Project Management Professional (PMP) Business Environment and Strategic Alignment Syllabus

What are the three stages of Lewin's Change Management Model?

Unfreeze (prepare for change by challenging the status quo), Change/Transition (implement the new state), and Refreeze (solidify and stabilize the new state).

What are the five stages of the ADKAR change model?

Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement.

What does the ADKAR model focus on?

Individual-level change, ensuring each person moves through Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement for the change to succeed at the organizational level.

What are the five stages of the Kübler-Ross Change Curve as applied to change?

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance — describing the emotional transition people experience during change.

What are the phases of the Bridges' Transition Model?

Ending/Losing/Letting Go; the Neutral Zone (uncertainty between old and new); and the New Beginning.

How does Bridges' Transition Model differ from typical change models?

It focuses on the psychological transition people experience internally, not the external situational change, emphasizing the human emotional journey.

What is the Virginia Satir Change Model's sequence of stages?

Late Status Quo, Resistance (the Foreign Element), Chaos, Transforming Idea, Integration, and New Status Quo.

Why is assessing organizational culture important before implementing change?

Culture (shared values, norms, behaviors) determines how receptive people are; aligning change tactics with culture reduces resistance and increases adoption success.

What is a stakeholder readiness assessment?

An evaluation of stakeholders' awareness, willingness, capability, and capacity to adopt a change, used to tailor engagement and communication strategies.

What is a force field analysis in change management?

A Lewin technique that identifies driving forces (favoring change) and restraining forces (opposing change); change succeeds by strengthening drivers and weakening restrainers.

What are common reasons people resist organizational change?

Fear of the unknown, loss of control or status, lack of trust, poor communication, perceived threat to job security, comfort with the status quo, and change fatigue.

What is a change champion (or change agent)?

An individual who actively promotes, supports, and drives adoption of a change within the organization, helping influence peers and overcome resistance.

What is the purpose of a change adoption (transition) plan?

To define the activities, communications, training, and support needed to move stakeholders from the current state to the future state and embed the change.

What are key levers for driving change adoption?

Clear communication, leadership sponsorship, training and enablement, stakeholder involvement, addressing resistance, quick wins, and reinforcement/incentives.

Why are short-term wins important when executing change?

They demonstrate progress, build momentum and credibility, reduce skepticism, and energize people to sustain the larger change effort (Kotter Step 6).

What does 'sustaining change' mean?

Embedding the change into normal operations and culture so it persists over time and does not revert to the previous state (e.g., Lewin's Refreeze, Kotter's anchoring).

How is change adoption typically measured?

Through adoption metrics such as usage/utilization rates, proficiency levels, benefits realization, employee feedback/surveys, performance improvement, and reduction of workarounds.

What is the difference between an output, an outcome, and a benefit?

An output is the deliverable produced; an outcome is the change in capability/behavior the output enables; a benefit is the measurable improvement in value resulting from the outcome.

What is benefits realization, and when does it typically occur?

The process of ensuring planned benefits are achieved; benefits are often realized after the project closes, during operations, which is why ownership transfers to the business.

What does monitoring the external business environment involve?

Continuously scanning external factors—economic, regulatory, technological, competitive, social, and political—that could affect the project's viability, scope, or value.

What is a PESTLE analysis?

A framework for scanning the external environment across Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental factors.

What is a SWOT analysis used for in the business environment?

Assessing internal Strengths and Weaknesses and external Opportunities and Threats to inform strategic and project decisions.

How can changes in the external business environment affect a project's backlog?

New regulations, market shifts, competitor actions, or technology changes can add, remove, or re-prioritize backlog items and reshape project scope to keep delivering value.

What should a PM do when an external change impacts project scope?

Assess the impact on scope/backlog and value, communicate with stakeholders, re-prioritize the backlog, and route significant baseline changes through integrated change control.

In agile, how does the team respond to external business-environment changes?

By continuously re-prioritizing the product backlog so the highest-value, most relevant items (given the new environment) are delivered first.

What is continuous improvement (Kaizen)?

An ongoing, incremental approach to improving processes, products, or services through small, regular changes driven by everyone in the organization.

What is the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle?

A four-step iterative method for continuous process improvement: Plan a change, Do (implement on a small scale), Check (measure results), and Act (standardize or adjust).

What is a retrospective and how does it support continuous improvement?

A recurring meeting where the team reflects on what went well, what didn't, and what to improve; resulting action items drive incremental process improvements each iteration.

What is a lesson learned, and when should it be captured?

Knowledge gained from project experience (what worked, what didn't, recommendations); it should be captured continuously throughout the project, not just at closure.

What is the difference between explicit and tacit knowledge?

Explicit knowledge is documented and easily codified/shared (manuals, data); tacit knowledge is personal, experience-based, and hard to articulate (insights, intuition, know-how).

What are the goals of knowledge management on a project?

To use existing knowledge and create new knowledge to achieve objectives and contribute to organizational learning, ensuring expertise is shared and not lost when people leave.