PMP Domain #1: Initiating

The Project Management Professional (PMP) is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

Hello, and welcome back to our series on the Project Management Professional®️ (PMP®️) certification. In this article, we will cover everything you need to know about the first domain of the PMP exam: Initiating. Initiating covers 13% of  the PMP exam, meaning that approximately 23 questions will be testing your ability to perform the tasks needed to initiate a project or a phase of a project.

Initiating involves starting up a new project and all the tasks you need to focus on in order to do that efficiently. Before a project can start, there needs to be a clear understanding of the business needs and potential ideas to meet them, as well as a proper evaluation of those ideas and solutions so that the right project is chosen. The project manager then needs to perform several tasks to ensure the project and its objectives are feasible, can be completed effectively and then get formal approval to start the project. You can think of it as laying all the ground-work to ensure a successful project like defining the initial scope, getting financial commitment, identifying stakeholders and generally making sure everyone is on the same page on what the project is about.

There are eight tasks within the initiating domain. They are:

Task 1: Perform project assessment based upon available information, lessons learned from previous projects and meetings with relevant stakeholders in order to support the evaluation of the feasibility of new products or services within the given assumptions and/or constraints.

Task 2: Identify key deliverables based on the business requirements in order to manage customer expectations and direct the achievement of project goals.

Task 3: Perform stakeholder analysis using appropriate tools and techniques in order to (Read more...)