How to Read the ITTO Process Chart Correctly - PMBOK 6th Edition

Hello and welcome everyone. In this lecture, we are going to cover how to read the ITTO process charts properly for your upcoming PMP or CAPM certifications. So just before we start, ITTO stands for Inputs, Tools and Techniques, and Outputs, and there is one matching every single one of the 49 processes in the PMBOK 6th Edition Guide. And if you haven't done so already, be sure to sign up for our 1.5-hour free course at examspm.com/free. The link is also in the the description below. Now let's jump right into it. So here we have the process chart, and what the process chart tells you is PMI's methodology of how to complete a project from start to finish. And your exam is broken down by the process groups or the columns. So there's 13% of the questions will be on initiating, 24% will be on planning, 31% will be on executing, 25% will be on monitoring and controlling, and 7 would be on closing. So you do need to know all 49 of these processes for your upcoming exam. Now if we zoom into one of the processes, let's take Plan Scope Management as an example. You don't only need to know the name of these processes, you need to know what they do and how to complete this process. So let's start with the first portion. Let's first look at how do we complete the objective of this process. In order to do that, we need to know what this process does. So the The plan scope management process is a process where you determine how scope on your project will be defined, how you're going to document the scope, and how you will validate and control the scope. In other words, this is where you're planning out how to do all of the processes related to scope management. So you're not actually going out and planning out your project scope yet, you're just planning out how you are going to do that. That's what the planning processes are for. And so the main output of this process that you're going to get is a scope management plan, which will document all of these things. So how, you know, you will determine your project scope, how the scope will be validated, and how the scope will be controlled throughout your project. Now once you know that, so once you know what this process is all about, you're now ready to move on to the ITTOs, where again ITTO stands for inputs, tools and techniques, and outputs. And what the ITTO tells you is how PMI wants you to actually accomplish accomplish the goal of this process. So you can kind of look at this like cooking. So the inputs are your ingredients, the tools and techniques is the way that you cook the ingredients in order to get the output. So as an example, if you are trying to bake a delicious chocolate birthday cake for a friend of yours, the inputs that you may have include butter, egg, sugar, maybe cocoa powder, etc. The tools and techniques that you, you use in the In your cooking could be mixing and baking and stirring, and then the final output that you get is the delicious chocolate birthday cake. So that's kind of how you can read this chart, as in the output is the final product you're trying to get, the input is the ingredients you're trying to use, and the tools and techniques is how you can transform the inputs into the outputs. So for plan scope management, the inputs that we have include the project management plan, the project charter, the enterprise Environmental Factors, or EEF, and the Organizational Process Assets, or the OPA. So you need to know what each of these mean. You don't actually need to memorize all of the inputs, all of the tools and techniques, and all of the outputs for every single one of the 49 processes. This point is very, very important. I'm going to say it again: you do not need to memorize all of the inputs, all of the tools and techniques, and all of the outputs for all 49 processes. When you are looking at the ITTO charts, here are 2 things that you need to know. You need to ask yourself, do I know what each of these elements are and what they mean? Do I know the definition of them? Do I know what a project management plan is? Do I know what a project charter is? Do I know what the difference between a project charter and project management plan is? If you do, okay great, then now you're ready to move on to the next section. You do the same thing for the tools and techniques. Do I know what an expert judgment is? Do I know what data analysis is? Do I know what meetings are? Then you do the same thing for the outputs. Do I know what a scope management plan is, and do I know what a requirements management plan is? So the first part of reading the ITTO chart is knowing the definition. The second part, and the more crucial part, is connecting the ITTOs into a story for yourself so you understand how to accomplish the end goal of this process. So for example, here the end goal is to produce a scope management plan, which is going to document how you will do all of the other processes within scope management. In order to do so, you want to look at your inputs, which include your project management plan, which may include other planning documents that you want to take into consideration. You may also want to take a look at your project charter, which contains your high-level scope, or other processes in your organization that's listed inside your OPA, which is going to dictate how you can plan out and manage your scope throughout your process. So with all of those inputs that you have gathered, so your— the policies and procedures in your organization, your project environment, your project charter which contains a preliminary scope, and other planning documents in your project management plan. So you're going to use all those inputs, and in order to transform it into your scope management plan, you're going to use expert judgment. An expert is anyone with specialized knowledge in this particular field. You may need to use data analysis, and you may need to meet with your experts in meetings in order to finally create your scope management plan, which is going to document all of these processes and procedures. And another thing is you're also going to create your requirements management plan at the end of this process as well. So I hope you can see here how I told the ITTO chart in a story format, and it makes much more sense as to how to accomplish the end goal of this process. Now let's take a look at another example right now. Let's take a look at Manage Communications. Firstly, we are going to look at the definition of this process to understand what it is that this process is trying to accomplish. The Manage Communications process is the process of creating, collecting, distributing, retrieving, and disposing of project information according to the Communications Management Plan. In other words, in plain English, what this process is trying to accomplish is getting the right information to the right people at the right time. So that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to communicate with people at the right time and to the right people. So now in order to actually do this on our project, we need to look at the ITTOs, or the inputs, tools, and techniques, and outputs. The inputs that we have in this process include our project management plan, project documents, work performance reports, and our project environment, our EEF, and other policies and procedures regarding communication in our organization, which is listed inside our OPA or organizational process assets. So essentially, we're going to look at the things that we need to communicate to the appropriate stakeholders and who our stakeholders are, which is in our stakeholder registry, which is one of our project documents. So we're going to look at who our stakeholders are and all of our work performance reports. So this is what we need to communicate, and then we're going to use a number of tools and techniques such as communication technology. That could be phone calls, that could be emails, that could be Skype, so the different mediums that we can use to communicate that information. We can look at different communication methods, skills, interpersonal and team skills. This is soft skills that you need as a project manager in order to communicate with your stakeholders appropriately about sensitive information at times. We also need to use meetings or project reporting or our PMI or a project management information system as well. These are all tools and techniques that we can use to communicate our messages to the appropriate stakeholders, and the output of this process is the actual project communications that we have communicated to our stakeholders, as well as a number of updates that could be to our project management plan, project documents, or our organizational process assets. One more point about the ITTO right before we end this quick lecture. And that is that you do not need to use every single ITTO on every single process on your actual projects. What the PMBOK is trying to do is be a comprehensive guide that's going to cover any scenario in any industry. For your specific project, you need to tailor the ITTO that you're going to use in order to complete your project successfully. So I hope you learned a lot about the ITTO. What you want to do is look at the ITTO for all 49, those processes, make sure you understand all of the bullet points that follow all of the ITTOs and then connect it in a story for yourself. You can even say it out loud to yourself so you understand how each of those components actually help you accomplish the objective of that process. It's not about memorization. Okay, and if you learned a lot from this and you want to learn more, be sure to sign up for, for our free course at Examspm.com where we will teach you how you can get PMP certified on your first try and in 6 weeks, and I can't wait to see you there. So thank you so much for joining me today, and I hope to see you again in a future video.