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During the days of my PMP exam preparation, I wanted to have a tool that would help me master certain aspects of the exam. It wasn’t necessarily your usual exam simulator or a flashcard set. However, development of such a tool was clearly “out of scope” for the project …

What’s the difference between Project Schedule and Schedule Baseline? I’ve answered this question numerous times in emails, forums and blog comments. But it keeps coming back to me. It is high time I address it in a separate post, and settle it once and for all. If …

The difference between Quality Assurance and Quality Control is one of the most frequently asked questions and among the most commonly confused concepts for the PMP exam. Going by the emails and comments I receive, I’m sure many of you are interested in this topic. In this post …

When I started this blog last year, the articles were focused on the PMP certification process like how to become a PMP, FAQs, audits etc. As time went on, I started focusing more on exam preparation, tips and study notes. The older posts got buried. For regular visitors, it …

Project Estimation and PERT (Part 8): Standard deviation is a statistical concept that gives a measure of the ‘spread’ of the values of a random variable around the mean of a distribution. It shows how much variation there is from the average or the mean value. The more the variation …

Project Estimation and PERT (Part 7): The expected duration of your project is 48 days and standard deviation is 4 days. Your management wants to know the project duration estimate with a 95% confidence level. What estimate would you give them? I’m not going to answer this question …

Project Estimation and PERT (Part 6): If you have been following the series on PERT, then you have developed a good understanding of probability and statistical concepts as applied to projects. In this post, we are going to see how Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) and Critical Path …

Project Estimation and PERT (Part 5): So far we have learned about the basics of PERT, how PERT is used to estimate activity completion time, and how the PERT formula was derived. We know that a project manager has to wear several hats. In this article, we are going …

PERT Formula (Part 4): We saw the formulas for PERT estimate, variance and standard deviation of an activity duration in study guides, and accepted them like Newton’s three laws of motion. Did we try to figure out how those formulas were derived? Do we know the underlying assumptions …

Three Point Estimate (Part 2): An estimate by definition is a guess, albeit an educated one. If estimates had to be always accurate, then they wouldn’t be called estimates. Every task involves an element of uncertainty or risk. A good estimate incorporates the uncertainty or risk involved in …