call. So manage conflicts, the first one. That's a huge part of a project manager's job. Lead the team. To me, that's a given. If you are a project manager, you are absolutely a leader. It doesn't matter how matrixed, how much power you do or don't have.

Support all the different members of your team from the newest person to the most veteran. You're going to have some folks that aren't all in project management, some folks that are, some folks that don't know the language. So there are so many leadership resources out there. And certainly this exam nor just this podcast are going to solve that for you, but hopefully this helps. But understand as a project manager, you are absolutely a leader. Task number three, support team performance, right? You're going to say great job for the folks that are performing well. You're going to reach out to the folks that maybe aren't getting things done and say, Hey, how can I help you get more time? Can I talk to your manager and have

them reserve some time? Are you overloaded? Are you okay at home? You know, if you, you know, someone wants to share that with you, but you gotta support team performance and then you have to kind of validate those. Like one of the last ones here says verify performance improvements, right? So do you have measurable setup? Do you have measurable things

that you want to achieve throughout the project, let alone by the project completion? So task three, support team performance. Task four under domain one and people, empower team members and stakeholders. This to me is super tied into leadership, right? You as the project manager don't have to have the last word or drive what the team does.

And I have found myself more probably in trying to be helpful in suggesting teams go down a certain road and then knowing, wait a minute, why don't I just listen to the experts? And I've learned that recently. I've learned it a few times in the past. And I've been good at it and let people come up with the plan and then support them. But you need to empower them in the stakeholders. And for the stakeholders, for me, I'm in the healthcare space.

So that's nurses, doctors, administrative assistants, biomedical engineering, anybody that has a stake in this project or in the outcome or in the improvements, empower them with the knowledge of what the project's about, why you're doing it, what's our timeline, all that kind of standard stuff, but also give them position, give them access, let them do what they know how to do, and you just kind of wrap it together in good process and good leadership. Task five under people, which is domain one, ensure team members slash stakeholders are adequately trained, right? This is a huge part of ADCAR too, right? When you get to the K for the knowledge, so you need to see that kind of pretty early on the task list here under domain one for people for PMI's revised 2021 PMP exam deal is, you know, not just the end users, but say you have a new device coming into your environment. Do the clinical engineering folks have to get trained and certified per the vendor or is it suggested or what opportunities do you have for your people on a new project, whether it's the reporting, the project management software, but seeing what you need to do because that's going to be time, that's going to be money, that's going to be trainers. So that's going to be built

into your plan and that may not include actually the project work that may be prepped just to be able to do the project work. Build a team. To me, this is huge. This speaks to the second of the foundational four I talk about a lot here. So the first one is those objectives, those smart objectives. The second one, put an org chart together, right? Boxes and lines, I suggest we do these functional groups within the project team. Have a committee. Let's integrate the vendors with us, not have two separate org charts, all that kind of stuff. Number seven is address and remove impediments, obstacles, and blockers for the team. Leadership, leadership, leadership, right? So project management, just like I talked about when you're looking at performance measures, if someone's not performing, it isn't necessarily or often just because they don't want to.

What if they have six other projects that their manager has put on their plate? Part of your job as the PM is to figure that out, do some detective work, reach out to that person that you're a teammate with, and then say, you know what, I'm happy to talk to your manager or put a formal request in and hold your time or have it protected or escalate if we need to because not everybody's comfortable doing that for themselves. And that's a huge part of us is let's get stuff out of their way. Do they need more people? Do they need less people? Are you the impediment? Are you asking too many questions? Are you asking for too many updates too often? But that I think really speaks to the relationship that you build with your teammate that's on your project. The second task in Domain 100, people, is to negotiate project agreements.

Here, as a project manager, you're going to, for sure, get into contracts, request for proposals, request for information. What are the objectives of the project? Anything that's a key decision, whether it's the money you spend, the product you choose, the deliverables that are signed off on, they're all negotiations and agreements. And so that's part of the relationship building and communication and discussion that you're going to have to facilitate as a project manager. Number nine, collaborate with stakeholders. Seems pretty straightforward, but I know you all know this. If you've been part of a project or a response or a plan or something, not everybody works together, right?

That should be. And so you as the project manager need to work with anyone that has a stake in this project. So when you think about that org chart, when you pull together a team, think about not every user needs to be represented, but maybe some of the key areas, key departments do. So you know, you had that clinical voice, you know, you had the technical voice, the policy, legal compliance, all those kinds of people. So think about, did you talk to those folks and ask them if they need to be involved? And the answer could be no. Cool. But at least you reached out, right? So you've collaborated with folks. Um, test 10 and domain one under people is to build a shared understanding, right? So again, tying into ad car, that awareness that a is do people know why this is the why of things, the, the Simon Sinek golden circle,

right? Why are we doing this? Let's all understand what the need was for this project, why we're going to put it in place, why it's going to benefit the patients for us in healthcare, why it's going to benefit the end users out in the world. If you're in private sector, whatever it is, everyone needs to know that Envision. So when we're down the road and executing or during a sprint and we're all tired and we're looking at this one piece and we're like,

ah, we know, wait a minute, this is going to enable someone to talk to their family member from across the world in our facility whenever right so that that's one example that's real examples from recent covid stuff um task 11 uh domain 100 people for the 2021 pmp exam stuff is engage and support visual virtual teams. Well, holy smokes, how timely is that? Right. And this is from the end of last year, from June, actually, sorry, of 2019. But, you know, I've been a remote project manager for a little over a year. So I'm kind of used to that. And you can have a super efficient remote project team virtually. And we've seen

folks have to figure that out on the fly over the past few months. But we don't have to, right? Know your tools, know how to use zoom teams, all the stuff that you have facilitate good conversations. Don't make the weekly project team meeting,

the work session, make it a report out and have people work together between meetings, right? Nothing makes a meeting longer and less efficient unless it's a designed workshop meetings, right? Nothing makes a meeting longer and less efficient unless it's a designed workshop meeting, right? Or an ad hoc, but a weekly check-in meeting or status meeting as folks waiting until that meeting to ask questions of other people on the team. It's silly and we shouldn't be doing it. So I always honestly shoot for if it's my weekly, you know, virtual team check in half an hour or less, and ideally 15 minutes, right? Because what should

happen is we've already had the conversations, we already know of the issues, and we're just letting everybody else that maybe wasn't on that separate call know, here's what's up with that. And maybe something will come up where someone goes, Oh, I should be part of that too. And we go, cool, we'll have another call about it, right? The famous, we'll talk offline. I'm not a super fan of that. I would rather just say, you know what, can you and I talk further about that, right? Because talk offline to me sounds like I don't want to talk to anybody else about it. Let's just you and I, as opposed to, hey, you know, let's finish these status reports and then you and I can dive deeper into that subject, right? Sounds a little nicer and it's true it's not you know silly task 12 and domain one

under people define team ground rules right so I like to do this very early in charter development and when we make the org chart particularly when we have groups that have potentially multiple project managers coming together, a matrix team where we bring vendors in and sometimes vendors come in with their own project team is first, if it's us, we own this project, we are paying the money.

We have the contract is to us get on board and say, okay, here's what we think we're going to have one org team, one team, right? One organizational structure. It's, it's our project collectively, not your project, your team, my team, my team, right?

So those are part of ground rules, not just be nice to each other and, you know, talk to each other, report this or that. It's what are the rules for the project that we are going to work together and how are we going to organize and how are we going to communicate? The 13th task under the people domain and the new 2021 PMP exam guidelines is to mentor relevant stakeholders. Right. So we mentioned early on with not with training or the knowledge from ADCAR, not everybody's going to be trained up the same and not everybody's going to have the same experience level. Right. So I may be facilitating a project, managing a project, however you want to say it. I like to say facilitate because no one really works for me and I'm really facilitating a process even though I'm providing some leadership, some management, all this kind of stuff. But at any rate, so there may be folks on there that have no idea about project management or they haven't been around as long. So guess what? You as a leader are going to also mentor,

here's the tools we use. Here are the phases we're going to go through. Here's a style I recommend. What do you think? Right. And that back and forth. And, you know, maybe there's some folks that are analysts that have an opportunity to lead their own ad hoc meetings, right? Again, you don't need to lead every meeting, you know, whether you help set them up and sit back and just listen or say, which is fine as the project manager you don't need to be on every technical programming call so say hey here's what we're trying to achieve would you like help in setting that up or facilitating

it if not hey you all get that done let me know right empower them give them space decentralized as one of you know the folks that I think does great stuff Jocko Willink is big on his decentralized command so I'm'm always going to trust but verify, but you go do your separate programming meeting and come back and we'll work together then. So and mentor and any other processes or how you do things in your shop that you can. The last of the tasks in the people domain is to promote team performance through the application of emotional intelligence, right? So we mentioned that as far as facilitating meetings and reading the room. Well, you can still read the tone of people's voice, see how they're looking.

Is that a long breath over the microphone? You know, promoting performance to me through emotional intelligence is, again, if you empower your team to do their thing and they're doing good work and they're getting it done, your emotional intelligence is that they're doing a good job. They're happy. I don't need to tell them what to do. Ask them how you can help them. And if the answer is we don't need any help, cool. The other thing is team performance through emotional intelligence, I mentioned paying attention to does it seem like someone's just having a bad day, right? Could they have things going on outside of work?

100% because we all do, right? Nobody has a perfect life outside of this. I think that's one thing that this pandemic has shown us, particularly on these calls, is I don't care as much if my kids are yelling in the background. It may be upsetting at the time, but you know what? And in this podcast, right? Like when I talked to Andrew Smith from Revolution quite a few episodes back, my son seemed screaming through and it's like,

you know what? That's the real world. So your emotional intelligence these days in the midst of a pandemic needs to be maybe up a little bit because people are scared, they're tired, they're sick of being at home, they want to go do normal work stuff. Some also relieved, right? This is a great privilege for us to be able to work from our homes at times, walk outside, get some fresh air. It's a little rainy right here now, but the air is still fresh and we're still breathing. So that's great. So those are the 14 tasks in the people domain. Again, the people domain and the new PMP exam outline is 42% of it and there are 14 tasks so be aware of those look at the look at the sheet it still uses the project management body of knowledge 6th edition but it's not just

that as I mentioned right a lot more agile a lot more hybrid style stuff driving is an outstanding trend just the name of these domains speaks volumes to me you know compared to looking at the process groups and knowledge areas and all that kind of stuff in the table, which you still need to know a bit of. But PMI, it seems really looked at, you know, how do we actually do this and not be quite as rigid as kind of old school waterfall? And again, has its place and get folks more into the modern area. And again, obviously, because of the name of this podcast, People Process Progress, which thank you for subscribing, rating, reviewing. I love people process business environment. It's outstanding. So to that, let's get to the process portion of the 2021 PMP exam guidelines.

So this is domain two. It's 50 percent of the exam. So the majority of it by a little bit more than people. So task one in process and domain two is to execute project with the urgency required to deliver business value. So we're gonna look at, right, do we go incremental? Are we still providing a value? Are you putting out a product that you find that you're working on that maybe isn't going

to provide value, but you've already paid for it? Who knows? Um, now urgency, right? So a lot of what I've done is to help get, um, iPads and iPhones, hundreds of them for use for inpatient care inside the room, outside the room. We don't have to wear PPE. We can just FaceTime each other, um, an iPad that rolls on a cart for virtual family visits, right? These happened very quickly over the course of a week or so actual deployment, a little

more in the planning and things. But again, we're going to give real-time business value and other folks have done that as well. So when you're doing project management, when you're looking at processes, make sure you are getting those measurables up front or what you think they're going to be the measurables. How is this going to provide value? And hopefully a lot of that's done in the business case. But really you want to be able to measure that when you're done as well.

So test two is manage communications. Have a communications plan. I actually use a SharePoint list that I customized that's essentially a spreadsheet, but it's on SharePoint. I love using online forms. I'm a super SharePoint nerd, but it works, right? So anybody can go there weekly. We're going to meet a monthly steering committee, you know, and on and on do your typical kind of communications planning. But then you also have to manage them from the standpoint of making sure people are communicating. Quick tips for communication that I learned from that Gettysburg staff ride I mentioned

in old school between the slides episode 10, still there on the archive. So peopleprocessprogress.com or wherever you're subscribed on here, you can go back and listen to that, is to communicate, meaning you're receiving the information, to understand what is being asked or to make sure people understand what you're asking of them to decide. Decide what we're going to do. Decide how we're going to work together. Decide the direction of the project. And then communicate back, right?

So you're taking it in. You're understanding it. You're deciding the next course of action. Then you're communicating it back out. So it's C-U-D-C. Kind of a quick thing. There's so many other communication tools and stuff out there. But you as a project manager absolutely need to make sure communication pathways are open,

particularly horizontally and vertically. This is the fourth of the foundational four that ties together the objectives, organization, and resources. Task three in domain two under process is to assess and manage risks. That's huge. So risks are going to be early on. Risks are what do we think could happen, what do we know is going to happen or has a high likelihood? And we're going to set those up. We're going to try and be predictive in those. Do we think someone, do you have someone maybe that's going to go out on maternity leave? Do we have a risk of a second resurgence in COVID?

Now we're going to get those lined up. We're going to manage them. We're going to either accept them or mitigate them or all the different strategies we have and then hopefully we're going to we're going to do what we need to do and not have them become issues right so risks become issues when you're doing the project and it has come true and now it's affecting your project task four we're going to engage stakeholders that has to do a lot with you know the tools we're going to make a power interest grid influence categorize them do the the raci RACI chart, and categorize everybody so we have an idea. There's good practicality to doing that. The exercise of doing it gets those who's who in your mind.

There's also some administrative overhead with that. So follow your PMO's guidance on to what level you do that or not. But, you know, when you make those charts, like a RACI style chart, and you're looking at, you know, who you need to, who's responsible, who's accountable for it, who you're going to consult, and who's just going to be informed of things, you know, that does a huge part of engaging. You can't just say, well, here's what we're going to do. You've got to have those conversations with your stakeholders. So task five is to plan and manage budget and resources. So as a process in domain two for the new 2021 PMP guidelines, you know, that's pretty straightforward, right?

You need to plan for early on because you're going to get, you're going to be under contract hopefully, right? When you kick the project off or before then. So you'll have an idea. Here's how much total we have and how much is it going to cost for these contractors and this stuff we have to buy and that training we have to do and manage all that out so you really get into your your budgeting and resources and work with your you know I'm super fortunate where I am my purchasing guy is super scored away so yes I still do that kind of stuff but he keeps me honest keeps me on track so really work with

your financial pros that you have whether they're in your project management office, whether they're matrix to you, whether it's just a resource available. But really make sure you're squared away with them. Task six under the process domain and the new setup for the PMP exam coming in January 2021. Plan and manage schedule. See, now we're getting into kind of the more traditional project managing stuff. So that makes sense early. We're going to have a high level, maybe month by month schedule, predictive, you know, charter style. Hey, this month we'll probably initiate these two.

We'll kind of try and build and then we'll go live, right? But as you get tasks, as you get your experts on your team to tell you what you need to do, you're going to get task level stuff that's going to have predecessors and tied to it and maybe do sprints of work and, you know, depending on how you're set up get task level stuff that's going to have predecessors and tied to it and maybe do sprints of of work and you know depending on how you're set up as a project but you obviously as a project manager whether you're agile waterfall scrum mastery you're going to help facilitate some sort of scheduling and planning task seven under the process domain plan and manage quality of products deliverable so that goes without saying quality control right we need to make sure that the interfaces we build work that we have done the design that

testing is signed off on them and again your people can help drive how that works if you're making a product you know getting some user sign off right for hey does this work does this look like it's meeting the needs? Very much in the Agile space there, you know, very iterative process. Nope, let's come back and change it, do that kind of stuff. So you got to keep an eye on that and track it and make sure we're getting and giving feedback. Task eight, plan and manage the scope, right? We don't, scope creep is a big thing we don't want to have to deal with, even though sometimes it happens. But as much scope as we can keep on track from the beginning through your work breakdown structures, your backlogs, your different things, we want to do that as much as possible as part of our process that we're facilitating. Task nine, integrate project planning activities, right? So I mentioned empowering your teams and letting them do ad hoc and really honestly encouraging them to do ad hoc working sessions that focus on the really technical or

the really detailed pieces of the plan and then come back and then let's latch all those together with our integrated plan. So upfront, what's the level of effort we think this will take, how long for the different parts of it, and then you have to make sure those come together in a more cohesive way, whether you're planning multiple sprints or you're doing the waterfall, this, then that, then that, however you set it up. But obviously, you're going to integrate those planning activities. As a project manager, this is task 10. You're going to manage project changes. Obviously, that's huge, right? So any change to schedule, scope, costs, quality, hopefully there's no change there.

But those have to be pretty heavily managed. And depending on how your project's set up, usually have to be approved by high-level steering committee or sponsor-style folks because that can have a big impact. Particularly if you're pushing a schedule, a go live, or you're asking for more money. The best is you're ahead of schedule, you haven't spent all your money, and you're well within scope. That's the ideal. But you as a project manager need to manage those changes, making sure that people aren't surprised by them coming up, that your team has answers for them if you can, or that you're working on answers actively and that your leadership knows that you are doing all those things. Task 11, plan and manage procurement. Depending on probably how you're set up as a project management office, as an organization, you may get the project and not

at all be involved in the procurement or the business case or any of that, or you may be involved in helping to establish some of those, particularly if you're doing requests for information or requests for proposal. So you may help with part of to establish some of those, particularly if you're doing requests for information or requests for proposal. So you may help with part of the procurement, but I think unless you're a project manager that is a procurement-focused person, you may not do a lot of that other than seeing the contract or maybe helping push it through with your purchasing folks. But that's something as a project manager you need to be aware of,

of the different kind of projects or different kind of contracts rather how long will it take get a feel for your your organization what does the typical project take for us to push through what's the information what's the rfi rfp process so get to know all that stuff in your org as a project manager test 12 in the process domain in the 2021 PMP exam guides is manage project artifacts. What's that? So a project artifact is like your documentation, your charters, your version control, your who, what, where, when, why. So you need a system for an electronic system. How are you going to manage these?

Whether it's a project management plan style documents, it's schedule stuff, it's tech specs. How are you going to control the the versions all that kind of stuff so managing the project artifact is how is your electronic file system working how are you going to share that information how are you going to do your reporting those kind of things task 13 determine the appropriate project methodology methods and practices so some of this is going to be determined for you because of your organization or your project management office or you know Whether it's a new PMO an older PMO Hybrid PMO the industry you're in so many different things right if you're in You know with the robotics industry, you're probably going to be pretty iterative pretty agile, right?

If you're in the construction industry You're going to be less because you know If you may have to make adjustments but to adjust a whole part of a building or a whole part of a structure is a lot more so what methodology fits best for the product you're trying to provide people the structure you're trying to build the new workflow you're trying to establish and then you have to make it work right so this is where we go off the book page and into the real world for sure what is it going to work not just because this book says it but really because this is what this team needs

this is what this organization needs and that's that's really driven by you and your organization and as a project manager though you can help drive that conversation with based on either project you've worked on or the organization has or your feel from the team we should do this right so and again there's so many methodologies out there but but use what you use and then adjust as you need to task 14 establish project governance structure right so how are you going to have high level decisions made do you have a governance structure before you even get the project so or projects approved well before you get it so that it's not just, hey, I want this project and we keep doing projects for everybody? No, it has to go through a request process, be

approved by high-level leadership, and then on your project in particular, to what level does the business owner want to make decisions? Does the sponsor, does the steering committee? So you got to work all that kind of stuff out and set it up. And again, keep it simple, make an org chart, and then you can document some things, but it's way easier for most folks to look at the boxes and the lines that show a hierarchy than to read a whole bunch of bullet points or pages of structure and process and all that. And a good opportunity for this is a lot of these things process wise is to when you do your kickoff, just walk through all this at a high level, right? Let everybody know up front. Test 15 under process domain or domain two is to manage project issues. So we talked

about those risks, right? So a risk has become an issue now. Now we got to stay on top of it, escalate as needed to get more people or stuff to help solve it, change direction in the way you're managing the project, whatever it is to make this issue better or go away, or accept it if it just can't be fixed is something you have to stay on top of as a project manager. Test 16, ensure knowledge transfer for project continuity. This is huge now in particular for COVID-19, whether an emergency response, healthcare, construction, whatever industry you're in, gathering lessons learned, creating after action reports, improvement plans, capturing those key decisions along the way,

meeting notes, all of that is critically important so that if you get a similar project a year or two years from now or a continuation of a similar project like I've had a few times, hey, we're going to expand on this regulatory thing you did a year and a half ago. What did we do for this and that? You can look back and not have to try and remember and have the answers. And it looks pretty good because you have set yourself up for success in the organization for success by documenting when you were supposed to and you're able to transfer. This is also huge if, say, you have to be pulled to another project.

You need to go help something that just popped up or you have an expertise in a project that's coming up and now you're going to transfer to another project manager. You're not going to just leave them hanging with no information there, right? So from both a colleague to colleague perspective and from a picking up where we left off years from now or if you're gone, it's hugely important. The last of the tasks, task 17 under domain two, which is process, which is 50% of the new PMP exam in January, is to plan and manage projects slash phase closure or transition. So well before or around go live, right? When you're going to put this thing out there, you should already have an understanding of obviously how you're going to support that go live now. But when we're done, when this is in place, once we make sure it's working, who's going to support it? Do they have the resources to support it? Meaning did we we get them the training like we mentioned earlier? Did we have the discussions

to walk them quickly through? Here's how the project went. Here's the support issues we ran into. Here's suggestions we have for you. And then give like your IT service desk or your support system, the references they need. So if end users call when they start calling, when they're not going to call you as the project manager anymore, which is another thing you have to be able to do is redirect folks when you get to the point where you've handed off to say, oh, you know what, let me get you to the folks that are answering that now we've closed the project and not totally shut them off. Like that's not my job anymore kind of thing, but redirect in a helpful way. So you need to do that in documenting

whether you use like service level agreements or just your key decisions and set up those meetings with all the key players of who's going to be in charge of doing the support ongoing and make sure those discussions happen. So that was the last of the process. Again, that was domain two. That's going to be half of the PMP exam in 2021. And again, this is a pretty quick overview, but you can read the rest of the document. And it's more, it's kind of a combo of what's officially in the bullet points and what I think will be helpful for folks to consider. Whether you're a current project manager, you're looking to take the PMP, things to

remember when you get to the real world or back to it. So domain three is business environment. It's 8%, right? It's not that big on the exam, but business environment has a lot of influence. So task one in domain three is plan and manage project compliance, right? So do we have the players and in the healthcare space where i am legal compliance patient privacy it security are huge players and many if not all the projects i'm involved in because there's you know protected health information patient data there's government regulations about what you can or can't share and so you need to make sure you bring in those experts from the very first charter creation stuff, requirements and things on through closing as you make requirements decisions.

We will or won't show this data like they need to be involved at a pretty granular level at some points, at other points, just advisory wise, right? And set up maybe that policy group. It's always a great group to have, I think, with projects that have any sort of regulatory, legal compliance, health, safety, that kind of stuff. So make sure that you have those folks involved. Task two is evaluate and deliver project benefits and value. So this, I think, really starts with hopefully on the intake process. Someone's made a good business case that shows, and again, what we think is going to be helpful and how we rate those early on often have a grandiose flavor to them. We're going to change the world because of this new process,

et cetera, et cetera. But what are the tangible benefits that we're going to get? How many hours in SAF time are we going to save? How many improved patient outcomes will we have? If we can get to those tangible deliverables, that's really going to have some meat in the values of it. So try early on, but throughout the project, you can refine those. And certainly, as we look to hand off, as we look to do our lessons learned and our closeout reports, we can have that in there. Task three of the business environment, which is domain three, again, from the 2021 PMP exam, uh, that's coming out 8% of the total is to evaluate and address external business environment changes for impact on scope. Well, Holy smokes, supply chain, personal protective equipment products

made in China and other places. Um, speaking from a resident of the U S here, um, I mean, COVID-19 is the perfect example of why we need to do this well ahead of time. And in a future episode, I'm again going to touch on particularly hospital and healthcare preparedness and continuity of operations and how huge that is. So as a project manager, we absolutely need to be paying attention to what's going on in the industry that's involved with our project, what's going on in the world, in our department, in our company, in our staffing, all these things we need to be aware of, right? What regulations, I mentioned those that are changing right now, you know, the HIPAA was relaxed a little bit to allow for improved telemedicine, to, you know, keep us socially distanced, to allow

patients to visit with their families virtually, have medical discussions over less secure lines, we'll say. But that's going to tighten back up. So as a project manager, I need to stay up to date, make sure I'm linked in with my organization and have the latest and greatest official word on how that goes. And the same thing goes for really any kind of project that you're looking at. Task four, this last one, is support organizational change, right? Change is inevitable. Org charts change. People in the org charts change. Restructuring happens. It gets, you know,

expands, contracts. You go new directions. You as a project manager are in a great place with your knowledge, skills, and abilities and exposure to people from the boots on the ground up to the C-suite to support change at every single one of those levels. I think in practicality, this is one of the most important aspects of a project manager's job as both a person and a professional is not everybody is going to support the change for many reasons. Maybe they've been done the same thing for 20 years and they're comfortable. Maybe they're going to have a job demotion. Maybe they're not going to be there anymore, right? Any of these folks could be on your project team. It could be you.

So what I would say is if you're fortunate that it's not you, you're fortunate where you're on project, if you're fortunate to be in a position where you can still be influential and help do your best to support the change and help make the organization better. Because in the long run for me in healthcare, all of this impact, all of this change, all of the work we do is to help that one patient and that one unit get better. To have that child have a better appointment. To have the cancer patient get a better treatment. To have folks have one last visit with their family virtually because we got phones in the rooms and they could call and their family could see them die and be with them. That and all this work that we do and all this people, this process, this business environment

and project management, particularly in the healthcare space, and it doesn't have to be patients. It could be the kid in the Apple store. It could be someone that's going to move into this new house, right? All the projects that we support, that we manage, that we work on have people at the end of them. For these domains and the PMP exam that's going to change, people is first. For this podcast, people is first. That's because people are central to everything we do. For you people that are listening to this, I thank you so much for listening, for reaching out to me, for supporting me in various aspects. I support all of you. I'm available for any questions you have at peopleprocessprogress at gmail.com, Kevin Pinnell on LinkedIn. There's a People Process Progress Facebook page.

Questions you have about project management incident management public safety public health anything that's you know kind of in my bailiwick as they say i am more than happy to reach out and help you please do so thank you again i hope you all stay safe wash your hands and godspeed