PMP Exam Preparation Course: 35 Contact Hours for PMI, 2024

Discover how projects deliver unique products, services, or results within a temporary endeavor to create value for stakeholders. Learn the PMBoK view of project management and how organizations drive change.

Clarify the relationship between projects, programs, portfolios, and operations management, and how governance and prioritization align to organizational strategy and strategic objectives.

Explore the project and development life cycles, from predictive waterfall to adaptive agile, including iterative and incremental approaches, phase gates, and how to tailor life cycles to project needs.

Define the data, information, and reports lifecycle in project management, showing how raw data becomes information and then work performance reports for stakeholders using the PMIS.

Develop and align the project business case and benefits management plan before project start, with sponsor responsibility and project manager oversight to ensure ongoing alignment with charter and plan.

Explore how enterprise environmental factors and organizational process assets shape projects, as internal or external influences that serve as inputs to project management processes.

The PMO standardizes project governance, shares resources and methodologies, and supports, controls, or directs projects. It aligns strategy and measures value across portfolios and programs.

Explore project manager competencies through the PMI talent triangle: technical project management, leadership, and strategic business management. Tailor tools and engage stakeholders across project sphere of influence to maximize value.

Analyze project management processes that drive the life cycle through inputs, tools, techniques, and outputs. Compare agile and traditional approaches, and note the three process categories and continuous improvement.

Identify the five process groups—initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, closing—and the ten knowledge areas that drive project success through defined inputs, tools, and outputs.

Introduces the integration management knowledge area and its seven processes. Shows how the project manager unifies outputs across knowledge areas and coordinates work from charter to close.

Develop the project charter as an internal contract that authorizes the project, links it to organizational strategy, and creates the assumption log, using inputs like the business case and agreements.

Develop project management plan consolidates subsidiary plans into an integrated document that defines how the project will be executed, monitored, and closed, using inputs from the charter and other plans.

Direct and manage project work executes the project management plan, applies approved change requests, and delivers project outcomes, generating work performance data and the issue log for ongoing control.

Leverage existing knowledge and create new knowledge to manage project knowledge and drive organizational learning, capture lessons learned, and improve future projects through explicit and tacit knowledge sharing.

Track and review project work to meet the performance objectives in the project management plan, producing work performance reports and change requests to update plans as needed.

Analyze and document every change request through the integrated change control process, approve or reject via the change control board, and update the change log and project baselines.

Close the project or phase by finalizing activities, archiving lessons learned, and transitioning the final product and deliverables to operations, guided by inputs from the charter and management plan.

This quiz-based lecture covers project integration management, direct and manage project work, work authorization system, change control, risk management, configuration management, and the project management information system.

Define and control the project scope using scope management, requirements collection, WBS creation, and scope validation, while distinguishing product scope from project scope in predictive and agile life cycles.

Plan scope management by defining, validating, and controlling project and product scope, guided by inputs, tools, and outputs such as the project charter, life cycle, and expert judgment.

Learn to collect and document stakeholder requirements, align them with project scope, and trace them through the requirements documentation and traceability matrix using seven inputs and elicitation techniques.

Define the project and product scope by filtering requirements and detailing deliverables to form the project scope statement, guiding the scope baseline and work breakdown structure.

Learn how to create a work breakdown structure by decomposing deliverables into work packages, establishing the scope baseline, and aligning with the scope statement and requirements.

Validate scope formalizes customer acceptance of completed deliverables, using inspections and voting to confirm verified deliverables against the scope baseline, guiding change requests and closing the project or phase.

Monitor and control the project scope to keep the scope baseline up to date, use variance and trend analysis, and issue approved change requests to adjust plans.

Solve scope management quiz questions to locate acceptance criteria in the WBS dictionary, understand the scope management plan, and apply WBS, code of accounts, and requirements traceability matrix.

Develop and manage the project schedule by planning, defining activities, sequencing, estimating durations, and building the schedule model, then monitor against the final schedule baseline.

plan schedule management by establishing policies, procedures, and documentation for planning and controlling the project schedule, and define the schedule management plan as part of the project management plan.

Define activities by decomposing work packages from the work breakdown structure into actionable schedule activities, producing the activity list and attributes to support estimates, scheduling, and control.

Sequence activities convert the activity list into a logical project schedule and network diagram using precedence diagramming method. Define finish-to-start, start-to-start, finish-to-finish, and start-to-finish dependencies with leads and lags.

Estimate activity durations teaches applying analogous, parametric, bottom-up, and three-point techniques to determine duration estimates per activity using scope, resources, calendars, and the basis of estimates.

Develop schedule establishes the schedule model and baseline to plan and monitor project execution, integrating activity sequences, durations, resources, and key techniques like the critical path method and what-if analysis.

Monitor the project schedule, update the schedule baseline, and manage changes via integrated change control, using predictive and agile practices, retrospectives, and earned value analysis to forecast and control performance.

Solve quiz questions on project schedule management, including PERT duration, estimation types, rolling wave planning, agile schedules, sequence activities, critical path, float, and on-demand scheduling.

Learn the four core processes of project cost management: plan cost management, estimate costs, determine budget, and control costs, and use the cost baseline to monitor, forecast, and manage expenditures.

Plan cost management defines how costs are estimated, budgeted, monitored, and controlled, producing the cost management plan from inputs like the project charter, schedule plan, and risk plan.

Develop cost estimates for project activities using the cost management plan and expert judgment, aided by estimation techniques and enterprise environmental factors, yielding cost estimates and the basis of estimates.

Aggregate activity cost estimates to establish the cost baseline and project budget. Include contingency reserves and management reserves, align with funding requirements, and apply earned value management.

Explore earned value analysis and cost control to monitor, forecast, and update the cost baseline through variances, performance indices, and change requests.

Master earned value management through quiz-style questions on CPI, EV, AC, PV, CV, SV, and estimation techniques, cost management plans, agile forecasting, and value analysis.

Explore the project quality management knowledge area, covering plan quality management, manage quality, and control quality to meet stakeholder requirements with verified deliverables and quality reports.

Identify quality requirements and standards, document how the project will demonstrate compliance, and create the quality management plan as a component of the project management plan.

Manage quality translates the quality management plan into executable activities, ensuring quality assurance and standards, conducting audits and root-cause analysis, and producing quality reports, change requests, and plan updates.

Conduct ongoing testing, inspections, and evaluations to verify deliverables meet requirements, record quality control measurements, and update plans to ensure final acceptance by the customer.

Learn core project quality management concepts, including plan, manage, and control quality, audits, and root cause analysis. Apply tools like Pareto diagrams, Ishikawa, and affinity diagrams to improve processes.

Explore project resources management by distinguishing physical and team resources and mastering processes: plan resource management, estimate activity resources, acquire resources, develop team, manage project team, and control resources.

Plan resource management by defining how to estimate, acquire, and manage team and physical resources, and produce the resource management plan and team charter to guide roles and deployment.

Estimate activity resources defines estimating the human resources, equipment, and materials needed to perform project work, using expert judgment and bottom up, analogous, and parametric estimating.

Acquire resources explains obtaining internal or external resources—people, facilities, equipment, and materials—through the executing process group, using multi-criteria decision analysis, negotiation, pre assignment, and virtual teams to assign resources.

Develop the project team by improving competencies, interactions, and the work environment to boost team performance through inputs, tools, and outputs like co-location, virtual teams, and Tuckman ladder.

Manage project team performance by tracking results, providing feedback, resolving conflicts, and applying leadership and emotional intelligence to guide team changes and optimize outcomes.

Control resources ensures physical resources—equipment, materials, and facilities—are available when needed, monitors planned versus actual utilization, and updates the resource management plan and project documents through change requests.

Solve quiz questions on RAM, emotional intelligence, and resource management planning, highlighting weighted scoring, multi-criteria analysis, team charter, and estimates of resources.

Master project communications management by planning, managing, and monitoring stakeholder information exchanges, using formal and informal, written and verbal artifacts, guided by the five Cs and active listening.

Plan communication management to define how to conduct project communications, tailored to each stakeholder’s information needs, formats, and frequency, resulting in a documented communication management plan.

Manage project communications by implementing the communication management plan, ensuring timely, correctly formatted information reaches the right stakeholders through appropriate media, tools, and PMIS, with active listening and meetings.

Monitor communications ensures information meets stakeholder needs by evaluating planned communications against outcomes, triggering plan updates and change requests to sustain stakeholder support and optimize message delivery.

Solve ten quiz questions on project communications and reporting; distinguish progress from status reports for quick review, and apply project reporting and managed communications to stakeholders, and understand communication dimensions.

Master seven project risk management processes to identify, analyze, plan responses, implement, and monitor risks. Understand threats and opportunities and how risk analysis and responses protect project objectives.

Plan risk management by defining how risk activities will be conducted and integrated, using project charter and stakeholder register, and detailing risk appetite and RBS within the risk management plan.

Use tools and techniques—from expert judgment to brainstorming, checklists, interviews, root cause analysis, swot analysis, and document analysis—to identify risks and update the risk register and risk report.

Perform qualitative risk analysis prioritizes project risks by evaluating probability and impact, updates the risk register and risk report, and assigns risk owners through a risk workshop.

Perform quantitative risk analysis to numerically assess the overall project risk, focusing on high-priority risks with Monte Carlo simulations and expected monetary value, and update the risk report.

Plan risk responses by developing options and selecting strategies to address overall project risk exposure and individual risks, using inputs like the risk register and project management plan.

Execute approved risk responses to reduce project risk exposure, assign risk and action owners, and update change requests, risk register, and related documents throughout the project.

Monitor risks by tracking risk registers, identifying new risks, and evaluating the effectiveness of risk management activities to inform project decisions using audits, reviews, and data analyses.

Explore risk management basics, including identifying risks, creating the risk register, and planning responses; analyze stakeholders, SWOT, data quality, and contingency reserves for project success.