Pass CompTIA Project+ PK0-004 Exam in First Attempt Easily

Preparing to pass the Project+ Exam

1. How to earn the Project+ certification

When I meet CAPM candidates, they often ask, "Well, how do I earn the PMP?" So let me answer that question for you in this presentation. In order to earn the PMP, there are some more stringent requirements than the CAPM, but the process is very similar. You complete your application online. You'll get an eligibility letter from PMI. You have one year to pass the exam, and you can also take the PMP exam up to three times within one year. Now, the actual requirements, though, in order to complete that application, are a little bit more involved than what we saw with the CAPM requirements. So there are two paths to get to the PMP. The first path is a bachelor's degree or its global equivalent. Now, if you have a bachelor's degree, you can move right into documenting your experience, and you must have 36 non-overlapping months of project management experience. Now, those non-overlapping months mean that if you're managing two projects at the same time and they both last for a year, that's only twelve months of project management experience, not 24 months.so no overlapping months. So basically, you have to have worked as a project manager for at least three years. Now, within those three years, you have to have 4500 hours of leading project management tasks. So if you have a project that's just kind of sitting dormant for three years, that really doesn't count towards your experience. Now, if you have those two projects, and they're both running in uniform for a year, you can count the 4500 hours from both. It's just the unique, non-overlapping months of experience that you cannot count. Now let's go back up top and talk about whether you don't have a degree, whether you have a high school diploma, an associate's degree, or the global equivalent, and whether you have to have more experience. 60 non-overlapping months of project management experience and 7,500 hours leading project management tasks. So you have to have more hands-on work if you don't have a bachelor's degree. Now, on the exam itself, you have to have a 61% passing score. That's 106 correct questions out of 175, and you have to have 35 hours of project management education. So those are the requirements for your PMP. Now, for the PMP exam, it is a little bit more expensive. It's $405 if you're a PMI member, $555 if you're not. Now, it still only costs $129 to join PMI, so it's worth it to spend the money and become a PMI member rather than abstain from joining PMI and taking the exam. So some math there. If you are looking to move forward with your PMP, always check with PMI.org to see what these fees are and the requirements. But these are the most recent published requirements from PMI. If you go on and earn your PMP, I ask you to follow the same guidelines there that we had with the Cap and celebrate. Do something good for you. And then there's a different requirement here. After the PMP, you have to maintain your certification through a three-year cycle to keep the PMP. Unlike the CAPM, you can retain the PMP title by earning PDUs. A PDU is a professional development unit. It's basically education. So there are other categories of PDUs, but the primary one is if you take seminars like this through registered education providers and then you earn PDUs. You can also earn PDUs by volunteering at your PMI chapter or speaking at different events. There are a lot of different ways to earn your PDUs. You can go out to PMI.org and just search for the certification cycle or how to earn PDUs. And they have a whole table with all the different ways that you could earn PDUs. And then again, I ask you to come back here and share your story, give some advice, and then go on and celebrate.

2. How to earn the PMP certification

Let's talk about how to earn the CAPM certification. There are some requirements that you have to follow in order to take and pass the exam. First off, you'll complete your application [email protected]. Now, you don't have to complete the application in one sitting. You can start it and come back to it later, but it's really not that painful of a process. It'll take a little bit of time, but you can do it in a couple of hours. Once you have submitted your application and PMI approves it, they will send you an eligibility letter. Sometimes. This is called the Authorization to Test Letter. Or you'll see in the Eligibility Letter that it gives you the information to call the Pro Metric Testing Center. You'll provide them with the code in this Eligibility Letter, and then you can schedule your exam. You have one year to pass the exam from the date on the Eligibility Letter. Now, you can take the exam up to three times within one year if you do not pass. Now, if that's you, which I'm certain it won't be, if you do fail the exam three times within a year, you have to take a year off and then reapply or start the whole process over. Now, I want to stress this. Throughout this course, we are going to be in the mindset of passing the exam, even if you are not taking the exam. You are passing the exam. So, yes, you can take it up to three times, but no, that's not your goal. So I'm going to help you throughout the song. So we're going to keep a positive mindset for passing the exam on your first attempt. So how do you qualify? Well, there are two different avenues you can take to qualify for the exam. With a high school diploma or grader, you have to have 1500 hours of experience on a project team, or with a high school diploma or grader, you have to have 23 contact hours of formal project management education. And yes, this course does qualify for that formal project management education. We are a PMI registered education provider, and this course certainly qualifies for the objectives and for this particular requirement on the way to your CAPM certification. Now, the exam itself, 150 questions on the exam, but only 135 questions are scored. Those 15 questions there that are mysterious are what PMI calls pretest questions. In other words, there are 15 test questions on your exam about which you don't know if they're live questions or seated questions. Now imagine the whole pool of CAPM candidates answering those questions based on how many people answered them correctly and incorrectly, and so on. That allows PMI to be determined. Is that a good question? to be added to the set of live questions for future exam candidates. So that's a 15-question difference there. You don't know if you're taking a standing or a seated question. So yes, you have to answer all the test questions. You will not leave any test questions blank because leaving them blank is wrong. Now, you have 3 hours to complete the exam. Now, once you pass the exam, which you're going to do on your first attempt, you can stay alive as a CAPM for five years. At the end of five years, you have to recertify as a CA, or you go on and earn your PMP, which I suspect many of you want to do. So that's the requirement and the path to earning and keeping your CAPM. Of course, this isn't free. There are some exam fees. It's $225 if you are a PMI member. The exam will cost $300 if you are not a PMI member. So, how much does it cost to join PMI? It's $129. Now, that $129 maintains your membership in PMI, but it also gives you some really nice things, like going to your local PMI chapter and networking events. There are some free classes that you get as a result of being part of PMI. You can also have access to their materials, such as the Pinbock and their other guides, in the project management library on PMI.org. They'll also send you a magazine and a newsletter. Other than lowering the exam fee by $75, there are numerous advantages to joining PMI. Now, should an individual not you, but should an individual fail the exam, it's $150 to retake if you're a PMI member, $200 if you are not a PMI member. So those are the requirements—or the fees, rather—for taking the CAPM exam. After the exam, you're going to celebrate. Do something for yourself. This is hard work. Learning is hard work. There's a lot of stress involved in going in and taking an exam like this. So give yourself a goal. It takes a vacation day or a vacation. Give yourself a nice meal and a nice night out on the town. But set a reward now for passing the exam, so you have something to look forward to when this is all done. Now you have five years, as I mentioned earlier. So use that time to work towards your PMP. And then I would encourage you to share your story, come back to you and me, and post your exams. Give some advice to your peers and share your experience with others because it will be very beneficial to others who are pursuing their CA.

3. How to earn the CAPM certification

In your quest to earn the Project Plus certification, you may come across the terminology of the Pmbok Guide. In fact, I'll be using that terminology throughout this course. So what is the Pmbok Guide and what's in it, and do you need it? So let's take a look here to see what the Pmbok Guide is. The Pmbok Guide is a book that's published by the Project Management Institute, and it's a generally recognised approach to the general, acceptable principles of project management. Now, the Pmbok Guide is a lexicon of project management terms, and it's fundamental primarily for the PMI exams like the PMP, the CAPM, and the PgMP, and then there's the Agile Risk and Scheduling, the ACP, RMP, and SP. So notice that you don't necessarily see Project Plus as one of the exams that the Pmbok Guide is appropriate for. However, the Pmbok Guide, because it is so broad and because it is the industry-leading book on project management, is what most people studying for their Project Plus may adapt. Now, the pinball guide—do you have to have it? No, not really. not for your project. Plus Everything I give you in this course is going to help you earn Project Plus. But if you want to purchase it, you can get it online for about thirty-five to forty-five dollars, depending on where you purchase it. Let's take a closer look at the Pmbok Guide, how it's organized, and how it can help you study for the Project Plus. It is of course a book, and the actual title A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge." But we all just call it the Pmbok Guide, and it's a Guide to the Body of Knowledge. It does not cover everything, but it does cover the generally accepted practises of project management, the mainstream of project management, and your Project Plus exam objectives are certainly covered in the PMBOK Guide. The book itself has 13 chapters—the PMP Exam and the CAPM. If you're not familiar with those, the PMP is the Project Management Professional, and the CAPM is the Certified Associate in Project Management. They are directly aligned with the Pinball Guide. Now, Project Plus is not as closely aligned with the Pmbok Guide, but it is appropriate. The Pinball Guide and your Project Plus Exam follow the five process groups: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing. Now, within those five process groups, there are 47 processes. The 47 processes are also distributed across ten knowledge areas. And you'll see those ten knowledge areas and the 47 processes and those five process groups on your Project Plus exam. And in this course, it's how this course is structured. So even though you don't have to have the Pmbok Guide, you'll do just fine in this course if you follow along with those ten knowledge areas. The chapters in the Pinball Guideone, two and three are pretty straightforward an introduction to Project management. We talk about organisational influence and the project lifecycle. And then in Chapter 3 are the PM processes. So ones, two, and three are the first chunks of the pinball guide and are really pretty fundamental. They build a good foundation for project management. Now the next chunk here, chapters four through the remainder of the book, all deal with the individual knowledge areas. So we have Chapter 4, Integration integration management, scope management, time management, cost management, and quality management. So chapters four through eight, and then chapters nine through 13. the remainder of the book. We have HR management, communications management, risk management, procurement management, and stakeholder management. Now, if you are really curious about the Pinball Guide and want to go buy a copy, just be forewarned that it's a really dry book. It is more useful as a reference than sitting down and reading it and studying from it. So it's not the novel that you may think it is. It's really dry. It reads like a toaster manual. It's accurate. It's a great place to go to for a point of reference, but it's not very easy to read cover to cover. And that's it. So do you have to have it? No, not really. not for your project. Plus, if you have more questions about the Pmbok Guide, let me know and I'll be happy to answer them. You.

4. All about the PMBOK Guide

Let's take a moment and walk through how to earn the Project Plus certification. This certification really has no upfront requirements. You don't have to apply to take the exam. Basically, you have to just pass the exam, and the exam itself has 100 questions. You'll have 90 minutes to complete the exam, and then you must earn a 710 passing score. Now, on this exam, it's a scale of 100 to 910. So basically, you have to pass about 61% of the questions, or 61 questions out of 100. Now, the exam code that you want when you register with Pro Metric through CompTIA to take this exam is PK zero, the exam code that you'll use when you go to register. Now, the cost of the exam is pretty straightforward. It's $277 per attempt, and that's what it will cost in order to take the exam. Now, in the Project Plus exam details, it's broken down into the five exam domains. These are, of course, initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing. Now, CompTIA uses a little different terminology: initiating. They have the pre-project setup Up initiating. And then we have project execution and delivery, change, control, and communications. And then, of course, Project Closure. Now, the percentage of questions in each one of these domains that you can see initiating You're going to have about twelve questions, or 12% of 100 questions. Project planning: 29 questions; project execution and delivery: 23 questions; control and communications: 27 questions. and Project Closure. You're going to have about nine questions. Now, as part of your preparation in order to pass the Project Plus exam, I encourage you to go out to CompTIA.org. And this is their website that I've just brought up on the screen. And you can come down to the Project Plus certification on this website here at comptia.org, where you can simply search their site for Project Plus and you'll find all of this information. just a little bit of an update. If you're curious about the different languages, you want to look at some exam objectives or the sample questions. When you go into exam objectives, for example, it's going to make you fill out a little form here to get the exam objectives. But it's a PDF that I've included over on the Resources tab if you want to download that. But you can also go in and look at some sample questions for the Project Plus exam. So again, it's going to make you fill out some information there in order to access those sample questions. But this is CompTIA.org, and I'll put this link right in our resources as well. So if you want to check that out, So there you go. That's the big picture of how to pass the exam.

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All About Projects

1. What is a project?

Defining a project. What is a project? Well, what is a project? It is a temporary endeavor, meaning that it's not going to last forever. And oftentimes we say, "Thankfully, that project isn't going to last forever." But it's one of the characteristics that we really have to embrace with a project, that it's a temporary endeavor. It has a definite beginning and a definite ending, and you know that this project must be done in order for the project to be successful. It's not like manufacturing a car, where it goes on and on and on. That is a temporary endeavor. A project also creates something that's unique, such as a product, a service, or a result. Let's go back to that idea of manufacturing a car. If you were to manufacture a car, every car off that assembly line would be identical. However, if you have a project to design a car in which you are creating the design of something unique, special, and unlike anything else you've ever done before, that is one of the characteristics of a project. Now, a project can also create a service or results. You think about a service. As a result, maybe in your organisation you start a new service with how your department takes orders. Now, as a result, it's sometimes encapsulated as MACD MACD. And that means in an environment you're moving something, you're adding something, you are changing something, or you're deleting something, you're getting rid of something. So for example, you're going to move one department to a different building, or you're going to add a new server to your network, or you're going to change the configuration of a process in your business, or you're going to remove all of the old printers. So those are all conditions that would constitute a result. And as you can see, each of those has a definite beginning and a definite ending. Now, a project, according to the Pinbox, can be just a single person. You don't have to have 50 people on your project team. It could be just you. A single person can be part of a project; they could be a single organisational unit. So if you think about just the sales department or the marketing department or the IT department, it could also be multiple organisational units that the project is going to involve. So the sales department has a new piece of software, so the IT department gets involved. Learning and development play a role. And then, obviously, you and your project team members get involved. So multiple organisational units And we'll take a look at that in more detail coming up. Now, projects create an item, an enhancement, or a component of another item. So that's one of my favourite lines here, a component of another item. So a great example here would be a product that maybe has a bronze level, then a silver level, and then a gold level, so that's an enhancement. Oftentimes, we see that in software, where you can buy the base version of the software for a few dollars more and have these additional features. Projects can create a service or have the capability to perform a service. So consider starting a new type of department or group in your organization, which could be just an improvement, a new and improved version of an existing item, and then again, some type of outcome or document. So a feasibility study we're going to study. Is it feasible for your company to go after a new market that could be a project, and the feasibility study creates this report that would say, yes, we should go after that audience, or no, we shouldn't? So that's just one example of a result. Now, projects live within a portfolio or programme, or they could just be standalone. Let's talk about portfolios first. Portfolios are the categorization, or catalog, of projects within a company. So a portfolio could be: We have $5 million this year for special projects. So of that $5 million, the portfolio committee or the steering committee for the company is going to say, "All right, we need to do these high-priority projects first and then, if we have the money, we'll do those next." So the portfolio is kind of like this umbrella of all the projects that live within it. Now, a programme is a collection of projects that work together to achieve a result. A skyscraper is a great example of a program. If we were going to build a skyscraper, we would have lots of little projects within that program. You could have the framing, the metal beams of the building, and then all of the windows, the elevators, and so on. So that could be a great example of a program. And then of course, we could have individual projects within your department. Now a programme is a coordinated, orchestrated effort for organisational goals, and then they're all linked in some way. So, if we were building that skyscraper, this program, we wouldn't add a project to set up a print station or a project to design, say, a new car. It really wouldn't fit; it wouldn't make sense with that program. So there are some strategies and priorities that are assigned not only within the portfolio but also within the program. A programme now adheres to a common governance. Governance is just a nice way of saying that within the program, there are certain rules that we're all going to agree to and follow. Now a programme also uses, and really, an organisation should use, a uniform approach to change control. and we'll see this coming up in a future module. But uniform change control means that we all analyse proposed changes and manage changes the same way. and then we have performance measurement. Performance measurement is a way to measure how well the project, the programme, and the portfolio are performing. Project management is the application of the knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques—everything that you have in your toolbox—to help you meet the project requirements. That's what this course is about. It's what the CAPM Exam is about: how well you understand those tools and techniques. There are 47 project management processes that are divided across five different process groups. Now, sometimes project managers say, "Well, these process groups are the different phases of project management," and that is not correct. These five process groups are not project phases. They are groups of processes that achieve a goal in that process group. So you have initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, and controlling, and eventually closing the project or closing the phase. So these five process groups—sometimes we call them IPECC for initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing—are These five process groups are collections of like processes. So for example, in planning, we'll only see planning processes. Now, typical project management begins by identifying the requirements. Requirements are the things that we must create in order for the project to be successful. So we identify the requirements, and we'll talk more about requirements when we get into scope management. Project management also addresses the needs, concerns, and expectations of our project stakeholders. Setting up, maintaining, and carrying out communications is paramount in project management. If you want to do one thing to make your projects better, communicate better. And we'll talk about communications because it's one of our key objectives for the CAPM Exam. Managing stakeholders is a big part of project management. Stakeholders: we're really talking about anyone who is affected by the project. So if we go back to that skyscraper and that programme of the skyscraper, all of those little projects within that programme have project team members and individual project managers. And those folks are stakeholders because they're affected by the project. The people that live in that city and have to deal with the construction of the skyscraper are stakeholders. So anyone who's affected by project management also deals with balancing competing objectives. Sometimes we call them competing project constraints. So, for example, we have to balance scope, quality, schedule, the budget, resources that we use, and risk. And we'll talk about all of those in detail in this course. Here's an important note for your CAPM Exam preparation. Elaboration If you had a year to build a new garage for your house, you would start with an idea of what you wanted the end result to look like. So you'd have some kind of idea or concept, and then you and your spouse or family would start thinking about what we're going to put in that garage and how we're going to use it. So you'd focus on how you'll use the end result rather than how you'll get there first. but the vision of what that's going to become. So you're going to formulate the idea? Well, in business, we would develop a business case. How long is a business case a financial study? We've already stated that we have it for a year. But would it really take a year? Then how much would it cost? And is it valuable for our company to invest in this project of building a garage? So the business case is all of the financials, and then you may do a feasibility study. Now, a feasibility study looks at the idea and the business case, and then it looks at the internal resources and if we have those talents and skill sets, and is it really something that we want to invest not only our money in but our time in order to build that garage? So the feasibility study is really determining: Is this something we really want to do? and then that may lead to the project. So that's progressive elaboration; it's the same idea. Deductive reasoning. We start very broad and then go to something very specific. Project management, application areas It's just another way of saying the discipline in which your company operates. So the four biggies that you have are construction, healthcare, government, and IT. Now you may have a different application area. You may be in a not-for-profit organization, or you may have a project that is a tradeshow that any type of discipline could come to. Or you might work in the manufacturing arena. doesn't really matter. This idea of an application area describes the discipline where the project takes place. So you won't need to know about construction, healthcare, and so on for your exam. Just be familiar with the concept that an application area talks about the discipline where the project takes place. That is important, though, because the discipline where the project takes place, this application area, will affect how you manage the project. You would manage a construction project differently than you would an IT project. So the application area has some bearing on how you're doing the project.

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