Project Management Fundamentals (PMP)

Explore the PMP exam journey from eligibility and registration to test day, including required experience and hours, fees, test format, process groups, and scoring insights.

Learn elimination techniques to choose the best answer from four options, tackle easy, medium, and hard questions, and apply professional responsibility and ethics across project management processes.

Learn professional responsibility in project management by upholding ethics, honesty, and laws, handling bribes and conflicts of interest, reporting to the BMI ethics review committee, and promoting open, respectful conduct.

Explore foundational terms in project management, including processes, inputs-tools-outputs, 47 PMP processes, process groups, knowledge areas, and the distinctions between project, program, and portfolio.

Delve into foundation terms and concepts of project management, including exit gate and kill, progressive elaboration, baseline, lessons learned, project lifecycle, organization process assets, and the triple constraint.

Examine functional, matrix, and productize organizational types, their power dynamics for the project manager, and exam questions on how organization structure influences project outcomes.

Explore the project management process framework, covering the five process groups and 47 processes with inputs, tools, and outputs. See how each process links to a single knowledge area.

Explore common inputs and outputs across the 47 project management processes, including enterprise environmental factors and organizational processes, using expert judgment and meetings to update the project management plan.

Explore how project integration management coordinates all knowledge areas, balancing priorities and guiding the project charter, management plan, execution, monitoring and control, change control, and closing.

Learn to develop a project charter in the initiating process, using inputs like the statement of work and business case to authorize the project and name the manager.

Develop a formal project management plan, the output that guides the product execution and control, integrating 15 components such as scope management, configuration management, risk management, and procurement management.

Direct and manage project execution to create deliverables by performing work packages within the execution process group, guided by the project management plan and change requests.

Learn how to monitor and control project work to keep deliverables aligned with the plan, assess plan versus actual variance, and manage change requests through validated changes and performance reports.

Learn how to perform integrated change control by evaluating change requests through the change control board, assessing impact on scope, time, and cost, and updating plans and logs.

Close the project or phase by documenting lessons learned, archiving records, and handing over accepted deliverables through structured transition, guided by integration management knowledge.

Plan, collect requirements, define and decompose scope, verify deliverables, and control changes using integrated change control to ensure project and product scope align with stakeholder needs.

Learn to plan scope management, define requirements, and control scope creep within the project management plan by building a school management plan and a requirements management plan, incorporating change control.

Collect and document stakeholder requirements early in a project using smart criteria, traceability, and interviews, focus groups, and workshops.

Explore group decision making techniques such as unanimity, majority, and dictatorship, and apply group creativity methods like mind maps and the Delphi technique to collect project requirements effectively.

Learn how to collect requirements using group creativity techniques like affinity diagrams, nominal groups, and brainstorming, plus benchmarking and document analysis; produce requirement documentation and a traceability matrix.

Learn to define scope through refining requirements into a detailed project scope statement, clarifying in-scope versus out-of-scope work, and using progressive elaboration.

Learn to build a work breakdown structure that decomposes deliverables into components, achieving 100 percent scope, with inputs like the project plan and requirements and outputs like baseline and dictionary.

Validate scope verifies deliverables meet customer requirements through inspection and acceptance, with inputs from project management plan and requirement documentation, and outputs include change requests and accepted or rejected deliverables.

Master scope control by analyzing variances between planned and actual work, identifying root causes, and applying integrated change control to prevent unnecessary change requests.

Convert the work breakdown structure into scheduling activities and sequence them. Estimate resources and durations, build the project schedule, and control changes across the seven time management processes.

Plan the project schedule by creating the schedule management plan within the project management plan. Define activities and milestones and outline scheduling contingencies using inputs like the project charter.

Define the activity list by decomposing work into scheduling activities, sequence and estimate them, and establish milestones to guide the project website using Microsoft Project.

Learn to sequence activities by ordering project tasks, setting dependencies, and building a network diagram using finish-to-start, finish-to-finish, start-to-start, and start-to-finish relationships, including leads and lags.

Explore how to estimate activity resources by defining activities, sequencing them, and determining labor, materials, and equipment needs, using expert judgment, bottom-up, and published data.

Learn to estimate activity durations by defining and sequencing activities, assessing resources and calendars, and applying analogous, parametric (barometric), and three-point estimates with group and expert judgment.

Develop the project schedule by defining activities, sequencing them, and estimating resources and durations. Apply CPM and critical chain, resource leveling, and schedule compression to establish the schedule baseline.

Master the control schedule by monitoring performance data, managing change requests, and following the schedule management plan and change management plan to keep the project on track.

Identify the critical path of a network diagram, compute durations and dependencies with critical path method, and learn early start and finish and late start and finish determine project finish.

Learn to calculate project float (slack) using forward and backward passes, deriving early start, early finish, late start, and late finish to identify the critical path.

Learn to compute a project's float by performing backward and forward passes, determine early start and finish, late start and finish, and identify the critical path.

Learn to calculate project float using early start, duration, early finish, late start, late finish with the network diagram and free float concepts, emphasizing the critical path.

Review time management essentials in project management, covering planning, sequencing activities, estimating durations, building the schedule, and controlling it with Gantt charts, critical chain method, and schedule baseline.

Master cost management by turning the work breakdown structure into activities, estimating costs, building a bottom-up budget, and applying a time-based spending plan to forecast cash flow and control costs.

Explore the planned cost management process, establishing policies, procedures, and the cost management plan to guide budgeting, estimating, and controlling project costs with a plus/minus 10 percent precision.

Learn to estimate a project's cost in the planning process by evaluating materials, human resources, and equipment, and translate rough order of magnitude estimates into definitive estimates aligned with baselines.

Learn to determine the budget by time-phasing cost estimates into a cost performance baseline, enabling cash-flow planning and clear project funding requirements.

Monitor and control project costs by comparing plan to actual, using inputs like the project management plan and work performance data, to keep costs in line and trigger change requests.

Explore earned value management basics, including BAC, PV, EV, and AC, and learn how to apply formulas to determine project performance.

learn to calculate earned value and assess schedule and cost performance using ev, pv, ac, cpi, sba, tcpi, and eac for remaining work.

Master earned value calculations by computing CV, CPI, and EAC from EV, AC, and BAC. Interpret budget status and forecast project cost with key formulas.

Revisit cost management in project management fundamentals by detailing planning and control processes, estimating costs, determining the budget, and establishing the cost management plan, cost baseline, and funding.

Plan, implement, and validate quality management to meet customer requirements by improving processes and inspecting deliverables, using PDCA, total quality management, kaizen, and ISO 9000.

Plan quality management uses the triple constraint to align customer requirements with project scope, time, and cost, guiding inputs from project management plan and stakeholders to shape quality plan.

Learn how quality assurance prevents defects by improving project processes, not deliverables. It uses inputs from the quality management and process improvement plans, process analysis, audits, and yields change requests.

Learn how quality control checks inspect deliverables against standards, using inspection, statistical sampling, and control charts to validate acceptances and distinguish quality control from quality assurance.

Learn to perform quality control checks using control charts, Pareto analysis, scatter diagrams, Ishikawa fishbone diagrams, flowcharts, and check sheets to monitor performance and drive validated changes.

Explore the quality management knowledge area across planning, executing, and monitoring and control, including plan quality management, quality assurance, and quality control, with related outputs and tools.

Define human resource management roles and responsibilities, acquire and train the project team, and assess performance while managing conflicts and change requests.

Plan the human resource management process to produce the human resource management plan and staffing management plan, defining roles, responsibilities, RAM/RACI, organization charts, position descriptions, and recruitment policies.

Acquiring a project team converts defined roles into names, staffs the project with the right resources, and uses assignments, negotiation, and multi-criteria decision analysis to fill roles.

Develop project teams by training and aligning resources within the executing process, guiding forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjoining stages to deliver and improve performance.

Explore Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a foundation for team motivation, compare McGregor's theory X and Y, and apply Herzberg's motivation-hygiene factors to develop project teams.

Apply contingency theory to project management to match leadership style with the situation. Explore motivation through achievable rewards, McClelland's three needs, and power types, plus team performance assessment.

Learn how to manage project teams by comparing plan to actual performance and using conflict management and leadership concepts with inputs like staff assignments and HR plans.

This lecture covers human resource management knowledge area, highlighting planning and execution with processes: plan hr management, acquire team, develop team, and manage team, with outputs including hr plan.

Plan communication management, manage communications, and control communications to plan, collect, distribute, and monitor product information for stakeholders with accurate, timely updates.

Plan effective communication by creating the communication management plan, identifying stakeholders, and detailing report formats, frequencies, and channels for clear, timely project updates.

Learn how to execute the communications management process: collect and distribute product information per the plan, handle stakeholder requests, and use information management systems with performance reporting.

Learn to monitor and control project communications, ensuring the right information reaches the right audience at the right time through inputs like the project management plan and performance data.

Review the planning, executing, and monitoring and controlling process groups in communication management, detailing plan communications management, manage communications, and control communications, with the communication management plan as an output.

Introduce the project risk management knowledge area by outlining six processes from planning and identifying risks to quantitative analysis, monitoring triggers, and defining planned risk responses and responsibilities.

Create the product risk management plan as the primary output of planning risk management, outlining risk tolerance, inputs, tools, and stakeholder communications for early project planning.

Identify risks and build a risk register through stakeholder interviews and document reviews. Apply tools such as brainstorming, root cause analysis, inference diagrams, and SWOT to capture risks and responses.

Perform qualitative risk analysis to rank risks by probability and impact, prioritize emphasis, update the risk register, and compute the PEM score for ranking and categorization.

Learn quantitative risk analysis by assigning cost and time values to risks, updating budget and schedule reserves, and applying EMV, sensitivity analysis, and decision tree techniques.

Learn to compute expected monetary value (EMV) for project risks by analyzing costs, losses, and savings with probability-weighted calculations, and decide whether to proceed.

Explore decision tree analysis and EMV to compare buying versus building software, using probabilities and costs, then apply Monte Carlo simulation to assess risk and update the risk register.

Plan risk responses using negative-risk strategies (eliminate, transfer, mitigate, accept) and positive-risk strategies (exploit, share, enhance, accept), guided by the risk register and risk management plan.

Control risks by comparing the risk plan to actual events, applying corrective actions, and using ongoing monitoring with risk audits, reassessment, and variance analysis.

Review risk management process groups in this quick revision, detailing planning, identifying risks, performing qualitative and quantitative analysis, planning risk responses, and tracking outputs like the risk register.