Now, the pinball guide, the pinball guide, is a collection of best practices. And let me just, you know, take you on a small story here just to explain what best practices mean. And this is one of the things that characterize my my courses. My Courses are filled with stories. I'll be telling you lots of stories, slash case studies that I've experienced firsthand, or have heard about from colleagues in the field, or have just simply read about them or seen on TV, movies and so on and so forth. Of course, stories and case studies that are relevant or subject.

Now, the Pembroke does not tell you what to do. PMI maintains in several places in the PMBOK. The Pembroke is not a prescriptive book. It's a descriptive book, descriptive in the sense that it tells you what are people doing in the field of project management, rather than what you should be doing. And of course, when we say what are people doing? And of course, when we say what, what people are doing in the field of project management, we mean the most successful people, most successful projects.

Now, look, management. If you want to categorize management in general project management particular. You can Google this book title for example, or Amazon ads or looking Barnes and Nobles for A book titled, Management Science and I bet you anything you want that you will find literature under the title Management Science. Now, if you Google that other title, the art of management, I still bet you anything you want that you will find books under the title, maybe just as beef the books on the title The Art of management, so Management Science, the art of management, which authors write titling his or her book and which others wrong titling his or her book is management, the science or is an art. Let's take a step backwards and differentiate between science and art. I had a high school teacher, many years back, physics teacher we used to complain to him about physics.

Problems, how difficult they are. And we cannot solve this problem or that problem, please explain more. And he was a bit cranky. And you just get, you know, his first reaction would be, how can you complain about physics? physics is science and science is easy. All we thought that's his way of telling us You didn't study hard enough.

Before you bother me with your questions, go back and study a little bit more. And one evening, we had we were a group of five or six students and we had him at a dinner table. He was our tutor, and we were having the school dinner. And he was our tutors. And we was there was six of us. So we told him Look, Mr. Wilkins, Mister, what was his name?

You're not leaving this table until you tell us. Why is science easy? We don't see it easy wrong. Find it easy. You keep telling us that science is easy. Why'd you say that?

He said, because there are no points of view, this round table here if we say this table is half a meter in diameter, there will no be there will not be any second opinions. We measure it half a meter in diameter and of the story that's the beauty of science. So, our next question was so what's difficult he said difficult is art. Because you might see a painting and think is beautiful and the next person see the same painting and think it's, I think it's not rubbish. As probably the reason why Van Gogh the Dutch painter died, people thought nothing of his of his paintings. Back then when he was alive.

And the guy the poor guy died in poverty and hunger, literally. Not with authority and Now if you want to buy a van Gogh, of course, you have to be a multi millionaire. So I can expect to pay 100 million dollars for it. So it's art. So now is management a science or not? Those who say management of science, they are classifying it in the same corner of math, chemistry and physics and where you can sit in a lab and come up with the best formula to do stuff.

And managers probably not like that. We will see things in project management that look like science because you can calculate schedule and time. You can calculate costs. But of course, there are lots of parts in management that are rather on the art side that work most of the time for most people in some environments and don't work so much in other environments. And and and especially when it comes to managing people and communicating, managing project communications, those areas, there's a lot of art there. So you might say that project management management in general project management in particular is a mix of science and art.

When you have something like that, how can you say this is the best way to manage a project, or that is the best way to manage project. In order to do that, we rely on human experience. We go have a look on the most successful projects out there, okay? And try to trace the footsteps of those who worked on those projects and come up with a certain structured way of saying, Okay, this is how most successful projects are successful. And that's the concept of best practices, or as some literature today call it good practices because it's Some organizations are kind of allergic to the word best. Some might say, okay, we know what's best for us.

So don't tell us that these are these are the best practices. So some literature refers to it as good practices that you might want to benefit from them. The Pembroke maintains that this standard, the Pembroke standard, is the best practice that works most of the time, in most projects in most environments. So we're not saying that this will apply perfectly every time everywhere as is. The standard is great. It's, it will probably be 90 to 95% relevant to what you're doing in your organization.

But you still have to do some customization here and there. And that's why there's a lot of so called tailoring in the Pembroke. The concept of tailoring has been magnified in the sixth edition of the Pembroke. So, you need to tailor the standard to your organization to your environment to your particular project. So, that's the concept of best practices, good practices on which the pen book is based. Now, the standard in the pen book is very nicely if you ask me is very nicely structured logically, and it makes it easy to study and apply.

And they call it the five by 10 structure the five by 10 Guide. by five we mean the five stages through which every project or or every project logically go through those five stages are initiating every project is goes through some initiation work. Then we move into planning, then we move into execution. Then we have monitoring and control controlling throughout the project. And finally, we have the Closing stages. So these are the five stages.

And each of those stages contain a number of processes. That's why PMI calls them calls them the five process groups, five process groups, initiating process group planning, process group, executing process group, monitoring and controlling process group, and finally closing process group. Right. Now, throughout these process groups throughout these five stages, we manage 10 things in projects 10 areas, and we call them the 10 knowledge areas. Those 10 areas that we manage in projects are project integration management, project scope management, project, schedule management, project, cost management, project, quality management, resource management, communication, risk, procure, Government and stakeholder management. These are 10 areas 10 knowledge areas that we manage in projects.

And that's why we call this standard, the five by 10 standard. And it's very nicely presented in the Pembroke. And in the next presentation also, as a table, you have the five columns representing the five process groups and 10 rows representing the 10 knowledge areas. At the intersection of those columns and rows, we have the project management processes, each process, each process belongs to one process group and belongs also to one knowledge area. So and you will see that in the next presentation, and that's why we have this standard called the five by 10 guide or the five by 10, standard five process groups 10 knology areas. Of course, that's, that's what you need to study for the for taking the exam.

And that's what we will focus on here. But it's also worth mentioning that if you are in a certain industry like the construction industry and you refer to the construction extension to the pin book, you will be studying some more knowledge areas like health and safety, like finance management. And so that's, that's out of scope here, but I just wanted to mention that there's still more knowledge in certain fields like construction like governmental contracting like the it now you might want to take a look at those if you are in a in a relevant field. For our purposes here, preparing you for the PMP exam equipping you with a common knowledge for project management. We will will stick to the five by 10 guide and we have five process groups and 10 knowledge areas. Now, the pin book is structured in three parts.

If you get your hands on a copy of the hard copy of the pin book or a PDF soft copy of the pin book is structured in three parts. Part one is a guide to the knowledge. It gives you the knowledge and it's divided into the first the first section of Part one is general introduction to the whole thing. The second section talks about the environment in which projects operate, it will introduce you to things concepts like the enterprise environmental factors and organizational process assets and and some other cool stuff that we'll come to look at the first and the next presentation. Then comes the section on the of the project managers. The role of the project manager has had enjoyed some spotlighting in the PMBOK sixth edition, there used to be less spotlighting on it inside the Pembroke, the previous Pembroke and pin box.

But PMI had a separate document that is on pmis website somewhere called role delineation study still worth reading the document today because what is in that role delineation study is not entirely in the PMBOK but some of it. They're all delineation study or the role of the project manager. It details the skill set that is needed from a project manager. The skills that are needed for project initiation skills that are needed for project planning, skills that are needed for project execution skills that are needed for project monitoring controlling skills that are needed for project closing and the skills Without need for managing a project in general. So, and the role the project manager plays as opposed to other stakeholders, in projects, and so on. So that's the part that talks about the role of the project manager.

And we will go through it in the next presentation. Right. So and so that's still in part one. Then there is a section in part one there. So we have 123 sections. so far.

The fourth section has 10 chapters. That's the really the core of the pin book. Those 10 chapters are dedicated to the 10 knowledge areas, one chapter for each knowledge area. And that's really the core of the heart of the subject, of course, is the whole everything is important from the framework and you need to study the entire handbook. But certainly, so the really the heart of the matter is in those 10 chapters. Explaining the 10 knowledge areas.

So, and that's all part one of the Pembroke Part Two reorganizes all the knowledge areas, but not one knowledge area by knowledge area, but rather one process grouped by process group. So, we go through the knowledge areas, if you may, not horizontally but rather vertically. And that is the standard for project management. Because, if you think of it, the way projects proceed is not knowledge area by knowledge area, but rather process group by process group. So, for example, you initiate a project first, then you plan it, then you execute it, and so on. So, that's, that's the order of the project lifecycle, and that's the order of the project process groups.

So after explaining the knowledge in part one, part two, goes through that knowledge once more, but rearrange. In a project lifecycle kind of manage, and that presents, and that represents the standard for project management. Now, finally, the third part contains your dependencies, grocery and index. And it's also an important part that you will find some really good knowledge there. Appendix one talks about the sixth edition changes. So what changed from this fifth edition to the sixth edition, which might be of interest to some of you.

And if you ask me in my top of my mind estimate, from each addition, addition to the next there are like 10 to 15% changes in the in the in the books. So appendix, Appendix, x one goes through what has changed in the sixth edition from the fifth edition appendix x two lists the contributors and reviewers. Now I have a little interesting story here. On one of my live sessions some years back, one of the participants asked me, he had a hard copy of the pin book next to him, and he was looking for the name of the author of that book. He's accustomed to that each book has an author. So he looked at the cover, and there was no name of the of an author.

It starts flipping inside the book and there is no author's name. So I asked me, who's the author of this book? And I told him, there is no author for this book. There are authors, there are contributors and reviewers and committees and there's a very robust structure in PMI how to produce a standard. So there are drafters and contributors and there are reviewers and committees and Above committees every comment that you might, because everybody can send PMI comments for them to incorporate in subsequent editions. Criticism if you have, I don't know new developments in the field, whatever you feel like commenting on, you can send to PMI and every comment will be taken into account that's a PMI guarantee, every comment will be taken into account.

So on appendix x two, you will find the list of hundreds of contributors and reviewers along with their designations. There you will see that they are all highly, highly decorated. working professionals with Masters and PhD degrees and of course PMP degrees and certification and other certifications also, from right and left. So what working professionals from all walks of industries. So you can expect virtually every industry to be represented there. And from different geographical regions in order for PMI strike to make the standard as widely relevant as it possibly can get.

And it's a collective, you can really feel the brain juice, the collective intelligence, the collective human intelligence inside that standard. And those contributors are all on appendix x appendix x two. Now, Appendix x three. These were the one of the two main things that have been added to the Pembroke sixth edition. And those two main things are the concept of agility as well. And the other one is what's on appendix x five The concept of tailoring.

So, up to the Pembroke fifth edition, PMI leaned more towards predictive models when it comes to project planning for example, it leaned towards predictive models where you can say Okay, the next step should be x the step after that should be why the task after that after that should be said so, in a predictive kind of way until the end of the project, how So, those hundred thousand tasks what they are on what they should be. On the other hand, there is that is the predictive model. On the other hand, there is the adaptive way, when you don't know that much because many projects will not be able to be to be that predictive. Some industries are more lucky are luckier than others, in the sense that they can be more predictive, like, for example, the construction industry are luckier than the software development industry, for example, in the software development industry, you can probably not be able to say what the next tasks are for more than a week, maybe, maybe.

And then what happens during that week will dictate what happens in the week after that. So you need to go go about your project, john kind of manner in a giant model. So there is an there's a good bit about Agile Project Management in the PMBOK. And for those of you who are interested, there is a book on Agile Project Management a separate book that PMI likes to kind of, you know, attach to the Pembroke way if you if you download a PDF file on the Pembroke, they will give you the pin book plus the address book, attached to it. But for practical purposes for taking the PMP exam, you need to focus on the pin book. And there is a good discussion inside the pin book about agile.

And that discussion is singled out and in appendix x three and revisited right. Appendix x five is a summary of key concepts for knowledge areas, you can use that one for example, for exam review the night before the exam so quickly, you know, recapping the key points and so on. That's a good source. Appendix x five deals with the second main thing that has changed inside pin box sixth edition, and that's the concept of tailoring. So even your even your corporate standard project management process might be forced to some tailoring Because of dealing with certain type of clients, for example. So, so tailoring is a concept that is worth a good bit of discussion.

And it's singled out. It's of course dealt with inside the framework inside each knowledge area and the tailoring consider tailoring considerations for each knowledge area, but then they are summarized in appendix x five. Finally, Appendix x six goes through all the tools and techniques and the Pembroke because you have, we will talk about a big number of tools and techniques in the Pembroke and appendix x six talks about sheds a light on those tools and techniques, groups and classifies them and gives you a certain logic and rationale, why they are classified and grouped in a certain way. And there is a good discussion about them. That will also help you remember those tools and techniques and where they belong. So it's a good place to visit also.

So that's the Pembroke structure that we will work with. All right. This concludes our first module out of 13. This is rather a short one, introducing you to PMI to the Pembroke to the PMP exam a little bit. The next module, we'll take you through project management framework, covering a good deal of part one of the Pembroke that has the introduction, the project environment, the role of the project manager, they're all in the next module. So see you soon and thank you for being here.