Certified Project Management Professional

• Project management: principles; role of the project manager e.g. management of change, understanding of project management system elements and their integration, management of multiple projects; project environment and the impact of external influences on projects; identification of the major project phases (initiate, plan, execute, monitor/control, evaluate/close) and why they are required, understanding of the work in each phase; the nature of work in the lifecycles of projects in various industries.
• The product breakdown structure (PBS) and the work breakdown structure (WBS), project execution strategy and the organisation breakdown structure (OBS) e.g. preparation of organisational charts, task responsibility matrix, statement of work (SOW) for project tasks.
• Relationship between schedules, OBS and WBS, network techniques, resourcing techniques, computer-based scheduling and resourcing packages, project progress measurement and reporting techniques, staff-hours earned value and progress ‘S’ curves, critical path analysis and reporting, milestone trending. Cost control: cost breakdown structure e.g. types of project estimate, resources needed, estimating techniques, estimating accuracy, contingency and estimation, bid estimates, whole-life cost estimates, sources of information, cost information sensitivity, computer-based estimating.
• The why, what, how, when, where and by whom of project management e.g. contract terms, document distribution schedules, procurement, establishing the baseline for the project.
• Critical path method, PERT/CPA modelling, quality control and analysis, Total Quality Management (TQM), quality chain, milestone charting
• Team structures:
Hierarchical, virtual, functional team, matrix management.
• Roles and responsibilities of project manager:•Managing team and stakeholders, change management, project environment, understanding life cycle of projects, setting schedule, budget and timing, developing the project plan, managing project risks, interfaces with other projects, conflict resolution including role of project manager and sponsor, constructive vs. destructive conflicts, compromise, skill complementarities, goal congruence.
• Long term and short-term sources of funding.
• Share Capital or Equity Shares, Preference Capital or Preference Shares, Trade Credit, Preference Capital or Preference Shares, Bonds, Factoring Services, Retained Earnings or Internal Accruals, Lease Finance, Bill Discounting etc., Bonds, Hire Purchase Finance, Advances received from customers, Term Loans from Financial Institutes, Government, and Commercial Banks, Medium Term Loans from Financial Institutes, Government, and Commercial Banks, Short Term Loans like Working Capital Loans from Commercial Banks, Venture Funding, Fixed Deposits (<1 Year),Asset Securitization, Receivables and Payables
• International Financing by way of Euro Issue, Foreign Currency Loans, ADR, GDR etc.
• Project methodology: Traditional approach, critical change approach, event change approach or proprietary/ formalised approaches, for example PRINCE, AGILE.
• Feasibility: Risk Management; identifying risk, impact analysis, risk management/planning, review cost-benefit and risk equation for projects. Consider other issues impacting on project e.g. issues of globalisation (advantages and disadvantages of cross-country/culture projects).
• Communication plan:
o Identify the Audience: To WHOM do we need to communicate?
o Determine Goals and Objectives: WHY communicate?
o Develop Key Messages: WHAT do we need to communicate?
o Develop Tactical Plan: HOW will we communicate, to whom and when?
o Identify Measures of Evaluation: HOW will we know if we are successful?
• Mendelow’s Matrix, Expectations, Consistency, Productivity, Outcome
• Factors:
o Cultural Diversity.
o Misunderstanding of Message.
o Emotional Difference.
o Past Experiences.
o Educational and Intellectual Difference.
o Group Affiliations.
o Positional Differences among the Personnel.
o Functional Relationship between Sender and Receiver.
• Project creep, gaps in the scope or accountability of the project, changing dependencies (other projects, business conditions etc.), delays, planning errors, skills or other resource deficits.
• Financial constraints, lack of decision making, lack of ownership for the project, communication failures, ‘meaningless’ plan without buy-in, changes to project team, priority changes within the organisation, Project monitoring.
• Status and plan documentation and regular monitoring meetings, performance management against targets, defining responsibilities and accountability, communications, traceability, audit trails, formalised frameworks and stages, contingency planning.
• Relationship between schedules, OBS and WBS, network techniques, resourcing techniques, computer-based scheduling and resourcing packages, project progress measurement and reporting techniques, staff-hours earned value and progress ‘S’ curves, critical path analysis and reporting, milestone trending. Cost control: cost breakdown structure e.g. types of project estimate, resources needed, estimating techniques, estimating accuracy, contingency and estimation, bid estimates, whole-life cost estimates, sources of information, cost information sensitivity, computer-based estimating.
• Analysis of results and planned procedures; use of appropriate evaluation techniques; application of project evaluation and review techniques (PERT); opportunities for further studies and developments, use of appropriate techniques to justify project progress and outcomes in terms of the original agreed project specification

• Procurement & sourcing methods, inventory management, distribution facility, structural changes, Definition by CIPS.
• Procurement cycle support wider social, economic and environmental objectives.
• Contract Management: Standardized Processes and Procedures, Spend Visibility, Improved Compliance, Solid Foundation for Spend and Performance Analysis, Rebate Management, Reduced Maverick Spending, Evergreen Contract Elimination.
• Framework:
o The Public Service (Social Value) Act 2012
o Community Right to Challenge (Localism) Act 2012
o Freedom of Information Act 2000
o GDPR 2019
o Local Government Act 2000, Part 1
• EU Consolidated Public Procurement Directive, Remedies Directive, Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (Statutory Instrument 2015 No. 102), Court action or enforcement action by the European Union.
• Conducting purchase and disposal: competition requirements, pre-tender market research and consultation, contract award criteria, invitations to tender/quotations, shortlisting, submission, receipt and opening of tenders/quotations, clarification procedures and post-tender negotiation, evaluation, award of contract, and debriefing candidates, income- generating contracts, bonds and parent company guarantees, prevention of corruption & collusion, declaration of interests, post-contract procedures, PTN, PQQ.
• Category Management: Strategic, Bottleneck, Routine, Leverage
• Electronic procurement: Public Services Network (PSN), Procure to Pay (P2P), Enterprise Resource, Planning system (ERP).
• E-Sourcing / e-Tendering: Electronic reverse auctions, Electronic marketplace, Purchase cards, Request for information, Request for proposal, Request for quotation, RFx (the previous three together), and eRFx (software for managing RFx projects), System for Acquisition Management (SAM).
• Risks: Micromanagement, Time-Consuming Approval Chains, Supplier Onboarding Problems, Hacking, Data Loss
• Risk and Issue Register, Risk Probability Framework, Scoring Impact, Scoring Probability, Sources of Risk, Risk Control
• Procurement Cycle Risks, Measuring risk against expenditure type risk and cost, Procurement Risk Register, Prioritisation of Risk Matrix,

• Cross-project and Multi-disciplined
• Focal Point for Ownership and Accountability
• Horizontal Collaboration
• Strategic in Nature
• Strategic vs. Tactical
• Scope of Responsibility
• Management of Risk
• Life Cycle Involvement
• Process Orientation
• Skills and Capabilities
• Process vs. Function
• Portfolio Management and Organizational Strategy
• A Portfolio Roadmap
• Enterprise portfolio management
• Single-Criterion Prioritization Model
• Multiple-Criteria Weighted Ranking Model
• Multiple-Criteria Scoring Model
• Benefits of the PMO
o Executive management
o Functional managers
o Customer and sponsor
o Project/Program managers
o Consistent framework for stakeholders
• Structure of PMO
o Level 1 PMO – The Project (Process) Control Office
o Level 2 PMO – The Business Unit Project Office
o Level 3 PMO – The Enterprise Project Office
• Functions
o Project Management Competency
o Project Management Services
o Project Operations Support
• PMO staffing, PMO Charter, Assign the PMO Manager, Integrate Applicable Organizational Policies, Establish Project Manager Qualifications, Establish PMO Processes and Procedures, Create a Change Management Plan
• Create the PMO Charter
o Formalizes establishment of the PMO
o Specifies executive-level support and access to executive management
o Indicates PMO and project manager authority
o Designates program manager/director as PMO head
o Identifies resources and budgets
o Identifies assigned programs/projects
o Establishes roles and responsibilities
o Provides internal consulting to project managers
• Supply Chain Ecosystem
• The Ecosystem Elements as Enablers of Globalization
• Supply Chain De-Verticalization, Modularization, and Outsourcing
• Organizational modularity
• Supply chain trends: Modularity and outsourcing
• De-verticalization of electronics firms, De-verticalization of apparel firms
• Role of Institutions
• Economic, regulatory and trade-related innovations, Institutions and supply chains, Resources and Management, Clusters
• Delivery Infrastructure: Logistics, Communication, IT, and ITeS
• Logistics Ecosystem Framework
• Mapping the ecosystem of a supply chain: Auto vertical
• Mapping the ecosystem of a service chain: Inbound logistics
• GRIP analysis
• Smartening the players in the industry vertical
• Ecosystem-based analysis of CEMEX
• Information Logistics (IL), information element (IE), Data logistics
• (1) Pre-transaction elements:
o Inventory availability
o Target delivery dates.
• (2) Transaction elements:
o Order status
o Order tracing
o Back-order status
o Shipment shortages
o Product substitutions.
• (3) Post-transaction elements:
o Actual delivery dates
o Returns/adjustments.
• Examples of CSF may include the following: (1) For inventory availability:
o Accurate inventory records
o Effective and accurate decision rules for the replenishment decision
o Well-functioning order-placing and follow-up system
o Effective and loyal supplier base.
1) For order status and order tracking:
o Accurate on-time updating and reporting information
o Effective well-planned documentation procedures
o Traceability via sound operating and flow procedures. Frameworks: The Project Integrate Framework, Enterprise application integration, ELPIF: E-Logistics Processes Integration Framework Based on Web Services, Resource Integration Framework of Logistics Resource Grid (LRG).

• Differences: Tangibility of Output, Production on Demand, Customer Specific Production, Labour Requirements and Automated Processes, Physical Production Location, Degree of customer contact, Uniformity of inputs, Quality assurance, Inventory, Wages, Ability to patent
• Major functional areas: Finance, Operations, Marketing
• Finance, Operation, Operation, Design of the product, Forecasting, Supply
Chain Configuration, Managing the Quality
• Business Process Management (BPM), Business Process Reengineering, Six
Sigma, Supply Chain Management
• Operations Manager Responsibilities:
o Provide leadership
o Make important policy, planning, and strategy decisions.
o Develop, implement and review operational policies and procedures.
o Assist HR with recruiting.
o Help promote a company culture that encourages top performance and high morale.
o Oversee budgeting, reporting, planning, and auditing.
o Work with senior stakeholders.
o Ensure all legal and regulatory documents are filed and monitor compliance with laws and regulations.
o Work with the board of directors.
o Identify and address problems and opportunities for the company.
o Build alliances and partnerships with other organisations.
• Issues:
o Economic conditions,
o Innovating,
o Quality problems,
o Risk management,
o Competing in a global economy,
o Ethical Conduct.
• Importance of capacity planning: Employee Skills, Calculate Accurate
Workloads, Strategies, Charting the Future.
• Design capacity, Effective capacity.
• Available capacity, Expertise, Quality considerations, The nature of demand, Cost, Risks
• There are seven categories of constraints:
o Market: Insufficient demand.
o Resource: Too little of one or more resources (e.g., workers, equipment, and space),
o Material: Too little of one or more materials.
o Financial: Insufficient funds.
o Supplier: Unreliable, long lead time, substandard quality.
o Knowledge or competency: Needed knowledge or skills missing or incomplete.
• Policy: Laws or regulations interfere.
• Inventory:
o Raw materials and purchased parts.
o Partially completed goods, called work-in-process (WIP).
o Finished-goods inventories (manufacturing firms) or merchandise
(retail stores).
o Tools and supplies.
o Maintenance and repairs (MRO) inventory.
o Goods-in-transit to warehouses, distributors, or customers (pipeline inventory).
• Keep track of the inventory, forecast of demand, lead times and lead time variability, holding costs, ordering costs, and shortage costs, classification system for inventory items
• A (very important), B (moderately important), and C (least important), Cycle counting: A physical count of items in inventory, APICS guidelines.
• EOQ variables, average inventory level and number of orders per year.
• Single-period model: Model for ordering of perishables and other items with limited useful lives.
• Shortage cost: Generally, the unrealized profit per unit.
• Excess cost: Difference between purchase cost and salvage value of items left over at the end of a period.
• Continuous Stocking Levels, Discrete Stocking Levels.
• Flow system: High-volume system in which jobs all follow the same sequence.
Flow-shop scheduling: Scheduling for flow systems. Job-shop scheduling: Scheduling for low-volume systems with many variations in requirements.
• Infinite loading: Jobs are assigned to work centres without regard to the capacity of the work centre.
• Finite loading: Jobs are assigned to work centres taking into account the work centre capacity and job processing times.
• Input/output (I/O) control: Managing workflow and queues at work centres.
• Hungarian method: Method of assigning jobs by a one-for one matching to identify the lowest-cost solution.
• Sequencing: Determining the order in which jobs at a work centre will be processed.
• Priority rules: Simple heuristics used to select the order in which jobs will be processed.
• Global priority rules: Incorporate information from multiple workstations when establishing a job sequence.
• The Theory of Constraints- Production planning approach that emphasizes balancing flow throughout a system and pursues a perpetual five-step improvement process centred around the system’s currently most restrictive constraint.
• Scheduling services, Scheduling Multiple Resources, Time–Cost Trade-Offs.
• facilities; workforce; machinery; transportation; technology; quality systems; quality circles; managing and monitoring quality.
• ISO 9000/ EN 29000; TQM; Kaizen, continuous improvement.

• Different qualitative and quantitative approaches to business/management research (e.g. interviewing, archival research, ‘at a distance’ methods, content analysis, surveys, case studies, etc.)
• The strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to business/management research The theoretical foundations of different research methodologies
• The practicalities of business/management research (sources, evidence, dealing with human subjects)
• The ethical, legal and safety dimensions of conducting business/management research Preparing a research question, strategy, and plan Explanations of relevant quantitative and qualitative research methods
• Exercises examining how to apply different research methods
• Explorations of the challenges involved in different research methodologies
• Writing the research proposal