CompTIA Project+ (PK0-005) Complete Course & Practice Exam

Discover how project management turns ideas into tangible outcomes by applying methodologies, defining scope, managing teams and budgets, and delivering new value through structured templates and standards.

Develop essential project management skills by balancing adaptability, discipline, and strong interpersonal relationships; plan meticulously, collaborate across teams, and apply critical thinking to solve problems and adapt to change.

Discover how project management brings order and efficiency, saving money and preventing costly errors through checklists, planning, contingency reserves, and governance considerations.

Differentiate operational and project work, noting how environment, roles, and structure affect communication; a project is unique, has a specific purpose, and is temporary.

Explore functional, projectized, and matrix organizational structures and how they shape project teams, budgets, and decision authority, including advantages, disadvantages, and the project manager’s role.

Explore project management roles from project manager to PMO, and influential roles like stakeholders, sponsors, customers, and end users, focusing on responsibilities, communication, and strategic alignment.

Explore how programs group related projects to achieve big goals, how program managers coordinate dependencies and stakeholders, and how portfolios prioritize projects for strategic alignment and resource optimization.

Explore how the business case justifies a project by outlining the problem, options, and financial overview. Learn how environmental, social, and governance factors and storytelling connect stakeholders to project value.

Learn to build a compelling business case by presenting the current state and future state with aligned metrics, side-by-side comparisons, and visuals such as flowcharts.

Assess the financial impact of a project by calculating roi through one of three equivalent formulas, comparing financial value, costs, and net profit to guide decisions.

Explore environmental, social, and governance factors and how they influence business case approvals, project design, and corporate identity, including environmental impact, social responsibility, governance, and branding.

Explore project management methodologies and frameworks, from waterfall, agile, Scrum, and Kanban to PRINCE2 and SAFe, highlighting strengths, weaknesses, and how to select the right approach for IT projects.

Explore the waterfall project management method, a linear six-phase approach—requirements, design, implementation, testing, delivery, maintenance—with its advantages, disadvantages, and ideal use cases.

Compare Waterfall and Agile project management, explore iterative and incremental development, and examine how Agile delivers value early, adapts to change, and involves user feedback.

Learn Scrum, a lightweight, customer-centric agile framework delivering iterative value through empiricism and lean thinking, with five values, three pillars, four roles, and a four-step process using product backlog.

Learn kanban, visualizing work on a board, limit work in progress, make policies explicit, manage flow, implement feedback loops, and improve collaboratively while evolving experimentally.

Explore extreme programming (xp), an agile software development framework that puts the customer on the team, emphasizes simplicity and continuous integration, and uses paired programming and test first practices.

Explore DevOps and DevSecOps, integrating development and IT operations with automation to accelerate the software lifecycle, while embedding security through CI/CD and a shared security culture.

Explore the scaled agile framework (SAFe) that coordinates multiple teams through agile release trains, iterations, and program increments, balancing alignment with autonomy.

Explore the software development life cycle as a flexible framework, with planning, requirements, design and prototyping, development, testing, deployment, operations and maintenance, and models like waterfall, iterative, spiral, and agile.

Explore PRINCE2, a process-based project management method with seven principles, themes, and processes, and learn how tailoring and clearly defined roles guide governance.

Compare waterfall and agile project management to determine the best fit for different projects. Explore how product ownership, team composition, communication, requirements, budgets, scheduling, and environmental factors shape method selection.

Compare waterfall and agile product ownership and outline the roles of product owner, project manager, and product manager across a product’s lifecycle, plus how backlog and WBS drive collaboration.

Compare Waterfall and Agile team composition, size, cross-functional roles, and resource allocation, and show how Scaled Agile coordinates several small Agile teams to support larger projects.

Compare how waterfall and agile methods handle stakeholder communication, channels, and updates. Learn to tailor handling of changes and working agreements so teams stay aligned throughout iterative development.

Compare waterfall and agile approaches by how requirements shape scope, cost, and time, then explain progressive elaboration and customer-driven change through product demos.

Highlight budget and schedule choices for waterfall and agile projects, contrasting rigid waterfall costs with agile's flexible, iteration-based cost planning tied to deliverables.

Explore how environmental factors shape agile and waterfall approaches, including culture, development processes, and industry standards, and how teams embrace iterative and incremental design and collaboration.

Initiate the project by assembling the team, defining roles with RAM (RACI), and establishing project initiation documents, including the charter, scope statement, records management plan, and kickoff meeting.

Explore project team roles and responsibilities, from project manager and sponsor to business analyst, architect, developer, tester, subject matter expert, vendor, and stakeholder, plus core and extended team dynamics.

Identify and assemble project team by evaluating skillsets, availability, and roles, customizing the structure to fit the project and establishing an organizational chart with sponsor, steering committee, and project manager.

Define who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed for each task in a RAM (RACI) chart. Apply the seven steps to create RAM during initiation and improve communication.

Learn how to identify, prioritize, understand, and develop an engagement plan for stakeholders across a project using a stakeholder engagement plan and a power impact grid.

Review and prepare project initiation documents to establish a shared understanding of scope, timeline, and team structure, using prior artifacts and KPIs to prevent miscommunication and scope creep.

Explore how KPIs, SMART goals, and OKRs measure project performance with leading and lagging indicators, and visualize timelines using roadmaps, milestone charts, and Gantt charts.

Explore the project charter and scope statement, their initiation-phase roles, and how templates and team collaboration define purpose, deliverables, milestones, risks, and alignment with stakeholders.

Develop a records management plan in the initiation phase to classify data into public, internal, confidential, and restricted, document essential project decisions, and outline creation, storage, and archival standards.

Kick off the project with a live synchronous meeting to align on purpose, goals, and plan after charter approval, build team rapport, and clarify details to prevent miscommunication.

Compare and apply communication management concepts to facilitate effective meetings, manage teams and resources, and perform planning phase activities.

Explore communication methods and modalities in project management, comparing synchronous and asynchronous timing, written, verbal, and nonverbal formats, and formal versus informal internal and external audiences.

Learn to manage language, time-zone, technology, and cultural barriers in project communication, optimize word choice, use interpreters and captions, and apply asynchronous methods to keep teams connected.

Identify the temporary meeting roles of attendees, facilitator, and scribe to keep meetings productive, document decisions, and tailor content to the audience and outcomes.

Share information to educate or persuade audiences through demonstrations, status updates, and standups, quickly aligning stakeholders on product updates and project progress.

Decisive meetings help project managers evaluate options, make clear decisions, and build support with an eight-or-fewer member group through agendas; examples include task setting, project steering, and refinement meetings.

Collaborative meetings empower project managers to gather customer requirements and spark solutions through focus groups, workshops, joint application development sessions, and brainstorming, balancing diverse participation and structured agendas.

Explore essential project meeting artifacts to stay organized, including agendas, time boxes, action items, minutes, and follow ups, plus the power start agenda for clear, productive meetings.

Learn the team lifecycle through Tuckman's five stages and master conflict management by identifying substantive and emotional conflicts, their causes, and applying smoothing, forcing, compromising, collaborating, and avoiding.

Explore project management tools across domains 1 and 3, applying meeting management techniques and managing resources, while selecting tools—from cloud to on-premise—plus collaboration and scheduling tools for effective projects.

Compare cloud-based, on-premise, and local installation options for project management software, highlighting access methods, pricing models, overhead, and total cost of ownership.

Explore essential meeting tools for project managers, including calendaring, conferencing platforms, surveys and polls, and print media, to organize teams, facilitate participation, and drive informed decisions.

Explore project tools, including ticketing or case management systems and scheduling tools, that streamline work and generate reports and dashboards, plus productivity tools like text editors, word processors, and spreadsheets.

Explore common project diagrams such as Gantt charts, flow charts, decision trees, data flow diagrams, mind maps, and quadrant diagrams. See how these visuals convey timelines, processes, dependencies, and decisions.

Explore collaboration tools for real-time multi-author editing, file sharing, and workflow and e-signature platforms. Learn how knowledge bases and whiteboards support distributed teams while managing permissions, revisions, and security.

Explore email, chat, SMS, face-to-face, telephone, video conferencing, and enterprise social media as project management tools, highlighting advantages, limitations, and suitable use cases.

Master the eight elements of a communication plan—goals, stakeholders, team members, artifacts, channels, communication recipients, frequency, and outcomes—and see how a formal plan reduces overhead and enhances transparency.

Develop a communication plan by identifying stakeholders and their preferences, creating a plan with goals, team members, artifacts, channels, recipients, frequency, and outcomes to guide engagement and reliability.

Develop an escalation plan that defines categories, levels, owners, and triggers to rapidly resolve project issues. Create and approve this plan in initiation to improve issue visibility and problem solving.

Maintain communication records by enforcing a records management plan that handles data classified as public, confidential, or critical, ensuring security, archiving, and integrity of project communications.

Analyze how project managers implement solution design, balance trade-offs, ensure compatibility, and create high-level and low-level design documents, with emphasis on agile and governance considerations.

Master the solution design process to optimize projects within the operating environment, define high level design and low level design, and set non-functional requirements to minimize changes.

Learn how functional and nonfunctional requirements shape solution design, explore the ilities like scalability, usability, security, and apply weighting to evaluate trade-offs.

Explore a solution design approach that weighs functional and non-functional requirements, constraints, and environmental factors, culminating in a detailed design document with high-level and low-level designs.

Explore solution design in agile projects, balancing up-front and iterative design, using non-functional and stakeholder requirements, with user stories and sprint-based collaboration to refine design across iterations.

Explore the law of diminishing returns and the Pareto principle to identify the 20% of causes delivering 80% of the benefit. Apply Pareto charts in solution design.

Explore information technology infrastructure and security concepts for project management, including solution design, multi-tier architectures, data storage, databases, data warehouses, and ERP/CRM software.

Explore data classification from public to restricted, protect PII and PHI, and apply data handling, privacy laws, and intellectual property guidelines for compliant projects.

Learn how project managers protect sensitive information with digital and operational security, enforce least-privilege access, use multi-factor authentication and virtual private networks, and manage background screening and security clearances.

Identify, acquire, and allocate financial, physical, and human resources across the project life cycle to maintain productivity. Leverage needs assessments, gap analysis, and succession planning for informed decisions.

Explore the three resource types: human, physical, and capital, and their life cycles, including acquisition, management, and decommissioning, plus budgeting and capacity considerations to support project success.

Learn how to source and allocate internal and external resources, develop a procurement plan, and choose between dedicated and shared resources to optimize project schedules.

Calculate shared resource capacity by identifying total hours and overhead, then determine disposable time and divide by the number of projects. Allocate the result per project as an upper limit.

Explore the resource lifecycle across acquisition, maintenance, improvement, and retirement for physical and human resources. Identify how end-of-life notices, contingency planning, and succession planning support resilient operations.

Conduct a structured four-step needs assessment to identify project requirements, current resources, and gaps, then plan to address them with a balanced resource approach.

Use gap analysis to identify skill, feature, function, and utilization gaps between current and desired states, then address them with training, hiring, or implementing quality control plans.

Explore resource optimization techniques to balance workloads and prevent over-allocation, using resource smoothing to distribute work without shifting end dates and resource leveling to extend the timeline when needed.

Explore gap analysis diagrams, including fishbone, skills matrix, and histograms, to identify root causes, match skills with interest, and track resource utilization over time.

Master the resource management process through five overlapping steps: estimate resources via needs assessment, secure them with planning and negotiations, train team members, allocate resources, and monitor and adjust resources.