PMP Exam Prep 2026: 35 PDUs | PMBOK 8 & AI Management

A project is a temporary, unique effort per the PMBoK guide to create a new product, service, or result with stakeholder involvement and balanced constraints.

Differentiate projects, operations, programs, and portfolios as temporary ventures driving change, ongoing operations delivering stability, coordinated groups of related projects, and strategic collections aligned with the organization's strategic objectives.

Explore the project management life cycle by outlining initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling, and closing, and compare predictive (waterfall), adaptive (agile), iterative, and incremental models to fit different scenarios.

Lead as a project manager, the captain of the project, balancing scope, time, cost, quality, resources, and risk to deliver business value across the project life cycle.

Explore the PMI Talent Triangle’s integrated framework, highlighting ways of working with AI fluency, power skills, and business acumen to lead projects and excel on the PMP exam.

Explore how the PMBOK 8 value delivery system makes projects vehicles for change, delivering through focus areas that balance delivery, people, and outcomes, guiding adaptive leadership and PMP value realization.

Learn how PMBOK 8 positions AI as a data-driven tool that automates planning, execution, monitoring, and reporting, enhances decision making, and supports human judgment to manage risks in data-heavy projects.

Bridge the project manager and business analyst mindsets by balancing project scope and product scope, aligning how, when, why, and what to deliver value for stakeholders.

Explore the difference between project life cycles and product life cycles, showing how projects are delivery sprints that end, while products endure through concept, growth, maturity, and retirement.

Learn how to build and lead a high performing team that is collaborative, self-managed, and accountable, through stages of forming, storming, norming, and adjourning, with emotional intelligence and psychological safety.

Define your team's ground rules and charter to create a project constitution that reduces conflict, clarifies roles with a RACI matrix, and supports psychological safety for continuous improvement.

Clarify roles and responsibilities to enable efficient teamwork and avoid duplication. Explore key players—project manager, sponsor, team members, stakeholders—and apply the RACI matrix across functional, matrix, and agile environments.

Explore conflict management as a natural part of projects, applying PMI’s five strategies and a five-step model to guide open dialogue, resolve issues, and strengthen teams.

Discover how coaching drives immediate performance and mentoring builds long-term capability, guiding teams through active listening, smart goals, and knowledge transfer to develop future leaders.

Lead virtual and distributed teams by establishing clear, asynchronous communication and AI-supported collaboration that builds psychological safety, fairness, and trust across time zones.

Develop emotional intelligence to lead projects by mastering self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills, boosting stakeholder trust and team engagement.

Engage stakeholders early to prevent conflicts and align expectations, using the stakeholder register, power interest grid, and collaborative decision making to build trust and lasting relationships.

Empower team members by granting authority, resources, and confidence to become proactive problem solvers, while project managers foster trust, psychological safety, and clarity of purpose to boost performance.

Create a shared project vision that emotionally and intellectually aligns stakeholders around a clear purpose, guiding decisions, boosting motivation, and sustaining engagement across traditional and agile contexts.

Develop structured problem solving and decision making by diagnosing root causes, generating options, selecting solutions, and using tools like the five whys, fishbone diagram, and decision matrix.

Explore how communication bridges strategy and stakeholders, and how leaders adapt autocratic, democratic, and transformational styles while managing barriers and planning effective project communications.

Map stakeholders with the power/interest grid to prioritize engagement, keeping high power/high interest close and informing the rest to prevent burnout.

Apply the stakeholder cube and salience model to prioritize and engage stakeholders by assessing power, interest, attitude, legitimacy, and urgency for project success.

Build a high performing project team by applying Tuckman's stages, creating a team charter and clear roles, resolving conflict, coaching, mentoring, and empowering, engaging stakeholders, and maintaining a shared vision.

Define and manage project costs by developing a cost management plan and a cost baseline using inputs like the project charter, baselines, EFS, and OPAs, and applying expert judgment.

Plan quality management by defining standards and requirements, using inputs like the project charter, and applying tools such as cost of quality and benchmarking to shape the quality management plan.

Identify, acquire, and manage all resources—people, equipment, budgets, and time—through the project lifecycle using a resource management plan, RACI, RBS, and calendars to align scope, schedule, and costs.

Develop a proactive risk management plan to identify, analyze, and respond to risks and opportunities, monitor them continuously, and document lessons learned using a risk breakdown structure and risk register.

Master procurement planning and contracts by understanding make-or-buy decisions, the four-step life cycle (planning, vendor selection, contract management, closure), and contracts like fixed price, cost reimbursable, and time and materials.

Master project communications and stakeholder engagement by delivering right information at the right time. Use a communications plan and a power–interest grid to tailor updates for sponsors, teams, and others.

Direct and manage project work by leading the team, managing quality and resources, and applying risk, communication, and procurement practices to deliver the plan and satisfy stakeholders.

Monitor and control project work as the project's nervous system, aligning scope, time, cost, and quality using data analysis and work performance reports.

Master change management with a structured plan from change requests to impact analysis and change control board decisions. Communicate changes clearly to stakeholders and monitor outcomes.

Master earned value management (EVM) to monitor scope, schedule, and cost using PV, EV, and AC, and interpret CPI, SPI, and EAC for proactive project control.

Predictive analytics and AI forecasting use historical data and intelligent algorithms to predict scheduling delays and costing overruns, enabling early, data-driven decision making.

Explore PMBOK 8's delivery and development focus area, emphasizing outcome-focused delivery, iterative development, adaptability, and continuous monitoring to deliver usable, valuable project outcomes.

Manage project artifacts as the project's DNA, from charter to final reports, to ensure clear communication, compliance, and a single source of truth through tailored access and version control.

Close the project with a structured closure process that ensures formal acceptance, final product transition, and administrative and contract closure. Capture lessons learned to inform projects and update process assets.

Explore how governance, compliance, and audits shape project management by establishing a steering committee, enforcing internal and external rules, and conducting formal reviews to ensure transparency, accountability, and control.

drive continuous improvement across the project life cycle with the PDCA cycle and Kaizen, and document lessons learned in a centralized repository and register to guide future projects.

Master the Five Whys technique as a core root cause analysis method to peel back layers, identify the underlying cause, and fix the real problem.

Prioritize project requirements using the mask-off technique, linking prioritization to traceability and change control to keep requirements predictable and manageable.

Learn how the Kano model classifies features as must-be, one-dimensional, attractive, indifferent, and reverse, and connect it with traceability, prioritization, and change control to guide value-driven development.

The lecture explains how the project management plan acts as the master recipe, integrating scope, schedule, cost, quality, risk, communications, and resources for successful project delivery.

Master how to identify and manage regulatory, contractual, internal, and ethical compliance across projects, including contracts, ndas, slas, audits, change management, and risk management.

Align every project activity with business value by engaging stakeholders and setting smart objectives. Track value through KPIs and earned value management (EVM), while delivering in incremental, agile steps.

Align each project with the organization's vision and strategic goals by applying corporate, business, and functional strategies and tools like business case and benefits management plan to deliver business value.

Organizational change management (OCM) guides people through change to improve performance and return on investment, distinguishing it from project management and focusing on stakeholders, training, and sustaining new habits.

Explore the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, grounded in responsibility, respect, fairness, and honesty, guiding ethical decision making in project management.

ESG in project management integrates environmental, social, and governance considerations into daily decisions and leadership. PMBOK 8 places ESG in the business environment domain, emphasizing responsible, long-term thinking.

PMBOK 8 defines benefits realization management as ensuring projects deliver measurable benefits beyond closure, with benefits realized over time and tracked by stakeholders.

Deliver continuous value throughout a product’s life, per PMBOK 8, by delivering early and often, reassessing value, adapting plans, and aligning with business goals in a volatile climate.

Explore how to identify compliance and legal requirements, manage value, and apply PMI ethics: responsibility, respect, fairness, and honesty, through a backyard deck case study.

Learn how PMBOK 8 reframes success by shifting from delivering outputs to achieving real business value through strategic alignment that links every project to organizational goals and measurable outcomes.

Organizational agility means sensing change, adapting quickly, and pivoting while delivering value. PMBOK 8 emphasizes adaptability, continuous feedback, and value-based decisions, with projects acting as agility engines.

Explore the agile mindset and the Agile Manifesto to value individuals, working deliverables, customer collaboration, and responding to change, while embracing frequent delivery and adaptive thinking.

Compare traditional predictive project management with agile methods, including sprints and backlogs, and show how hybrid approaches balance stability and flexibility for complex projects.

Explore the scrum framework, its roles, events, and artifacts, and learn how Product Owner, Scrum Master, and developers collaborate through time-boxed sprints to deliver value with transparency, inspection, and adaptation.

Navigate complex projects by balancing predictive and agile approaches into a tailored hybrid that aligns governance, milestones, and backlogs to deliver value through rapid feedback and controlled predictability.

Learn how servant leadership in agile projects flips the traditional hierarchy, empowering teams to self-organize, remove obstacles, and deliver value through collaboration.

Scale agile across multiple teams and enterprise with PMBOK 8 by aligning vision, value, and priorities through a principle-driven, lightweight coordination that enables flow and value delivery in hybrid environments.

Adopt the agile mindset and the Agile Manifesto’s four values, use Scrum and other tools, apply hybrid planning, and leverage metrics like velocity, burndown, and lead time to deliver value.

Explore agile foundations, compare agile to traditional methods, and examine the agile lifecycle, iterations, values, principles, and roles to connect agile to the capm journey.

Explore predictive and adaptive project life cycles, comparing traditional waterfall with agile sprints, product backlog, and DoD to tailor approaches for CAPM success.

Explore Scrum, a lightweight framework that delivers value in short sprints through transparency, inspection, and adaptation, with product backlog, sprint backlog, increment, and the definition of done.

Explore how scrum distributes responsibilities among the product owner, scrum master, and development team to drive agile success, prioritizing value through the product backlog and collaborative delivery.

Master Scrum events, timeboxing, and backlog refinement to plan sprints, align scope, and synchronize teams, from sprint planning to the daily Scrum and scaling frameworks.

Explore extreme programming (xp) as an agile framework built on four values: communication, simplicity, feedback, and courage, guiding practices like pair programming, TDD, and continuous integration for quality software delivery.

Discover Kanban's core practices: visualize the workflow with a Kanban board, limit work in progress, and manage flow for continuous improvement. Contrast with Scrum's timeboxed sprints.

Learn how verification ensures outputs meet requirements and validation delivers real value, linking to quality management, scope management, and stakeholder engagement through KPIs and continuous improvement.

Explore how generalizing specialists blend deep expertise with broad, cross-functional skills to bridge IT and business teams, improve communication, reduce bottlenecks, and enhance agile project outcomes in Capm environments.

Optimize agile teamwork by designing physical, virtual, and hybrid workspaces that enhance communication and resource management. Learn to integrate tools like Jira, MS Teams, and Slack, and apply effective metrics.