PMP Certification Exam Prep Course - PDU Contact Hours/PDU

A project is a temporary, unique endeavor with a defined start and end date, scope, schedule, and budget, guided by a work breakdown structure, activities, dependencies, and risk considerations.

Discover how a program, a group of related projects dependent on each other, coordinates the work to deliver benefits none could achieve alone, with defined start and end times.

Understand portfolio as a composition of projects, programs, and operations, with elements at different stages and not necessarily dependent on each other.

Explore how functional, matrix, and project-based structures assign authority to the project manager. Learn how weak, balanced, and strong matrices shift roles from expediter to empowered project manager.

Explore project roles and titles, including sponsor, project manager, functional manager, program manager, and portfolio manager, and understand their responsibilities with emphasis on the pivotal project manager role.

Early involvement of the project manager is essential; avoid assigning PM during execution; ensure PM participates from initiation with project charter and clear goals and strategic alignment.

Discover the roles and essential skills of a project manager, from communication and interpersonal abilities to budgeting, rules, non-verbal cues, negotiations, and conflict management for successful project delivery.

Learn the basics of project management, its knowledge, skills, and tools per PMBoK, and compare predictive (waterfall), agile, and hybrid approaches for effective scope and planning.

Learn the ten project knowledge areas, including scope, time, cost, quality, resource management, risk, procurement, communication management, and stakeholder management, to form an integrated master plan via project integration management.

Master the project life cycle by mastering the five domains—initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling, and closing—and apply integrated change control to manage variance.

Identify organizational process assets as policies, procedures, templates, and training materials that guide project management, with the PMO maintaining these resources for use across scope, time, cost, quality, and communications.

Identify enterprise environmental factors as internal and external elements beyond the project team's control, including organizational process assets, culture, and external guidelines from regulatory bodies, IEEE papers, and social media.

Discover how organizational project management aligns strategy with projects, programs, and portfolios using the PMBoK standard. Learn how to evaluate alignment and terminate non aligned initiatives to create value.

Learn what a PMO is and how it may span project, program, and portfolio management, with permanent and temporary roles guiding data, organizational process assets, training, and future projects.

Explore the three PMO types: supportive, directive, and controlling, and how each asserts authority, guides project practice, and maintains uniform data, templates, and policies across the organization.

Explore organizational governance and project governance, including PMO roles, culture, policies, and agile versus predictive approaches shaping structure and alignment with organizational goals.

Explore how projects and operations run in parallel, transitioning from project planning to a recurring process, with capacity expansions looping back to projects to meet demand.

Discover how scope management defines the project work, plans scope, collects requirements, defines scope, creates a WBS, and verifies and controls scope across predictive and agile methods.

Plan scope management defines how to plan the scope, specify deliverables, organize the WBS and WBS dictionary, prepare scope statement templates, and develop the requirements management plan.

Explore the relationship between project and product requirements and scope, detailing how to elicit, integrate, and manage product scope with WBS in predictive and product backlog in agile environments.

Explore agile scope management with product backlog and iteration backlog, timeboxed iterations and sprints, and the roles of Scrum Master, Product Owner, and team.

Define the work breakdown structure (WBS) as a hierarchical decomposition of the project scope into deliverables, control accounts, planning packages, and work packages for managing activity, cost, schedule, and risk.

Explore WBS creation through decomposition, detailing deliverables, control accounts, planning packages, and work packages, and learn how the WBS dictionary and code of accounts support the scope baseline.

Master the final outputs of the work breakdown structure, including the scope baseline, WBS, WBS dictionary, and code of accounts, and understand performance measurement baselines for PMP exam prep.

Define the project scope by bracketing in-scope and out-of-scope work through expert judgment, facilitation, and multi-criteria decision analysis, then document deliverables, criteria, and exclusions in the scope statement.

Differentiate verify scope from validate scope, showing how internal stakeholders and the project manager verify against the master plan, while customers validate and sign off.

Explore how change requests are initiated and evaluated by a change control board in plan-driven projects, contrast with agile change-driven approaches, and define scope creep as uncontrolled project changes.

Learn to monitor and control project scope by validating scope with stakeholders, tracking actual versus planned, producing performance reports, and avoiding gold plating and padding.

Learn how to collect stakeholder information. Use documents analysis, interviews, focus groups, benchmarking, surveys, affinity diagrams, mind mapping diagrams, and group decision making to shape the scope statement.

Explore tools and techniques for verifying scope, including definitions of done and ready, acceptance criteria, and performance analyses like variance, trend, and earned value, including agile iteration reviews.

Timeboxing defines the duration of sprints and activities in an agile environment. It creates urgency, cycles between time boxes, and uses retrospectives to evaluate performance.

Explore data analysis tools across project management, including alternatives analysis, documents analysis, earned value analysis, and assumptions and constraints, and learn to apply them to your project.

Explore common data representation techniques used in project management, including flowcharts, control charts, histograms, Pareto charts, check sheets, Ishikawa diagrams, and mind maps, as aligned with the PMBoK processes.

Explore decision making in projects using data analysis and data representation to select options through multi-criteria decision analysis and voting techniques, including majority, plurality, and unanimity in agile environments.

Discover how expert judgement from pre-qualified subject matter experts informs project scope, schedule, and cost, using facilitated workshops, interviews, and meetings and recording info with a traceability matrix.

Identify and document project constraints and assumptions—covering resources, cost, and quality—to prevent schedule delays, escalating to senior management when needed, and recording them in the project charter and planning documents.

Plan, define, sequence, and estimate activities to develop and control the project schedule. Use WBS work packages and RAM/RACI matrices to assign responsibilities and ensure accuracy.

Define activities deconstruct work packages into actionable tasks and milestones with no duration. Adopt agile concepts like features, epics, and user stories while building the activity and milestone lists.

Estimate activity duration by considering elapsed time, weekends and holidays, and the effort required to create a realistic schedule. Align with formats like Gantt charts, burndown charts, and Kanban boards.

Create and analyze a project schedule network diagram using the precedence diagramming method and identify the critical path and float to understand schedule flexibility and resource optimization.

Learn how the critical path method identifies the longest-duration path on a schedule network diagram, calculates float, and uses forward and backward passes to plan PMP project schedules.

Explore sequence activities in project scheduling by identifying dependencies—mandatory, discretionary, external, and internal—and how senior vs junior resource durations shape the schedule.

Learn how to use schedule compression techniques, fast tracking and crashing, to shorten project timelines on the critical path while balancing cost and ensuring customer consent.

Aligns project schedule management with resource optimization by applying smoothing and leveling techniques to optimize resource use, maintain the critical path, and manage start and finish dates across projects.

Explore precedence relationships in project schedule management by defining four types—finish-to-start, finish-to-finish, start-to-start, and start-to-finish—using practical examples.

Explain leads and lags in project scheduling, including discretionary versus mandatory dependencies, and show how lead time compresses schedules while lag time reflects gaps between activities.

Explore project schedule management concepts of float and slack, including zero float on the critical path and the distinctions of total, free, and negative float.

Explore project cost management, learning how to plan and control budgets, assess the time–cost relationship, and apply earned value management and estimating techniques to deliver value.

Learn project cost management, from cost estimation and budgeting to reserves analysis, using earned value management to control scope, time, cost, and quality.

Explore how to estimate costs by tying activity cost estimates to resources, contracts, and deliverables, using ROM estimates in initiation and definitive estimates in planning to finalize the budget.

Explore four cost types—fixed, variable, direct, and indirect—along with sunk (actual) costs and life cycle costing to manage project budgets and costs.

Apply funding limit reconciliation by comparing planned versus actual funding and confirming commitments from finance or management to ensure funds are available for upcoming deliverables.

Explore project governance and compliance to manage budgets, approvals, and spending authority, aligning with regulatory standards and PMBoK seventh edition, and addressing budget challenges.

Master earned value management to track project cost and schedule by comparing planned value, earned value, and actual cost, using bac, sv, spi, cpi, and cv.

Explore quality management concepts, including planning quality management, executing quality activities, and controlling quality through audits, standards like Six Sigma and ISO, and work performance reports.

This lecture introduces project quality management and the quadruple constraints, defining quality as conformance to customer requirements and outlining the project manager’s role in delivering customer-satisfying deliverables.

Explore project quality management by distinguishing quality from grade: quality is conformance to customer requirements, while grade reflects what the customer can afford and desires with higher features.

Explore prevention over inspection in project quality management, showing how proactive guidelines and preventive measures reduce mistakes, while testing and inspection verify quality before shipment.

Learn to distinguish precision from accuracy in project quality management, and understand how precise values compare to accurate results within specifications.

Explore how cost of quality links customer affordability to project budgets by weighing cost of conformance, like training and prevention, against cost of non conformance, such as rework and warranty.

Learn how project risk management balances opportunities and threats, defines risk appetite and threshold, and applies SWOT analysis and risk breakdown structures with stakeholders.

Explore the planning stage of project risk management, detailing the seven processes from plan risk management to control risk and the risk management plan components, appetite, triggers, and categories.

Master risk response planning by distinguishing positive and negative risks and applying strategies such as sharing, transference, avoidance, mitigation, enhancement, escalation, and acceptance, guided by the risk register.

Explore qualitative risk analysis in project risk management, calculating each risk's probability and impact, classifying them with a probability–impact matrix, and prioritizing with the risk register under the risk owner.

Quantitative risk analysis quantifies project risk using numbers and Monte Carlo analysis, identifying high impact items from the risk register and applying simulations to reveal potential effects.

Identify risks with input from team members and stakeholders using data gathering techniques and project documents. Assign risk owners, assess probability and impact, plan responses, and update the risk register.

Develop and apply a project communications management plan to define information flow, sharing policies, stakeholder requirements analysis, and the interpersonal, influence, and negotiation skills essential for project success.

Learn the four main types of project communication—formal written, informal written, formal verbal, and informal verbal—along with paralinguistic cues, communication technology, and the communication matrix in the management plan.

Detail the project communication processes from initiation to closing and design a communication plan and matrix to manage reports, meetings, and stakeholder information sharing.

Communication models encode information, overcome noise in transmission, and require receivers to decode with feedback to ensure stakeholders understand and stay on the same page.

Explore methods of communication for project stakeholders, including push, pull, and interactive approaches, and learn how a communication matrix guides information sharing.

Learn how feedback functions as a key communication tool with stakeholders, ensuring information is understood, recorded, and acted on across vendors, teams, and senior management.

Develop interpersonal and communication skills to lead projects, observe, negotiate, apply conflict management, and adapt writing, speaking, and cultural communication across teams.

Identify procurement management by weighing internal capabilities against external vendors, and master contracting, obligations, and negotiations required for project delivery.

Learn how to conduct procurement by advertising RFPs, applying source selection criteria, hosting bidder conferences, and selecting compliant contracts under governing regulations.

Define the procurement management plan within the project master plan, outlining contracts, statements of work, source selection criteria, and make-or-buy analysis to guide procurement.

Identify procurement documents such as RFPs, RFQs, RFIs, IFBs, and tender documents, and describe how they guide vendor responses, bidding, bidder conferences, and the conduct of procurement.

Explore make or buy analysis within procurement management, including in-house vs outsourced decisions, procurement statements of work, and the three core processes: plan, conduct, and control procurement.

Explore the three contract types in project procurement management—fixed price, cost reimbursable, and time and material—and subtypes like firm fixed price, incentive, award fee, and economic price adjustment.

Explore time and material contracts as a hybrid of fixed price and cost reimbursable, with a cost not to exceed and hourly labor rates used in short-term engagements.

Explore cost reimbursable contracts, including cost plus percentage, fixed fee, award fee, and incentive fee, contrasting buyer and seller perspectives, and examine turnkey projects like optical fiber telecom implementations.

Explore agile procurement management by detailing three contract types: capped time and material, target cost contracts, and incremental delivery contracts tied to milestones.

Define business value as the net tangible and intangible benefits a project delivers to its sponsor. Deliver revenue, services, and intangible benefits such as poverty alleviation.

Define the minimum business increment, the minimum value added to benefit the business or customer, delivered after a minimum viable product as small batches in a disciplined agile environment.

Explore the minimum viable product (MVP) concept as the minimum features to share with stakeholders, enabling feedback and customer validation for incremental delivery within the PMBoK seventh framework.

Communicate project vision clearly to senior management, the project sponsor, and team to align on objectives, roles, and changes. Share right information at the right time to deliver business value.

The product roadmap is a strategic plan guiding activities to deliver the product and align with objectives, showing the product vision to stakeholders and enabling stage and phase gate reviews.