It took me quite a while to get everything right.

So, you may be confused seeing a 1 hour video, with a title Simplified in it.

Don't be, just to set your expectations clearly this video has a lot of substance in it.

It's not one of those cooking under 3 minutes videos.

I am going to cover pretty much all the aspects of project management, be it project life

cycle, process groups, knowledge areas, WBS, scheduling, cost.

So, it's basically a 10 hour course condensed into 1.

So, my mission with this mini-course is to make project management very easy to understand

for you.

Essentially, project management is fun but more importantly it is very easy.

It's not a profession on its own.

It's not like accounting, auditing, or even consulting.

Project Management is a complementary discipline that helps you run your projects very easily.

As simple as that.

And the best part is pretty much all professionals be it an accountant or a chemist can benefit

from it.

So, who is this video for?

This video is for you if you want to learn how to manage your projects at work.

So, it's applicable to every single professional I can think of.

I have never seen any professional in my 10 year management consulting career who hasn't

run a project.

It just so happens that sometimes they don't know they were managing projects.

But they were projects indeed.

So, if you are looking for a simple enough framework to understand project management

and implement at work, then you are on the right place.

By the end of this video, I am confident that you'll be able to add Project Management

as a skill in your resume.

Also, this video is for you if you are preparing for your PMP exam, Once you finish this mini-course,

the PMBOK guide will be a lot easier to understand.

See, the PMBOK guide is over 500 pages long.

It's a very long book and quite boring I must say.

Obviously, I can't share everything in this short video that exist in PMBOK guide.

But if you watch this video without skipping, the PMBOK guide will be so easy to follow

for you.

Because, it's all about understanding the fundamentals.

Once you understand the fundamentals, everything else just becomes very easy to follow.

When I took my PMP exam, now around 6 years ago, I almost aced it.

I scored one of the highest points at that time.

And the only reason why I scored so high was not because I spent 100s of hours studying,

on the contrary, I just understood the fundamentals.

And once you understand the building blocks, everything else just becomes so easy to follow.

So, I suggest you watch the entire video without skipping, but if you are interested in learning

certain elements only, then you can look at the description box for the index of the video.

Let's get started.

What is even a project?

It definitely has a sexy tone to it right?

Project…

I just love the way it sounds.

I wonder how cool it must sound in French.

Proje…

Well, project is a temporary endeavor to create a unique solution.

Yeah that's operations.

No Well, the difference between a project and

operations is fairly simple.

A project ends.

So, it's temporary.

You implement your project, you close it, you create a unique product/service/ or whatever

outcome you wanted then you are done.

Whereas in operations, it's on-going and repetitive.

You may have also heard about the terms program and portfolio.

Let me just quickly explain them here.

Program is multiple projects put together.

Combined.

And Portfolio is similarly.

Multiple programs put together.

So, it's project, program, portfolio.

Now before I go further, and dive deep.

You need to understand something crucial.

To run any project, you need 2 methodologies.

The first one is a project life cycle and the second one is project management process.

Most people confuse these 2.

And if these are not clear, you can kiss the PMP certification goodbye.

It's absolutely amazing how many content creators in YouTube confuse these two.

They are not interchangeable.

You cannot afford to confuse a project life cycle with a project management process.

Don't worry I am going to make it very simple for you.

Let's start with Project Life Cycle.

Project Life Cycle is unique to a project, to an industry, to your needs.

It's highly customizable.

Think of it like this; a human development is a project.

So, your life cycle is; 1) Conceiving

2) Birth 3) Childhood

4) Teenage hood.

Teenage hood.

Is that a word?

Teenaging?

5) Adulthood 6) And death

Easy stuff right?

So, now if it was an IT project.

I am not an IT but it would like something like this;

High level design Detailed Design

Coding Testing

Installation And Turnover

This is project life cycle.

The term cycle is a bit confusing here.

Because, after you die, you don't get to be conceived again and be born again.

I think.

But who knows.

Or once you hand over the product to the client, you don't get to design it again.

So, it's not actually a cycle.

It's just a confusing term they use.

It's sequential.

It's a sequential steps of various phases of a project.

And these phases are unique to your own project, and your needs.

A project life cycle may have 1 phase or multiple phases like the examples I gave earlier.

There is no single way to define the ideal structure for a project.

For example, one company may treat a feasibility study as first phase of a project, another

may treat it as a third phase, or another may not even include it.

So, it's custom made.

I know I said multiple times, custom made, custom made,,, but you'll soon understand

why I had to repeat it multiple times.

Just be patient.

Ok, now let's talk about the 2nd element that you need to run any project.

And that's the Project Management Process, your process groups.

See, if you are following PMI's Project Management Body of Knowledge, then your process

groups aren't quite customizable.

The processes inside the group are, but not the process groups themselves.

You can't change their order.

So, we have 5 process groups to learn here.

We have Initiation, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing.

These are kind of set in stone.

You don't play around with them that much.

Now, here is where all the confusion arises.

For those of you, who are interested in taking a PMP test, I will now tell you the single

biggest reason why most test takers fail.

And it's all because of confusing this, this what I am about to share.

It's so confusing that even most of the content creators, most of the videos here

in YouTube or the blog posts, or the books don't understand or explain it well enough.

Remember how we talked about the fact that Project Life Cycle is highly customizable.

Now, what we do in real life is, for small projects we simplify things.

Instead of attaching process groups to every single phase of the project life cycle, like,

Conceiving – initiation, planning, execution, MandC, closing

Birth – initiation, planning, execution, MandC, closing

Etc Instead, in real life, we just attach the

process groups to a single phase project life cycle.

This makes things really easy to run the project.

Less complication.

I mean why make things more complicated than they should be right.

There is so much paper work involved.

But here is the confusing part, this doesn't mean that all of a sudden process groups became

project life cycle.

Your project life cycle isn't initiation, planning, execution, MandC, and closing.

If you don't get this right, I guarantee you that you will fail the exam.

Now we are going to talk about the process groups, and while I am explaining that, I

will also run a project for you to demonstrate how it works in real life.

But before I get there, I want to share something quickly with you.

It's about PMP, If you are looking to get a PMP degree so you can advance in your career

and get better jobs, don't.

Don't do that.

It won't really help you as much as you think.

Learn project management, it's awesome.

Everybody should learn project management.

But don't you think that by getting a piece of paper, you'll get amazing jobs, That's

not going to happen.

It may even be detrimental.

Because, PMI's project management is just a framework not a methodology, and even the

terminology they use is very different than what most companies use internally.

So, Instead of spending 100s of hours and a lot of money on a certificate that you won't

even use, I suggest you check out my LIG program and let that program show you how you can

achieve the career you deserve.

It sounded a bit like an advertisement break but it's not.

I am very passionate about my LIG program and the results are overwhelmingly positive.

Go to The Career Mastery.com and you'll see the link to register to LIG.

Because, as I said most multinational firms have their in-house methodology to follow.

So, you'll have to unlearn a lot of things to learn their way.

For example, my employer PwC Consulting has a complex methodology for every single work

we deliver.

It's the best in the world and miles better than PMI's framework or Prince 2 methodology.

So, your future employer will have its own methodology as well.

But still, learn the fundamentals, learn everything I'll share in this video, PROJECT MANAGEMENT

IS AWESOME.

It's an incredible practice but a certificate is debatable when you consider the investment

vs reward equation.

You want to a better job?

that's not the way to go.

You just don't know some of the hidden strategies to get better jobs, that's pretty much it.

And one final point on this, I have a pretty amazing bonus and guarantee.

If you don't get the results or the jobs you want within 30 days, I will personally

work with you free of charge to get you to where you need to be.

Ok, sorry for the break.

I felt compelled to share that.

Let's start with the first process group; and that's initiation.

Let's do it.

To make things very grounded, I will use the construction of this boat as an example explaining

the process groups.

I could give you examples from my work history.

Obviously, as a manager at PwC Consulting, I ran 100s of projects.

But it would create a few problems.

1) I am under strict client confidentiality agreements and 2 we don't use PMI's framework.

We had our own internal methodology to follow.

So, I think using this boat.

Designing and manufacturing this boat as an example will make it fun but at the same time

simple.

Now, this applies to project management as well.

For initiation process group, you have 2 important processes;

First process is that you develop a project charter.

And 2nd process is you identify stakeholders.

Let's start with Project Charter Project charter is a fairly simple document

outlining a few things.

It's like mini project plan.

Very simple one though.

Essentially, you are finding an answer to; why you are doing what you are doing.

So, in my case, if I have to develop a project charter for building this boat, it would include

my objectives, scope, rough idea for the cost and time, key stakeholders and milestones.

That's pretty much it.

At the initation stage, you don't want the document to be very detailed.

We need the details later for planning stage.

Speaking of later stages, can you do me a favor, if you liked the video so far, can

you please subscribe to my channel.

Because if you don't YouTube will not show my future videos to you.

So, in your case, your project charter may be as simple as explaining why you consider

the expansion to foreign markets, why you are considering building that new factory.

I'll repeat once more.

This is not the time to go into huge details.

Talk about the business case and maybe high level project objectives, major deliverables,

and roles and responsibilities.

But I'd like to emphasize something here.

If your project isn't a very large one, try to stay away from having too many details

in it.

Then you would ask, why do it?

I mean if it's not detailed nor comprehensive, it doesn't have much information.