The 47 Processes (1st headache)

I am wondering while I study more and more I hardly accumulate much cuz while answering the question there's alws sth that I missed :-(

Nonetheless one good point I came across is -

"As we keep studying, we will automatically get familiar with 47 processes just as we got familiar with 26 alphabets."

Still when we start these 47 processes that are spread across 10 knowledge areas and 5 process groups; they scare us and we try hard to memorize them to answer a special type of question -

Which of these process belongs to this process group?
1. 
2.
3.
4.
Hint: We gotta break the phrase in each option into words and see which KA and which PG the phrase belongs to? Noun will (alws) suggest the KA and verb (most of the times) will suggest the PG.

Did you wonder we hardly see "Which process belongs to this knowledge area" ?

It's because questions in PMP exam are arranged "process group wise"; you must have seen the sample result which gives assessment in 5 process groups and we gotta clear all of them.

But misery here is, we study "knowledge area wise" (almost all books do this except Kim's as I heard)

Once we've used a strategy for long enough, its hard to change it..plus do we have time to pivot the tables (KA vertically and PG horizontally) and make new material to study? It won't be helpful once we are half way unless we are ready to spend hell amount of time and run into a risk of confusion..

There are various systems available free on the net, like - games, flashcards and memory maps etc. devised by others to ease our headache, but most of them I find have one flaw "Verbose mania" (even this page is not an exception..lol)

Here's one link that "might" help u to explain how u can devise ur own strategy -

http://www.wikihow.com/Plot-the-47-Processes-of-Pmbok-5,-in-3-Minutes-Flat

CTC -

There's a S2S that looked 100% promising for the questions of above (in red) type.

If you do lil of writing on ur notepad,it will help you as well. Cuz the only way to make 47 processes ur nature asap is to write them a couple of times but unlike u did for 26 alphabets :-)

When I write below notes down, I have a half page with some arrows..(unfortunately my tab's resolution is poor to put the pic here for now)

Tip 1 (W for Write) - Guess and write down the full forms once that u are familiar with and; there on use the short forms mentioned here as long as u r studying for PMP. Remember u gotta have just a half page of this S2S at the end; and you are allowed to make multiple copies until u reach there :-) It will only fix the stuff in ur memory..and trust me it's not as harmful or discouraging as it seems to u now..

Tip 2 (Read) - If you're just reading, do yourself a favor to call (aloud if u can) full names wherever I mention short forms.
You ll know R is not for Read as it's for Risk ;-)

1. Alphabets

5 PG's - I,P,E,M,C
10 K.A.'s - "T, C1, S1", "H,S2,C2", "P,Q,R", "I"

"TCS" has a criteria of 1st class marks, starting right from from "HSC" which "I" passed in 2nd class and did not know "P,Q,R" of this criteria ("I" wanna know why ppl say A,B,C of something in the phrase instead of "P,Q,R" :-)

C1 is cost and C2 is communication
S1 is scope and S2 is stakeholder

Remember 2nd class HSC means C2 and S2 and 1st class TCS means C1 and S1.

(You can devise ur own shortcuts if you find above ones confusing but I bet you'll regret to "manage" anything like that :-P)

For me, P is for Plan (verb) and Procurement (noun) and I am Okay with it as I can guess them from context.
Similarly I for Initiation (PG) and Integration (KA) based on the context.

2. Nouns --> 10 K.A.

Pls don't bother for singular or plural as this is not a grammar class :-)

Most of the K.A.'s are nouns as well except "T" and "I".

So there are more than  8 (=10-2 for "TI") nouns you must be familiar with.
Here they are -

T - 
Schedule (Hope you never confuse this with S1 and S2)
Activity (if this word comes with "Cost", C1=Cost gets the preference. eg. - Estimate Activity Cost)

I
Prj - (Oh yes it's first P in PMP)
Exception - "Prj Team" cuz "Team" is under H

H - (H stands for HR and not Humans of Being Human :-)
Team

C2- (C2 is also a noun among primary 8 K.A.'s; here on I am not mentioning the tips again)
Budget 

S1 -
Requirement (please don't confuse this with R for Risk)
WBS


So we have 8 + 7 = 15 nouns against 10 K.A.'s.
And the best part is -

You don't have to memorize them provided you have written them just once in your notebook and forget not to refer to the notes throughout your PMP preparation on encountering any question of the type mentioned above. Also hope u start using the shortcuts as they ll be used in next posts like CTC and S2S.

3. Verb = PG

We have about 20 verbs but if you memorize them all; you'll have too much to call this an S2S
So we ll call it a verb only if can be fit into just one PG.

So remember only these -
I,P,E,M,C (again like "TI" is not noun, "IE" is not verb)

M is here both "Monitor and Control" or just "Control"
Pls don't confuse "Monitor" with "manage" as that's a verb under "E" (and not under "M")
Also C is for Close and not Control (the most we can use here is Ctrl)..

So don't do above silly mistakes as I do :-)

Here on start using the bold words in process names (i.e. after arrow "->") as clues to select the right bucket (KA as well as PG the process belongs to) as we'll not have sample questions even with this blog post.

Tip 3 (Tick Mark) - Tick mark your process chart (it comes with all the books). Tick the process you can put in correct buckets if you know the S2S mentioned here i.e. everything that follows the rules here, tick them as soon as u get to read the rule, if you don't do it, you won't get the benefit of this S2S.

I -
"I" has just 2 processes and if you really studied PMP even for a day, you can guess the 2 names -
-> Develop Prj Charter 
-> Identify S2
Remembering only 2 processes is not difficult when you have 47 :-)
Develop or Identify are not exclusive verbs so we won;t focus on them

C -
This also has 2 processes and if you remember C is a verb too.
-> C Prj or Phase
-> C P

M-
It is a verb itself and its only additional verb is "validate"; so memorize both of them for PG - M -
This PG has 11 processes, but you're done if you know above tip

P, E -

P is a verb and E is not means u ll never see "E" at all in your correct options.

They together have 24 and 8 processes respectively but sadly they share many verbs too. 

"P" is a distinguishing verb and all the KA's have at least one PG-P process and that's -
-> P <K.A.> mgmt\
e.g. P H mgmt. (read it Plan Human Resource Management)
Exceptions to above naming convention
----------------------------------------
Where K.A. is not a noun -
-> Develop Prj. mgmt P
Hint: P is verb and Prj is noun; now you know which KA and which PG above process belongs to?

So we have learned 10 (1 for each KA) processes in PG - P

I bet, you ll confuse P when we talk about outputs as there are more than 10 plans created from these 10 P's (there are total 12 plans) and some additional plans are part of those 12 :-( so there are 12+ plans you'll get to see in exams; for now just don't mix the question types...we are strictly looking at the type mentioned above in red
For this blog-post the "P" is a "verb" and not an entity that gets created by doing the "P"

We still have 22 processes and 8 in E -

E -

Remember - H is not monitored or controlled ; H is (only) executed (i.e. H is the only KA that's not in PG - M)
"(Only)" means of course everything is "P"ed and H is not exception
-> Acquire Prj Team
-> Develop ---- " ----
-> Manage ---- " ----
Above all fall in PG - E (Cuz H is executed if not being planned :-P and clearly above don't have "P" in them so they're not being planned)


Now, except H what other KA's are Executed?
(Remember E is not a verb in PMBOK but only for this blog-post)

Both 2's i.e. S2 and C2
(Hope you remember their full names and you dint make ur own shortcuts to name them :-D)
Both the 2's are actually "managed" (while their execution cuz E is not a verb)
Remember manage is an E verb? (I told you not not to confuse it with "M for monitor" as manage cuz its "E for Execution")
-> Manage C2
-> Manage S2
(we already managed H :-) in of the 3 processes of H (noun - Team) in just previous point .
So manage verb is in 3 processes - "2nd class HSC" i.e. HS2C2.


Isn't QA is a headache anywhere? So, let's execute it.
-> Perform QA
Remember ("Control Q" is an M process) --> This is most important to know that QA and QC (sry PMBOK calls it Ctrl Q i.e. Ctrl before Q and not after) fall in M and E respectively.

Perform is not a distinguishing verb so hold your performance right here or u ll lose the marks ;-D


I is the only KA with processes in all the PG's as that's about integrating everything.
Also do u know which process gives "the deliverable"? (So that's gonna come in E as that's the actual work to be executed i.e. implemented)
-> Direct and Manage Prj Work


[
This word "Deliverable" is gonna confuse you if you don't know this "i/o" that's for another blog-post hence grey here

Please continue bucketing the processes under correct KA and PG in case you are reading this grey area -

"Deliverable" turns into "Verified Deliverable" by process -
-> Ctrl Q 
"Verified Deliverable" turns into "Accepted Deliverable" by process-
-> Validate S1 
"Accepted Deliverable" becomes "Final Product, Service, Result Transition" by process -
-> Close Prj or Phase

So in short, any "Deliverable" is not being delivered to the Client but to another process in PMBOK ;-)

]


The last process remained in E is executing P i.e.

-> Conduct P
The verb "Conduct" is exclusive here. Nothing else is Conducted in PMBOK :-)

Now we have some 14 PG - P processes left
Lets not stress them now as anything else apart from above will fall there.
(So u gotta study everything mentioned here properly or u won't know what falls in 14 u didn't bother for :-)

More Tips :

For options with "made up" process names, correct noun will save you.

Also you won't write exam prior to finishing ur studies, would u?
(I did this sometimes and failed with flying colors ;-)

As I said (and others say too) you ll automatically memorize the names effortlessly in some more days of studies...

So why in the first place we learned above tips at all?
A] To get started with
B] To not to get confuse when we see multiple choices
C] Both are A & B correct!

Option C is the right one :-)