Project Management Fundamentals and Core Concepts
Projects, Programs, Portfolios
A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result. Temporary means a defined start and end; unique means it is not routine repetition. Ongoing repetitive work is operations. Programs group related projects for coordinated benefits; portfolios group projects, programs, and operations to meet strategic objectives. Many exam items simply ask you to classify a scenario.
Process Groups and Knowledge Areas
The traditional framework organizes work into five process groups - initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing - across ten knowledge areas (scope, schedule, cost, quality, resource, communications, risk, procurement, stakeholder, plus integration). Initiating produces the project charter and stakeholder register; planning produces baselines; monitoring and controlling compares performance to plan and manages change; closing gains acceptance, transfers the product, and archives lessons learned. Common traps: believing lessons learned are only captured at the end (they are captured continuously and archived at close), and assuming a project manager in a weak matrix has authority to commit resources.
Structure, Tailoring, and Value
Organizational structure shapes authority. Functional and weak matrix structures leave the project manager as a coordinator; balanced matrix shares authority with functional managers; strong matrix and projectized structures give the project manager real authority over resources. Modern practice emphasizes principles and value delivery over rigid process compliance, and delivery approach - predictive, hybrid, or adaptive - is chosen based on requirement stability, uncertainty, risk, and stakeholder involvement.
Rule of thumb: ask “temporary and unique?” If yes, it is a project.
Worked example: A service desk answering tickets daily is operations. Launching a new ticketing system is a project. Managing that system's rollout alongside a data migration and a training program is a program.