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GAQM PPM study materials
GAQM PPM study resources

GAQM PPM: Project Management

GAQM PPM · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

All guide sections

Project Management

What this domain tests

The Project Management domain is effectively the whole GAQM PPM syllabus: one domain, but questions that walk the entire life cycle. Expect items that ask you to place a tool in the right process group, pick the correct output of a process, or compute a schedule or earned-value figure - not simply recite a definition. The five process groups (initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, closing) form the backbone; the knowledge areas (scope, schedule, cost, quality, resource, communications, risk, procurement, stakeholder, integration) are the labels questions hang on.

Rules worth memorising

  • A project is temporary and produces a unique product, service or result; operations are ongoing and repetitive. A stem describing repeating work with no defined end is not a project.
  • The charter authorises both the project and the project manager. It comes from the sponsor, precedes the project management plan, and is the document a manager references when authority is challenged.
  • The scope baseline is the scope statement plus the WBS plus the WBS dictionary. Changes to it pass through integrated change control, never directly to the team.
  • The critical path is the longest-duration path through the network, so it sets the shortest possible project duration and carries zero total float. Imposed deadlines can push float negative.
  • Crashing adds resources to critical-path activities and costs money; fast-tracking overlaps activities and adds risk. Both are schedule compression, not scope reduction.
  • Quality assurance is process-focused and preventive; quality control is product-focused and detective.

Worked example

At the end of month two a work package has BAC 40,000, PV 20,000, EV 16,000 and AC 22,000. CPI = EV / AC = 16,000 / 22,000 = 0.73, so the project is over budget. SPI = EV / PV = 16,000 / 20,000 = 0.80, so it is behind schedule. Forecast with the cumulative CPI continuing: EAC = BAC / CPI = 40,000 / 0.7273 ≈ 55,000, giving a variance at completion of about −15,000. Read the signs first - most answer options differ only in whether cost and schedule are ahead or behind.

Traps that cost marks

Mixing up the charter and the plan; describing quality assurance as testing; treating total float as free slack that can be consumed without notification; reporting SPI as a cost indicator; and ignoring the words "first" or "next", which ask for the correct sequence step rather than any valid action.