Frequently Asked Questions

The IFPPM is structured to be complementary with the Project Management Institute (PMI®) and the International Project Management Association (IPMA).  Certifications from all three can be valuable to your career.

IFPPM.  Established in 2024, the IFPPM focuses on provision of a specific, practical, step-by-step methodology that can be applied to projects from any domain of any size.  Examples, templates, and software guides are provided.  The DPPM certification is designed to be accessible and low cost, available to anyone around the world.  More information on the IFPPM can be found on the About page.

PMI.  Established in 1969, the Project Management Institute provides several project management related certifications, the most well known being the Project Management Professional (PMP).  The PMI has published the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) since 1983, as well as a range of other documentation.  PMI resources document the overall framework for project management, and baseline the standard project management concepts and terminology.  However, the PMI does not provide a specific how-to methodology, or comprehensive example.

IPMA.  Established in 1998, the International Project Management Association certifies individuals against their Individual Competence Baseline (ICB).  The IPMA is focused on developing and certifying competencies of the project manager as a person.

The DPPM methodology addresses management of the project as a whole, and so can be used with any methodology for the development activities within execution.  Options for the development specifically is addressed by the companion document Project Development Methodologies available with the resource downloads. The relationship between project management (in blue) and project development (in green) is shown below:

That is, project management describes how to initiate, plan, execute, monitor & control, and close an entire project.  It can include management of stakeholders, business cases, work breakdown structures, precedence diagrams, schedules, risk registers, procurement, quality assurance, earned value management, multi-functional teams, and other matters.  A single project can include many domains, including business process, hardware, software, facilities, financial, legal, communications, support, training, and others.  The DPPM methodology addresses management of the project as a whole.

Project development describes how the specific product, service, or result is created within the execution stage. Development methodologies can include processes for organization and management of the development team, and the structuring and sequencing of design, development, reviews, and testing of the project output. The companion document to the DPPM reference, the book Project Development Methodologies, is available at no cost from the Resources page, and provides more information on the main options for development methodologies, including Waterfall, Incremental, Iterative, Spiral, Lean, Kanban, Agile, Scrum, and others.  The final section also provides over-arching best practice recommendations for structuring of the development activities of any project.

Yes, the Overview chapter of the DPPM standard and course describes the role of the Project Manager, since their leadership is critically important to project success.  A thorough description is provided of the role, attributes, and skills needed by the Project Manager, including the practical essentials of communication, team formation, team management, negotiation, and leadership.  These sections provide a mini-course in the most important soft-skills the project manager requires for success.

The rest of the DPPM standard and course then return again and again to the importance of the project manager to project success, including description of the essentials of building the best team, delegation, motivation, conflict resolution among team members, project reporting to management, the most constructive way to communicate with stakeholders when the project is under stress, management of expectations, persuasion techniques, and best practices for closing the team.  Throughout the course there is repeated emphasis on the importance of the project manager telling the truth about the project scope, schedule, budget, and risks, to protect their team, the Sponsor, the Customer, and themselves, and recommends the most helpful and constructive language to do so.

The follow-on course Project Management Lessons Learned (PMLL) then goes deeper, discussing common real life challenges the project manager will often encounter as they manage projects and the best way to address them.  Among other topics, the PMLL course describes how to leverage the power of accountability, the best way to build, manage, and protect the risk budget, the importance of broadcasting a success oriented mindset to the team, the importance of telling the truth, and a real life example of how a commitment to politely telling the truth can make your career.

The DPPM training courses have been taken by more than 150K people.  More than 2,000 people are now listing a DPPM certificate or certification as a career differentiator on LinkedIn.  The number of people that are DPPM certified is expected to grow even more over the coming years.

The best practices of the DPPM methodology were originally collected in 2007 by Dr. William Stewart based on his training and experience managing complex projects in aerospace.  But he did not invent any of it.  The many elements of the DPPM methodology were developed by hundreds of people figuring out the best way to manage their projects over many decades.

For example, the Gantt chart was first formalized by Henry L. Gantt in the early twentieth century for application in his client’s factories.  The critical path method was first developed by Kelley and Walker at Remington Rand in 1959. The critical chain methodology was developed by Eliyahu Goldratt in 1997.  Several of the concepts, such as the work breakdown structure, were developed in the aerospace industry to manage the extreme complexity of large technology projects.  And so on.

The DPPM methodology is simply a formal collection of the core thread of practical best practices that can be applied to any size project in any domain. The credit for the development of all the individual elements goes to the hundreds of project managers that developed the many processes and tools collected in the DPPM documentation to manage their projects over many years.

The DPPM process is completely compliant with the PMI PMBoK, with one small difference: some versions of PMI documentation place acceptance activities in the monitoring & control stage, while the DPPM course and standard describes them in the closing chapter.

The PMBoK places acceptance in the monitoring & control stage so closing starts only after all the deliverables have been verified, to protect closing from starting when there is a lot more work left than we realize.  In general, this is a good idea.  For example, you should never pay a contractor all of their final invoice when there is still work outstanding.  And the DPPM flowchart also places acceptance in monitoring and controlling as scope is completed.

However, in practice, in many organizations there is a significant difference between the build and scope verification parts of the project, with verification involving changes in the team, participation from contract personnel, and conduct of very formal processes.  Therefore, as a practical matter, scope verification and acceptance is often categorized as a closing process in actual implementation.  The DPPM standard and course follow this common approach, describing best practices for scope verification in a single Acceptance section in the closing stage.  While, of course, emphasizing that scope verification and acceptance should be carried out all the way through the project whenever portions of the scope complete.

Other than this small difference, the DPPM methodology is completely PMBoK compliant.  Indeed, many students of the DPPM course have commented that the course was invaluable in helping them pass the PMI PMP® exam.