The Examination Content Outline (ECO) organizes the exam material into three performance domains:
• People
• Process
• Business Environment
The People domain concerns skills and methods that help you succeed as a project manager and that you can use to help others succeed on projects. These include servant leadership, team building, motivation, and conflict management. We will focus on specific tasks listed in the ECO, appropriate to each of the following chapters. To start, here is a good list of “people skills” a successful project manager needs:
• Active listening
• Adaptive leadership
• Coaching and mentoring
• Collaboration
• Conflict resolution
• Emotional intelligence
• Facilitation
• Individual
performance evaluation
• Negotiation
• Participatory decision making
• Team development
• Personal integrity and
trust building
• Rewards and
recognition systems
• Team performance evaluation
• Understanding of motivation
The Process domain includes the technical project management skills, methods, and the activities needed to manage a project and deliver the benefits for which the project was undertaken. People work together in this effort—the project manager and team—so wouldn’t you expect to be using skills and abilities from the People domain? Of course! You lead the organization of the project and facilitate the development of its product with these skills alongside a balanced understanding of the business environment in which you are operating.
The tasks in the Process domain involve managing many of the processes you have probably already handled in your experience as a project manager. They include the management of the following project management processes, along with the integration of all aspects of the project and other related tasks:
• Communications
• Budget and Resources
• Quality
• Procurement
• Risk
• Schedule
• Scope
• Stakeholder engagement
Managing project governance, artifacts, issues, changes, the use and transfer of lessons learned, and product turnover to operations are also part of this domain. Once the project has been closed and turned over, a key measure of success is the continuation of the projects value and benefits (also part of the Business Environment domain).
Projects occur within the larger organization and business environment. Let’s say you have the skills associated with people and experience with project management processes. You also need to know how to navigate the internal and external business environments. You probably know this, but you may not have thought about it as a separate factor in your success.
The presentation of the business environment as a separate ECO domain helps you focus on understanding the organization in which you work and the environment in which it does business. Understanding the business and environmental factors are critical to accomplishing project objectives for the betterment of your organization and its stakeholders. Let’s take as an example the task of evaluating and delivering project benefits. You can only accomplish this task if you use skills related to the People and Process domains together with a complete understanding of your organization’s culture, processes, and practices, and of the external, cultural, and legal environments in which they operate.
As another example, let’s say that as part of renovating a library, the project manager plans to work with the city on enhancing transit options for getting to the library. Then they hear that a new highway interchange will be built nearby with a major transit hub included. This will affect the project in a number of ways. Organizations evaluate the external business environment during project selection. Then the project manager continuously monitors the business environment as they plan, execute, and control the project to ensure that environmental changes do not negatively affect project objectives.