Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)

Explore organizational governance frameworks defining rules, policies, procedures, norms, relationships, systems, and processes that guide project execution, objective setting, and the monitoring and assessment of risk and performance.

The project manager acts as the project CEO, accountable and visible from initiation to closing, chairs communication with stakeholders, and coordinates the charter, budget, and resources like a conductor.

Lead and motivate teams by negotiating with suppliers and contractors, communicating clearly, and applying problem solving and critical thinking to meet scope, time, budget, and stakeholder needs.

Explore project integration by covering process groups and ten knowledge areas, develop the project charter and management plan, monitor and control work, and implement integrated change control through closure.

Coordinate and integrate all project management process groups and knowledge areas from start to finish, balancing resources, time, and costs while tailoring approaches and communicating to manage interdependencies.

Develop the project charter to authorize the project, build an integrated project management plan, and execute, monitor, and control work while managing integrated change control and project closure.

Explore project integration in the initiation process and learn to develop the project charter, detailing inputs, tools and techniques, and outputs that authorize the project and empower the project manager.

Justify project investment with a business case detailing business needs and a cost-benefit analysis, and establish project boundaries as inputs to the project charter.

Define and authorize the project via the charter outputs, naming the sponsor, outlining purpose, deliverables, milestones, budget, risks, and approval criteria.

Review chapter five coverage: project charter as starting approval, project management plan, directing and managing the work, monitoring and controlling, and integrated change control with the Change Control Board.

Define the scope management plan to document how the project and product scope will be defined, validated, and controlled, and use inputs, tools, techniques, and outputs to guide scope management.

Explore project scope management by learning to determine, document, and manage stakeholder needs and requirements through the collecting requirements process.

Capture and document business, stakeholder, functional, non-functional requirements, plus readiness, data conversion, training, milestones, contractual obligations, and tests, certifications, and quality criteria for successful project deliverables.

Explore tools and techniques for project scope definition, including expert judgment, data analysis, multiple criteria, and decision making; develop interpersonal and team skills, facilitation, and product analysis.

Identify the inputs to the work breakdown structure, including the project management plan, scope management plan, and project documents such as the project scope statement, requirements, documentation, briefs, and opex.

Apply expert judgment to build a work breakdown structure that hierarchically decomposes the project scope into work packages, linking deliverables, cost, and schedule for control.

Learn how the scope baseline, including scope statement, WBS, and WBS dictionary, defines scope while control accounts, work packages, and planning packages generate outputs like assumption logs and requirements documentation.

Apply inspection to validate scope by measuring, examining, and validating deliverables against product acceptance criteria. Conduct reviews or walk-throughs, and use stakeholder voting to decide acceptance.

Use data analysis, variance analysis, and trend analysis to control project scope. Identify the cause and magnitude of variance relative to the scope baseline and decide corrective or preventive actions.

Explore project schedule management within planning and monitoring, covering planned schedule management, activity definition, sequencing, duration estimation, and the development, scheduling, and control of the schedule.

Plan schedule management defines the policies, procedures, and documentation for planning, developing, managing, executing, and controlling the project schedule to guide its timely completion, with agile, iterative, and poll-based scheduling.

Explore how the schedule management plan, a component of the project management plan, defines criteria, thresholds, and time-boxed methods for developing, monitoring, and controlling the schedule, including earned value metrics.

Define activities with activity list, milestones, and attributes, using rolling wave or agile planning to support change requests, integrated change control, and baseline schedule and cost comparisons to actual progress.

Identify and document relationships among project activities to define a logical sequence of work. Apply this sequencing throughout the project to maximize efficiency under constraints.

Identify the outputs of plan schedule management, focusing on duration estimates and the basis for those estimates. Update project documents with activity attributes, assumptions, and lessons learned.

Explore schedule compression techniques, including fast tracking and crashing, and learn how parallelizing activities on the critical path can shorten project duration while managing costs and risks.

Analyze schedule performance using earned value analysis, schedule variance, and schedule performance index. Apply trend analysis, variance analysis, what-if scenarios, critical path, and PMIS for optimization and compression.

Identify the inputs to planning cost management, including the project charter, the project management plan, the schedule management plan, the risk management plan, IFS, and all parties.

Learn to estimate costs by identifying resources, including people, equipment, and services, evaluate make-versus-buy options, account for currency fluctuations, and refine assumptions as the project progresses.

Aggregate estimated costs of activities to determine a budget and establish an authorized cost baseline. Use the baseline to monitor performance, identify variances, and compare actual costs to planned costs.

Explore cost management outputs, including the cost baseline, funding requirements, project document updates, cost estimates, and the project schedule risk register.

Monitor project spending, update the cost baseline, and manage changes to keep the baseline intact throughout the project, linking planning to execution.

Summarize inputs for cost management: project management plan, cost management plan, cost baseline, performance measurement baseline, project documents, lessons learned, funding requirements, performance data, and organizational process assets.

Explore tools and techniques for cost control, including expert judgment, data analysis, earned value analysis, variance and trend analysis, reserve analysis, and performance index within project management information systems.

Explore the fundamentals of project quality management and its role in project success. Learn how to plan for quality management, how to manage quality, and how to control quality.

Identify inputs for quality management: the project charter, the project management plan, the requirements management plan, the risk management plan, the stakeholder engagement plan, project documents, IFS, and pays.

Update key quality management outputs, including the quality management plan, quality metrics, risk management plan, scope baseline, and documents like lessons learned, requirements, traceability matrix, risk register, and stakeholder register.

Identify the inputs to manage quality, including the project management plan, project documents, lessons learned, quality control measures, quality metrics, risk report, and OPAs.

Explore affinity diagrams and Ishikawa fishbone diagrams to group defect causes—people, process, equipment, environment, and management—while using flow charts, histograms, matrix and scatter diagrams to analyze quality.

Use project management plan and quality management plan as inputs to control quality, including the lessons learned register, quality metrics, test and evaluation documents, change requests, and work performance data.

Outputs from quality control measurements verify deliverables and inform work performance information. Update the project management plan and quality management plan, plus project documents, logs, and test and evaluation documents.

Review chapter nine focuses on the core project quality processes: plan quality management, manage quality, and control quality.

Identify, acquire, and manage resources for effective resource management, ensuring the right resources are available for the project manager and team at the right time and place.

Define how to estimate, require, manage, and use physical and team resources within plan resource management, detailing physical resources (equipment, materials, facilities, infrastructure), human resources, and their inputs into planning.

Apply tools and techniques for plan resource management, including expert judgment, data representation, hierarchical charts, the work breakdown structure with its dictionary, and the raci matrix.

Define outputs for plan resource management, including the resource management plan, team charter, and project document updates such as the assumption log and risk register.

Examine inputs for estimating activity resources, including the project management plan, the resource management plan, scope baseline, project documents, the IFS, and the opposite.

Apply expert judgment and bottom up, analogous, and parametric estimating to determine activity resources using data analysis, alternative analysis, project management information systems, and meetings.

The lecture outlines tools and techniques for developing project teams using the Tuckman ladder, detailing forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning.

Identify the outputs of developing the team, including team performance assessments, change requests, and updates to the resource management plan, schedule, team assignments, and lessons learned.

Identify the inputs for resource management control, including the project management plan, project documents, resource assignments, schedule, resource breakdown structure, risk register, agreements, and organizational process assets.