Gianluca Griffoni, MSE, PMP PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONAL: GETTING THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT INSTITUTE (PMI ) CERTIFICATE Abstract Large modern projects constitute significant challenges for companies, since they often face substantial financial investments, stringent time constraints and market expectations, higher and higher. In recent years, it has become popular the outsourcing business model, providing the enterprise with non-core functions through outside acquisition. At the same time, there has been a growing interest in management specialists who have the ability to well lead a project and to effectively coordinate the resources in a team. Such a role is called Project Manager. As an evidence of the market interest in this professional profile, there is a wide range of project management certifications. Among these, given the large number of certified people, the Project Management Professional (PMP ), proposed by the Project Management Institute (PMI ), is a de facto standard. It has to be credited to PMI for having significantly contributed to the spread of the profession worldwide, for having compiled a handbook on how to comprehensively address the skills of a project manager, defined a common lexicon of project management and established a register of professionals. The article discusses the characteristics of PMP certification and outlines the project management methodology proposed by PMI. It also provides some guidance on how to acquire the certification and how to preserve it. ALTRAN Italia acknowledges the value of the certification as particularly qualifying for project managers: several Altran Italia consultants are, in fact, PMI certified. 1. Introduction Modern projects represent a significant challenge for companies: it is all about bringing into play a lot of economic resources, keeping together people that are different and creating a cohesive environment in order to achieve the project goals. The successes, and probably more, the failures of large projects have brought an increasing attention to techniques and methodologies for good project governance, that enable an effective and efficient project management and that minimize deviations from the established project objectives. This interest, which can be dated back to the early twentieth century, at the time of Taylor and Gantt, grew at the end of World War II, giving rise in the Fifties to the modern project management, with the development of methodologies such as Critical Path Method (CPM) in 1957 and of the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) in 1958. In addition to the methodologies, special attention was paid to persons who were involved in projects, to the group dynamics that appear in the project team and especially to the role of the project leader. It was borning the idea of a professional, within the company, that has to take care of the achievement of project objectives and is therefore primarily responsible for successes and failures in front of the top management. This role, mainly involving management activities, is in charge of coordinating a team of different professionals, both technical and managerial, of making choices for the good outcome of the project, of communicating, most of the time, by directly or indirectly interfacing with suppliers and customers. The project manager should also balance the expectations of all stakeholders, namely those who, within or outside the project, have some interest in the project to pursue. For this purpose, soft skills play an important role. Soft skills (e.g., time management, public speaking, etc.) are related to the personality of the project manager and complement its management skills: they are equally indispensable to successfully play the role. The maturity reached in the Sixties by the management practices and their wide diffusion in different contexts led to the need to bring order to all the knowledge accumulated over the years, to harmonize the language (a vocabulary of project management made of unambiguous terms) and to recognize professional project managers. Project management becomes a cultural factor to be spread inside enterprises and which everyone, no matter the level, must have access to, because the project s success depends on the team. Altran Italia Technology Review No. 5 - January 2011 < 31
Initiating Planning Executing Develop Project charter Develop Project man. plan Plan Quality Direct&Manage Proj. Execution Integration 4.1 Integration 4.2 Quality 8.1 Integration 4.3 Collect Requirements Dev. Human Resource plan Perform Quality Assurance Scope 5.1 Human Resource 9.1 Quality 8.2 Define scope Scope 5.2 Plan Communications Acquire Project team Create WBS Communications 10.2 Human Resource 9.2 Identify Stakeholders Scope 5.3 Develop Project Team Communications 10.1 Human Resource 9.3 Define Activities Time 6.1 Plan Risk Management Risk 11.1 Identify Risks Manage Project Team Human resource 9.4 Sequence Activities Risk 11.2 Time 6.2 Estimate activity resources Perform Qualitative Risk Anal. Risk 11.3 Distribute Information Communications 10.3 Time 6.3 Estimate activity durations Perform Quantitative Risk Anal. Risk 11.4 Man. Stakehold. Expectations Communications 10.4 Time 6.4 Plan Risk Responses Develop Schedule Time 6.5 Risk 11.5 Conduct Procurements Procurement 12.2 Estimate Cost Plan Procurements Cost 7.1 Procurement 12.1 Determine Budget Cost 7.2 Figure 1. The forty-two PMP processes classified according to knowledge areas and process groups. The knowledge areas are shown in different colours. 32 > Altran Italia Technology Review No. 5 - January 2011
In order to drive this cultural revolution, international project management institutes were born in the late Sixties. In Europe, the International Project Management Association (IPMA) [1] was Monitoring&Controlling Monitor&Control Project Work Integration 4.4 Perform Int. Change Control Integration 4.5 Verify Scope Scope 5.4 Control Scope Scope 5.5 Control Schedule Time 6.6 Control Costs Cost 7.3 Perform Quality Control Quality 8.3 Report Performances Communications 10.5 Monitor&Control RIsks Risk 11.6 Administer Procurements Procurement 12.3 Closing Close Project or Phase Integration 4.6 Close Procurements Procurement 12.4 founded in 1965 and in America the Project Management Institute [2] was founded in 1969. Both institutes intend to make the project management the profession of the future, gathering the most influential gurus of the discipline. The way to the certification is paved: a business card to credit each professional as a project manager and a written guarantee that s/he holds certified expertise on the subject. Both institutions introduce a professional certification and establish a register of certificates, similar to what is done for other professions, such as lawyers and engineers. To date, PMI has the largest number of certifications worldwide, about 500,000 [1] against the 110,000 of IPMA [2]. In Italy there are more than 2,200 PMP certificates (May 2009) [3] compared to about 620 of IPMA [4]. In the EMEA zone, covering Europe, the Middle-East and Africa, Italy is has the third highest number of PMP certifications. This article outlines the project management as proposed by PMI. 2. Project Management according to PMI PMI published a book, the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK ) [5], which is a comprehensive manual of all the knowledge needed to efficiently and effectively manage a project. The PMI Project Management is organized in forty-two processes to be implemented in the project. The processes are classified in nine categories, called knowledge areas: Integration Management, Scope Management, Time Management, Cost Management, Quality Management, Human Resource Management, Communication Management, Risk Management, Procurement Management. The processes are also distributed in five process groups that represent different phases of the project: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, Closing. In order to understand and memorize the purposes of the processes, it is useful to visualize the global cross-double placement area of knowledge/process group for all the forty-two processes (Figure 1). Each process is described in detail by PMBoK and it is identified with a number that corresponds to the paragraph of the manual containing the description of that process. Altran Italia Technology Review No. 5 - January 2011 < 33
Process: Estimate Activity Durations 6.4 INPUTS (from one or more process).1 Activity list.2 Activity attributes.3 Activity resource requirements.4 Resource calendars.5 Project scope statement.6 Enterprise environmental factors.7 Organizational process assets Elaboration with TOOLS.1 Expert judgment.2 Analogous estimating.3 Parametric estimating.4 Three-point estimates.5 Reserve analysis OUTPUTS (to one or more process).1 Activity duration estimates.2 Project document updates Source: reworking from PMBoK Figure 2. Example of process with inputs, outputs and tools. A process is characterized by a list of inputs, tools and outputs (Figure 2). Inputs come from other processes or, in some cases, from outside the project; tools are methods and techniques, including software programs that allow to perform the tasks described in the process and produce the outputs, which can be turned into inputs to other processes. This means that most of the processes are linked together. The complete graphical representation of these connections is far from easy, so that in PMBoK this view has been split into forty-two figures (one for each process). A useful exercise to test oneself in understanding the methodology is to try drawing the main connections between processes on a single view. Another way to analyse the methodology is by knowledge area. Note that, in placing the processes in each area, PMI has followed a similar approach. In fact, processes are always presented by process group order, from Initiating to Closing. Consequently, when addressing the study of a knowledge area, the processes to be followed will be described at the beginning and at the planning phase of the project; after, those related to the more advanced stages. This scheme recalls the Deming plan-do-check-act cycle. As previously mentioned, there are processes inputs that come from outside the project environment. The most common in the methodology are corporate assets and environmental factors. Corporate assets are the set of corporate resources such as procedures, guidelines, templates for reports, lesson learned, made available by the company for use in projects. Environmental factors, instead, are entities that may be internal or external to the company and affect the project: state laws, market conditions, corporate culture, political instability, are some examples. In the following sections, PMI knowledge areas are presented and discussed. 3. Integration Management The area of Integration Management includes the preparation, execution, monitoring and closure of the project. These activities have a major role in the methodology, since they are needed to coordinate the processes of all other areas of knowledge. For this reason, the responsibility of the processes in this area is owned by the project manager. The processes in Integration Management area are six (Figure 3): each of them is collocated in a different process group, except for Monitoring and Controlling which has two in (Figure 1). One of them is Perform Integrated Control Change. The concept of change management is particularly important. PMP requires to follow a formal management process to manage changes that may affect scope, cost, time, quality, and consequently have an impact on the baseline. Note that the changes are not limited to product configuration only, since they are just a special case of the whole set of design changes that can happen in a project. The Perform Integrated Control Change process examines the input change requests coming out from the processes in other knowledge areas and either approves the changes or rejects them. This approach allows avoiding proliferation of baselines and permits to always trace the causes of the changes. As well as taking the situation under control, this way of proceeding provides also an interesting historical archive, documenting the project s evolution over time (it can be used later in the project as lesson learned). Taking a step back, in Initiating and Planning phases two important documents for project management are produced: project charter and project management plan. The project charter is a summary document, issued before the 34 > Altran Italia Technology Review No. 5 - January 2011
project starts, which formally authorizes the project and instructs the project manager to use the allocated company resources to do the work. The project charter gives summary information such as project name, major milestones, the project manager s name, the name of the sponsor (i.e., who is funding the project), the customer, the main objectives and the general timing. The project management plan, which is issued during the planning phase, is probably the most important document for the management of the project. Indeed, it provides guidelines to run and control the project. It can reference (or include) other project plans, such as risk management plan and quality management plan. The project management plan may need several updates during the project, for example following an approved change request to take into account a new time or cost baseline. Regarding the process of closing the project (or a phase), it is rather interesting to note that it has always to be performed, even when the project is interrupted, e.g. due to lack of funds. 4. Scope Management The project scope is the content of the project in terms of work to be done. Therefore, adding or removing a feature means changing the scope of the project. The Scope Management is constituted by three processes in Planning group and two processes in Monitoring and Controlling group (Figure 4). It essentially provides the list of the work to be done, starting from a more general level, down to a detailed description of each basic activity, allowing the allocation of the jobs that the internal team and the external suppliers do. This refinement is progressive and starts with the definition of requirements and a general description of the scope, down to the creation of a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and the related Work Packages (WP) as shown in Figure 5. Regarding the Control and Monitoring group processes, the main goals are, on the one hand, the verification that the work done matches the scope of the project as it was planned (at this stage the project deliverables are accepted); on the other hand, every Develop Project charter Integration 4.1 Develop Project man. plan Integration 4.2 Direct&Manage Proj. Execution Integration 4.3 Monitor&Control Project Work Integration 4.4 Perform Int. Change Control Integration 4.5 Close Project or Phase Integration 4.6 Source: reworking from PMBoK Figure 3. Processes of the knowledge area Integration Management. Collect Requirements Scope 5.1 Define scope Scope 5.2 Create WBS Scope 5.3 Verify Scope Scope 5.4 Control Scope Scope 5.5 Source: reworking from PMBoK Figure 4. Processes of the knowledge area Scope Management. Collect requirements 5.1 Requirements documentation Define scope 5.2 Project scope statement Create WBS 5.3 WBS and WBS dictionary Figure 5. Refinement of scope in Scope Management. Altran Italia Technology Review No. 5 - January 2011 < 35
change in the scope has to be monitored and, if necessary, a call for change has to be issued. 5. Time Management This knowledge area, concerning scheduling processes, includes six processes, five belonging to Planning group and one to Monitoring and Controlling group (Figure 6). As in Scope Management, a detailed project schedule is reached step by step according to the process shown in Figure 7. First of all, project activities are listed with the corresponding milestones. Then, these activities are connected with logical links of precedence and succession, leading to the so-called project schedule network diagram. The following step is the identification of human and material resources, needed to develop each activity. At the end of this step, the project manager is able to formulate a resource demand to be negotiated with the functional managers (supposing a matrix organization). After that, activities duration can be estimated: this can be done using more or less accurate techniques, in order to predict the project duration. The last step is the development of a complete and detailed schedule, exploiting all the elements acquired in the previous processes; this schedule will be eligible to be the project baseline: a temporal reference to evaluate, by comparison, project performances. Define Activities Time 6.1 Sequence Activities Time 6.2 Estimate activity resources Time 6.3 Estimate activity durations Time 6.4 Develop Schedule Time 6.5 Control Schedule Time 6.6 Figure 6. Processes of the knowledge area Time Management. 6. Cost Management Cost Management is extremely important, considering the large amount of over-budget projects. Cost Management includes two processes in Planning group and one in Monitoring and Controlling group (Figure 8). As in Scope Management and in Time Management, also in this area, during the planning phase, progressive input elaborations are performed, in order to obtain an estimation of the overall project cost (Figure 9). Cost baseline is added to the scheduling baseline coming from Time Management (Figure 10): it allows to establish cost deviations during project execution. Project costs are generally controlled through the earned value method: it allows to obtain an overall cost-at-completion forecast, taking into account the actual rates as the work progresses and the budget is spent. Starting from the beginning of the project cost identification, the cost of each activity is first estimated and then, by aggregating and refining, the overall baseline cost of the project is calculated, using the activities temporal collocation. The cumulative cost of the project assumes typically an S shape (Figure 10). This shape is due to the fact that, at the beginning of the project, few activities have started, while later on, there is an increase in parallel activities that consequently causes an increase of the expenses. At the end of the project, the activities are completed and the expenses decrease again. As a general rule, a proj- Define Activities 6.1 Activity and Milestones list Sequence Activities 6.2 Network diagram Estimate Activity Resources 6.3 Resource requirements Estimate Activity Durations 6.4 Activity durations Develop Schedule 6.5 Project Schedule Figure 7. Refinement of planning in Time Management. 36 > Altran Italia Technology Review No. 5 - January 2011
Estimate Cost Cost 7.1 Determine Budget Cost 7.2 Control Costs Estimate Costs 7.1 Activity cost estimates Determine budget 7.2 Cost performance baseline Cost 7.3 Figure 8. Processes of the knowledge area Cost Management. Figure 9. Refinement of costs in Cost Management. Activities Time Budget at completion Cost Time Figure 10. Time and cost baseline. ect that spends little, without evidences of savings, is probably in delay. 7. Quality Management Quality Management plays an important role in managing projects, as the quality of products depends on the quality of the processes (the product is originated from). Investing in quality means to set up some processes for products and processes analysis, in order to obtain efficiency and effectiveness, a significant reduction of non-compliances and continuous result improvement. Altran Italia Technology Review No. 5 - January 2011 < 37
An investment in quality is useful if there is an adequate economic return. The total cost of quality according to Kerzner [6] is the sum of the following costs (Figure 11): internal failures, requiring rework of the product; external failures, that can occur after the delivery of the product to the customer; additionally, it should not be overlooked for its possible impact on the producer s image (this cost is not considered by Kerzner, but we believe it is useful to remember it - think about the value of a prestigious brand and a possible image damage due to failures noticed from customer); prevention, i.e., activities to avoid failure; appraisal costs, to verify, before the product release, that the requirements have been met. For example, the costs for validations and inspections belong to this category. Essentially, Kerzner suggests investing a little more in prevention, in order to obtain more savings from the reduction of all other costs. PMBoK dedicates three processes to quality (Figure 12). One is in the Planning group: it involves issuing a quality plan, that specifies how quality has to be managed in the project. The second belongs to the Executing group and involves implementing the quality processes. The third belongs to the Monitoring and Controlling group and involves measuring processes and products outputs in order to detect and correct deviations from quality objectives. The quality tools include: the cause and effect diagram (also known as Ishikawa diagram), that facilitates finding the causes of a particular noncompliance; the Pareto diagram, that highlights the minimum set of causes which the maximum number of non-compliances are originated from; flowcharts, that describe processes flows; control charts that verify that outputs do not exceed acceptable bounds and that identify anomalies in process behavior that must be investigated. These tools, along with audits, inspections, statistic sampling, 100 EXTERNAL FAILURE 80 SAVINGS 60 INTERNAL FAILURE 40 APPRAISAL 20 0 PREVENTION CURRENT Source: H. Kerzner [6]. FUTURE Figure 11. Total cost of quality and the convenience of investing in quality according to Kerzner. 38 > Altran Italia Technology Review No. 5 - January 2011
Source: reworking from PMBoK Figure 12. Processes of the knowledge area Quality Management. processes analysis, checklists, are widely used in Quality Management. 8. Human Resource Management Projects are made by people. This is the reason why much relevance is given to Human Resource Management. In Human Resource (HR) Management, as for Communication Management (addressed in the following section), the Project Manager soft skills are of great importance. A mix of capabilities and human factors, like communication, leadership, negotiation, in addiction to management abilities, complete the professional profile of the project manager. PMBoK points out some techniques to solve conflicts between members of the project team. The objective is to turn conflicts, which are inevitable during work, into moments of constructive comparison, which are useful for the project. In these situations project manager personality and ability in recognizing and managing human behaviors can make the difference. The HR processes are four (Figure 13). Three of them regard the Executing phase: the acquisition of the team project, its management and its release (even the release of each member of the team, when no more necessary, requires specific rules). A fundamental input to develop the human resource plan is the document of the resource requirements, developed during the Time Management process. Human resources requirements are given in terms of role profile and competences needed for a specific work, instead of people names, excepted cases when it is decided in advance that a person is appointed to the project (pre-assignment). The specific allocation of each person is consequent to negotiations between the project manager and the functional managers, and require approval from them. PMBoK suggests to optionally acquire human resources from outside the company (consultants) and to create, when necessary, virtual teams, i.e., people detached in different places communicating through telecommunication means. Once the team is built, project manager should manage persons (both as individuals and as a group) exploiting his leadership, motivating his collaborators to obtain the best from them. The team management process plans team building activities, i.e., training activities to increase competences, awards for the achieved goals; special attention is also given to team placement, in order to facilitate integration and communication between the members. Periodical appraisal are necessary to evaluate team results and, specifically, its components performances with respect to the assigned objectives. Awards for achieved goals motivate people but, at the same time, they present some weaknesses in companies with a strong functional organization. In this case, the project manager may suffer from lack of authority as compared to the functional leaders and he could have fewer possibilities than the functional leaders to award directly the worthy people in the team. Members of the team can understand such a situation and belittle the project manager priorities when not matching the functional leaders. Finally, PMBoK defines ground rules, i.e, informal advices given by the project manager to the team to fix the team working rules. These rules are behavioral, e.g, good working habits, arrive on time at meetings, communicate in advance the impossibility to participate at meetings, etc. Ground rules ease he cooperation between the members of the project team and promote fairness. Dev. Human Resource plan Human Resource 9.1 Acquire Project team Human Resource 9.2 Develop Project Team Human Resource 9.3 Manage Project Team Human resource 9.4 Figure 13. Processes of the knowledge area Human Resource Management. Altran Italia Technology Review No. 5 - January 2011 < 39
9. Communication Management In a project team, communication has to be organized. In a n members team that freely communicate, there are n*(n-1)/2 informative channels. Adding a person in a team where the communication is not well managed could lead to a critical situation, since it opens n new communication channels. PMBoK splits Communication Management in five processes (Figure 14). The first (introduced in the fourth revision of the book) is dedicated to the identification of project stakeholders, i.e., persons interested in the project that are able to influence it. Stakeholders can be either internal to the team or the company, or external. This definition includes the project manager, the team members, the suppliers, the customers, the sponsors, the labor unions, the citizens and the government. PMBoK states that making a simple list of project stakeholders is not enough, since it is necessary to distinguish between those who are influent on the project from those who are not: the formers should be managed by choosing appropriate strategies. Stakeholders influence analysis is developed very early in the project, before the Planning phase. The documentation produced for stakeholder strategy management is confidential: special attention must be given to avoid the stakeholders read it. The communication management plan, produced in the Plan Communications process, establishes how project communications have to be managed. In particular, this document must clearly state Identify Stakeholders Communications 10.1 Plan Communications Communications 10.2 Distribute Information Communications 10.3 Man. Stakehold. Expectations Communications 10.4 Report Performances Communications 10.5 Figure 14. Processes of the knowledge area Communication Management. who is the receiver of which type of information, when it has to be received and in which form. Before that, a careful analysis of stakeholders informative demand should be performed and of the appropriate communication means to be used (phone, videoconference, fax, letter, etc.). Among all the information exchanged in a project, the performance reports are an important subset. Information on the project status, if updated, clear and coherent, significantly assists the project manager in making the best choices for the projects. Much relevance is given to the management of stakeholders requests and expectations (Manage stakeholders expectations process): project managers should spend most of their time in communication, i.e., in acquisition and distribution of information. As in human resources, soft skills are of great importance to manage the project relationships and to reach equilibrium among all the stakeholders expectations, in a win-win prospect. 10. Risk Management Project risks must be managed to avoid unexpected future financial difficulties. A risk is an uncertain event, with neither zero nor one hundred per cent probability, which has financial impacts on the project (positive or negative). Projects without risks do not exist. Random events are typically divided into known unknowns and unknown unknowns. The former are called, in the strict sense of word, risks. These must be actively managed: they must be identified, analyzed in quantity and quality and continuously controlled. The latter are unexpected events, out of project manager s reach (i.e. earthquake). In order to manage risks a contingency fund is allocated, while a management reserve is allocated for unforeseen events. These funds should be included in the project budget: the contingency fund is dynamic, it increases or decreases according to the actual exposition; the management reserve is in general a static fund and it is used after the unexpected event has happened, in order to recover from damages. Management reserves, unlike the contingency fund, are not a part of the project cost baseline. To be more precise about risks, we usual define threats the risks with negative impacts and opportunities the risks with positive impacts. Opportunities can be managed in a mirrored way with respect to threats. The difference is that while threats management should minimize the risk exposition, opportunity management should favor the positive events to happen. Different strategies exist to manage threats: avoid: the risk is completely avoided (for example: if a house has to be built near a river with the risk to be flooded, we can decide to build the house away from the river, completely avoiding the risk); 40 > Altran Italia Technology Review No. 5 - January 2011
transfer: the risk is managed by an external third part (e.g. by buying an insurance policy); mitigate: the probability that the threat happens can be reduced or the impact of the threat can be mitigated (e.g. by building a high wall thus to avoid river floods); accept: the risk is accepted, without any specific action. In the same way, different strategies for opportunities can be adopted: exploit: actions are executed assuring that the opportunity certainly happens; share: the help of a third party is exploited in order to increase the possibility to take advantage of the opportunity, by giving part of the gain in return; enhance: actions are performed rising up the opportunity of probability occurrence or its impact; Plan Risk Management Risk 11.1 Identify Risks Risk 11.2 Perform Qualitative Risk Anal. Risk 11.3 Perform Quantitative Risk Anal. Risk 11.4 Plan Risk Responses Risk 11.5 Monitor&Control RIsks Risk 11.6 Figure 15. Processes of the knowledge area Risk Management. accept: no actions. Risk Management is rather complex since it consists of six processes: five of them belongs to Planning group and one to Monitoring and Controlling group (Figure 15). In big projects and in high-risk projects, a dedicated risk manager can be necessary. Risk Management include: risks identification, to obtain a list of project risks to be managed; qualitative analysis, to establish which are the risks to consider (and which ones can be neglected); quantitative analysis, to measure the probability of each risk and its financial impact. Every risk is assigned to a member of the team that becomes the owner of that risk and must manage it. The list of risks, with information associated to each item, is written into the risk register; this document is regularly updated with formal risk reviews during the project. Risks can expire if their verification conditions fail (for example, if the risk is related to the implementation of a very complicated function in the SW, but at the end it results easier than expected, the risk can be closed ). In this case, the contingencies relative to the not-occurred-expired risks can be released and become available for a new allocation. Identify Risks 11.2 Risk register update Perform qualitative Risk Analysis 11.3 Risk register update Perform quantitative Risk Analysis 11.4 Risk register update Plan Risk Responses 11.5 Risk register update Figure 16. Risk refinement in Risk Management. Altran Italia Technology Review No. 5 - January 2011 < 41
11. Procurement Management Procurement Management includes the processes required to acquire goods and services from external suppliers and to manage the related contracts. Buyers should plan purchases according to project needs, performing make or buy evaluations. As already mentioned in the introduction, today there is a growing tendency of maintaining, inside the companies, core competencies only and to acquire other products and services outside. From this point of view, Procurement Management is increasingly becoming the key to success for projects. As a consequence, the professionals who are in charge of managing external contracts (buyers, supply managers) are becoming fundamental. Procurement Management includes four processes, distributed in Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing groups (Figure 17). The first steps to acquire goods and services are: 1. issuing a procurement plan, which establishes the rules to manage acquisitions; 2. writing statements of work, that contain the products and services descriptions to be acquired; 3. fix the criteria for bidder selection (for example, bids with the lower price, belonging to the company supplier register, in possession of quality certifications, etc.). This phase ends up with the elaboration of the procurement documents that will be transmitted to the candidate suppliers for an offering request. The received suppliers offers are then compared and selected, based on established criteria. In this phase it can be useful to adopt internal cost estimations, in order to compare the received prices with independent cost estimations. The next step is to sign the contracts. There are many types of contracts, that differ basically for risk distribution between buyer and supplier: either closer to the supplier, for example in the fixed-price contracts, where the supplier takes the commitment to do the work for a fixed amount of money; or closer to the buyer, as in the cost-plus contracts, in which the buyer reimburses all project costs plus an incentive related to the achieved goals. Before the contract signature, it is important to define the scope of work. It is necessary to detail not only the activities included in the contract but also the activities that are beyond the scope, specifying clauses and limitations to the latter activities, just to avoid misunderstandings. Another important aspect is to specify penalties towards the supplier that allow the buyer to have some form of compensation from possible economic losses caused by supplier delays. Once the contracts are active, the work has to be kept under control with periodic progress meetings and reviews. To correctly close a contract, deliverables have to be inspected and their acceptance has to be formally declared. Claims must be managed and additional agreements negotiated during the project must be taken into account with respect to the formal contractual clauses. After a complete review of all the contractual clauses, the contract can be declared closed. Procurement documentation has to be archived and made available for future use as historical data and lesson learned. Plan Procurements Procurement 12.1 Conduct Procurements Procurement 12.2 Administer Procurements Procurement 12.3 Close Procurements Procurement 12.4 Figure 17. Processes of the knowledge area Procurement Management. 12. How to obtain and maintain PMP certification In order to obtain the PMP certification, the candidate must [7]: satisfy training and professional experience requirements; adhere to a professional ethic and behavior [8]; pass the certification exam. The minimum request in term of training and work experience is: ownership of a university degree; 42 > Altran Italia Technology Review No. 5 - January 2011
thirty-five hours of training in project management, documented and approved by PMI; 4,500 hours of professional experience in project management within the five recognized project management process groups, which is equal to roughly thirty-six months in eight years, before the presentation of the request for the certification exam. Without a university degree, PMP candidates must meet a professional requirement of minimum 7,500 hours of professional experience which is equal to roughly sixty months. The request can be submitted directly on line to the PMI official site. The length of the exam is about four hours and consists of two hundred questions with multiple choices answers, based on PMBoK content. Many questions are situational and require analytical skills which can be acquired by job experience only. In order to maintain the certification, it is necessary to gain professional development units (PDU). Every three years it is necessary to get at least sixty PDU. The different ways to obtain these credits is described in the Continued Certification Requirements (CRR) [9]: autonomous training (for example, study of project management books); taking part to conferences or seminaries on project management; writing papers about project management; participating in PMI Registered Education Providers (REP) courses and events; voluntary work in project management. A different score is assigned to each of these activities. The PDU can be registered online on the PMI official site. Bibliography [01]. International Project Management Association, http://www.ipma.ch [02]. Project Management Institute, http://www.pmi.org [03]. Project Management Institute Northern Chapter, http://www.pmi-nic.org [04]. Associazione Nazionale di Impiantistica Industriale (National Association of Industrial Plant Design), http://www.animp.it [05]. Project Management Institute, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK Guide) - Fourth Edition, Project Management Institute, 2008. [06]. H. Kezner, Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling, Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated, 2009. [07]. PMForum, http://www.pmforum.it [08]. Project Management Institute Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, http://www.pmi.org/en/about-us/ethics/code-of- Ethics.aspx [09]. PMI Continuing Certification Requirements System, https://www.pmi.org/ccrs/ 13. Conclusions PMP certification is certainly a good presentation for project managers. The interest in project management certifications is constantly increasing. PMI has recently introduced new certifications in order to meet needs of management specialists in specific areas (in particular, Risk Management and Scheduling Management). Altran Italia Technology Review No. 5 - January 2011 < 43
Gianluca Griffoni is a Professional Consultant at Altran Italia, in Aerospace and Defense Division. In 2002, he graduated in Computer Engineering at University of Rome "La Sapienza". Since the beginning of his professional activities, his interest has been in project management. For several years, he has been managing a project, on behalf of a big player in the defense sector, regarding a missile launcher for the Italian and French Armed Forces. He participates in project activities that take place in Italy and France and works with project teams and suppliers. Since 2008, he is certified Project Management Professional with the Project Management Institute. He regularly provides training courses on project management and he published some papers on this topic. 44 > Altran Italia Technology Review No. 5 - January 2011