The Best PMP Prep Course: 35 PDUs, Updated for 2026 Exam

Develop a solid understanding of project management fundamentals, roles, and the project lifecycle from initiation to closing. Learn key concepts like project charter, stakeholders, governance, scope, resources, schedule, and risk.

Identify tangible and intangible benefits delivered by a project, and distinguish measurable outcomes such as revenue, market share, and lead-time reduction from less quantifiable gains like goodwill and brand recognition.

Explore how projects, programs, and portfolios align with operations to deliver value. See how product management and agile practices connect projects, programs, portfolios, and the product lifecycle.

Explore predictive waterfall versus iterative and incremental approaches, with fixed requirements, upfront planning, and delivering value through small increments and agile delivery.

Blend predictive and adaptive approaches into a hybrid project management method, using kanban boards, backlog, in-progress work, testing, and daily scrums to deliver iteratively or in one final release.

Tailor your project approach by selecting the right processes, methods, tools, and templates, plus the development approach and organizational factors, to fit each project's unique situation.

Explore the project management team and the project team, including quality, risk, change, and release managers who guide and perform project work, capture feedback, and engage end users and stakeholders.

Navigate project politics by using diverse power types beyond positional authority, including informational, referent, expert, relational, and situational power, plus rewards and persuasive strategies.

Discover how the project performance domains interrelate across initiation, planning, execution, control, and closing, with governance, stakeholders, scope, resources, schedule, finance, and risk.

Turn elicited requirements into project scope that meets customer and stakeholder needs. Apply agile or hybrid cycles with change management, visible requirements, and measures of scope accuracy and creep.

This lecture explains how to anticipate and respond to project risks through proactive planning, risk registers, risk appetite, risk reviews, and risk-adjusted backlogs, including contingency and management reserves.

Apply a step-by-step project initiation process, covering scope, schedule, cost, and risk, with a real case from Harmony Fitness. Learn how governance and stakeholders guide online classes and tracking.

Initiating yields the project charter, approved by the sponsor, authorizing the project and giving Billy authority to start the Harmony Fitness application. Outline purpose, deliverables, risks, requirements, and assumptions.

Identify stakeholders using expert judgment and SME input, gather data via brainstorming and surveys, and map influence with stakeholder analysis and the salience model.

Identify and document stakeholders in the stakeholder register with roles, contact details, and engagement needs, and track changes via the change request process, change log, and change management plan.

Align project plans with the integrated project management plan and subsidiary plans for scope, schedule, cost, and quality, plus baselines and change and configuration management to guide execution and closing.

Develop a sourcing strategy using expert judgment and market research to compare vendor options, perform make-or-buy and source selection analyses, and balance cost, quality, and regulations within budget.

Develop a sourcing strategy plan within the project management plan to define activities for finding and managing third party vendors, including delivery methods, procurement phases, and performance indicators.

Plan stakeholder engagement by creating an actionable engagement plan that identifies stakeholders and captures their details. Define how to keep them informed and engaged throughout the project.

Identify and engage stakeholders by using the project charter and evolving plans, logs, and assets to tailor communication, roles, risks, and engagement strategies.

Identify outputs of plan stakeholder engagement as the process for engaging stakeholders, a subsidiary to the project management plan, which can be formal or informal and include maps and needs.

Plan scope management defines how we develop the scope statement, the work breakdown structure, and the scope baseline, plus the requirements management plan and traceability matrix, inside project management plan.

Apply expert judgment to elicit and analyze requirements with stakeholders and product owners, using affinity diagrams, mind mapping, design thinking, and methods like Moscow, cost of delay, Kano, and multi-voting.

Elicit and document requirements that meet business needs, using a traceability matrix to ensure testable, complete, and stakeholder-accepted outputs, including functional and non-functional requirements.

Define scope by transforming customer requirements into a project scope statement and quality management plan, linking inputs, tools and techniques, outputs, and acceptance criteria across predictive and adaptive approaches.

Apply expert judgment to develop the scope structure and scope work breakdown structure, then brainstorm with the team to decompose work into packages and activities.

Define the scope baseline and WBS dictionary with cost, resources, and duration. Prioritize the product backlog, breaking work into epics and user stories with acceptance criteria on a Kanban board.

Estimate resources using bottom-up, analogous, and parametric techniques, leverage PMIS tools, and apply AI methods—machine learning, NLP, predictive analytics, VR/AR, and COCOMO—for informed project planning.

Identify resource requirements for each work package and document assumptions, estimation methods, ranges, and risks within the work breakdown and resource breakdown structures.

Outline the schedule management plan within the project management plan, detailing schedule model development, units of measure, maintenance frequency, reporting to Grace and Anne, and control thresholds for change requests.

Develop the schedule by integrating activities, sequence, duration, and tools like Gantt charts. When approved, the schedule becomes baselined; predictive projects require change requests, while adaptive projects update the roadmap.

Develop schedule inputs show how the project charter, scope, milestones, stakeholders, and management plans, with development approach, drive the schedule—whether agile sprints or waterfall planning—and involve resources and risks.

Apply expert judgment to break down work packages into activities, use rolling wave planning, and manage dependencies via precedence diagramming, leads and lags, including mandatory, discretionary, internal, and external dependencies.

Learn to estimate costs using expert judgement and techniques like analogous, parametric, bottom-up, and multipoint estimating, while applying data analysis and cost of quality to build the budget.

Develop a budget using expert judgment, historical data, and bottom-up estimating, incorporating contingency reserves and funding limit reconciliation to manage cost, schedule, and quality.

Plan risk management by integrating inputs from the project charter, scope, schedule, cost, quality, stakeholder register, and organizational risk policies to define the risk management plan and responsibilities.

Identify risks with stakeholders by reviewing project inputs such as risk management plan and baselines to capture opportunities and threats, then document them in the risk register and risk report.

Analyze risks using qualitative and quantitative methods, guided by the risk management plan and inputs like baselines, risk registers, risk owners, cost estimates, and industry templates.

Explore risk analysis tools, expert judgment, interviews, and a probability and impact matrix, plus quantitative methods like Monte Carlo simulations, sensitivity analysis, decision trees, chance diagrams, and risk workshops.

Identify outputs for planning risk responses, including change requests and updates to the project management plan, schedule, cost, quality, risk register with triggers, contingency plans, and residual risks.

Execute the project using the project management plan and inputs like change logs, milestones, communications, schedule, and requirements traceability to deliver project deliverables and monitor performance.

Leverage expert judgment from the project team to manage execution with PMIS, work authorization systems, and information management tools, plus daily scrum updates.

Identify quality assurance inputs from the project management plan and project documents to support audits and compliance; leverage check sheets, traceability matrices, and test plans to produce a quality report.

Conduct audits to assess project processes against policies using a checklist and identify gaps. Use quality tools such as Ishikawa diagrams, flowcharts, affinity diagrams, and multi-criteria decision analysis.

Produce quality reports from quality assurance and control, detailing findings and corrective actions. Update the project management plan, issue log, risk register, and lessons learned through audits and change requests.

Explore how to manage project knowledge using expert judgment with knowledge management tools like communities of practice, job shadowing, storytelling, and lessons learned to inform training, information systems, and improvement.

Update the lessons learned register with the situation, impact, recommendations, and proposed actions for the future, and update the project management plan, assets, and team learning based on retrospective insights.

Explore tools and techniques for managing stakeholder engagement, including expert judgment, politics and power structures, culture, communication strategies, stakeholder groups, requirements management, vendor management, change management, and meetings.

Learn to manage project communications by using inputs from the project management plan and documents to collect, store, and share information with stakeholders, including work performance reports and risk reports.

Execute risk responses by issuing change requests for baselined items, reprioritize product backlog and update product roadmap, issue log, lessons learned, team assignments, risk register, risk report to reduce risk.

Analyze work performance data against baselines to produce work performance information and present it via charts or dashboards for stakeholders, while capturing change requests and updating the change log.

Identify and manage change requests to monitor stakeholder engagement, assess impacts to baselines, obtain approval from the change control board, and update the change log and change management plan.

Utilize inputs from the project management plan, issue log, project communications, and lessons learned to monitor stakeholder information needs, turning data into work performance information and change requests.

Learn to monitor and control project scope by leveraging inputs such as the scope management plan, quality management plan, requirements documentation, test cases, quality metrics, and approved change requests.

Validate scope gathers requirements, scope baseline, and quality reports to secure formal sponsor acceptance of verified deliverables. Review outcomes against defects, tests, and change requests to ensure a ready-for-release product.

Validate scope outputs by confirming accepted deliverables, securing formal sign-off, and documenting acceptance for close; review change requests and capture lessons learned.

Identify and manage resource inputs for monitoring and controlling resourcing, including the resource management plan, resource assignments, the resource breakdown structure, schedules, risk register, change requests, and lessons learned.

Explore tools and techniques for monitoring and controlling resourcing, including data analysis, alternatives analysis, cost-benefit analysis, schedule crashing, performance reviews, trend analysis, and structured problem solving with PDCA and DMAIC.

Transform earned value and planned value into work performance information, analyze schedule variance and spi, forecast schedules, and manage change requests and baselines to control the schedule.

Monitor and control finances by tracking actual costs and earned value against the budget and forecasts, applying corrective actions and updating the cost baseline through change requests and control.

Learn to monitor and control project finances with earned value management, variance analysis, and forecasting, using planned value, earned value, actual cost, CPI, and SPI.

Monitor risks by integrating inputs like the risk management plan, risk register, risk report, issue log, and lessons learned, with work performance data and forecasting to keep risks under control.

Monitor risks to produce performance information by comparing events with expectations to gauge risk response effectiveness; use change control for waterfall and product owner reprioritization with risk-adjusted backlog in agile.

Close a project or phase by validating inputs such as the project charter, project management plan components (scope, schedule, budget, stakeholders, communications, risks, resources), and accepted deliverables signed by Grace.

Close the project or phase by documenting final outputs, updating project documents and plans, transferring deliverables to operations, and capturing lessons learned, benefits validation, and stakeholder sign-offs.

Explore a real MS Project example to plan a Harmony Fitness website for Grace, detailing work breakdown structure, tasks, durations, resources, costs, and the critical path.

Identify the critical path and configure project calendars in Microsoft Project using Gantt charts, grid lines, and baselines to manage a 84-day Harmony Fitness project.

Analyze financial measures for project value, including net present value, internal rate of return, return on investment, payback period, and benefit-to-cost ratio, with discount rate explanations.

Explore how to compare projects using ROI, determine payback period, and assess value with the benefit-to-cost ratio to guide investment decisions.

Understand how stakeholders initiate change requests to modify baselined items under the change management plan in predictive projects. Approve, deny, or defer via the change control board and log outcomes.

Learn to identify and engage project stakeholders using the organisational breakdown structure and the stakeholder register, detailing names, roles, responsibilities, contact details, and project lifecycle stage to guide management.

Classify stakeholders using mapping methods like the impact over influence grid and the salience model to prioritize by influence and impact. Engage high-influence, high-impact stakeholders, inform others, and monitor changes.

Manage conflicts early and privately using a direct and collaborative approach; escalate to formal procedures for disruptive conflicts, while considering importance, intensity, time pressure, and power dynamics.

Explore basic and interactive communication models, from sender-receiver encoding and transmission to decoding, noise, and feedback, emphasizing stakeholder engagement and interactive communication for clearer project outcomes.

Lead project communications by selecting suitable methods and messages to prevent misunderstandings across emails, meetings, and reports. Gather feedback and manage stakeholder expectations through negotiation and active listening.

Master the five C's of communication—grammar and spelling, concise expression, clear purpose, coherent flow, and visual or summary support—to reduce misunderstandings in stakeholder messaging.

Compare push and pull communication to show how information is sent. Identify push methods such as letters and emails, and pull options such as web portals and self-paced e-learning.

Explore the design thinking double diamond to define problems and generate solutions through brainstorming and affinity diagrams, diverging and converging to identify root causes and deliver prioritized ideas.

Prioritize requirements and solution ideas using Moscow, benefit-to-cost ratio, or cost of delay to rank items for delivery, manage stakeholders, and balance capacity through work-in-progress limits.

Create the project scope baseline, including the scope statement, WBS and dictionary, and work packages, enforced by formal change control to prevent scope creep and manage acceptance criteria and exclusions.

Compare autocratic decision-making, where a single role approves or prioritizes key actions, with distributed leadership in Agile, where teams self-organize, empower decisions, and continuously improve through retrospectives.

Explore retrospective, in-progress post-mortem, and after action review practices to capture lessons learned and drive continuous improvement across iterations and projects.

Motivate teams by applying organizational theory, including Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Herzberg's hygiene and motivational factors, and McGregor's X/Y, plus Uechi's Z theory to improve efficiency and loyalty.

Explore Parkinson's law, where work expands to fill the time allotted, and how short agile sprints combat it; also assess team styles through MBTI to tailor collaboration.

Learn how critical chain project management (ccpm) extends the critical path method with resource leveling, buffers, and double estimates to reduce critical path drag and protect project ROI.

Learn how resource leveling and smoothing optimize resource use to keep the schedule on track, moving shared resources or activities within the critical path.

Leverage AI-powered project schedules using genetic algorithms and branch-and-bound techniques per PMBOK 8th edition to optimize timelines and resources, pruning non-optimal paths toward the best schedule.

Learn how to manage project costs with estimation ranges from rough order of magnitude to definitive, and distinguish contingency reserves from management reserves to protect the cost baseline.

Analyze schedule variance and the schedule performance index from earned value versus planned value, and estimate completion using budget at completion, earned value, and actual cost, including two-complete performance index.

Explore root cause analysis techniques like the five whys and Ishikawa diagrams, and use histograms and Pareto charts to prioritize fixes by the top defects.

Explore the difference between inspections and audits, and how they verify product quality and project processes against standards. Learn about checklists, check sheets, and the distinction between grade and quality.

Explore control charts that detect in-control versus out-of-control processes using three sigma limits and seven-point rules, and learn problem solving with DMAIC and Deming cycles.

Identify risks in a customizable risk register with owners, triggers, and responses; analyze probability and impact, map to work breakdown structure activities, and use decision trees to choose actions.

Use Monte Carlo simulation and sensitivity analysis to map project outcomes with probability distributions, showing 90% confidence budgets like $3.5 million and depicting tornado charts of risk and impact.

Explore procurements in project management, performing make or buy analysis, defining source selection criteria, managing bids and contracts, and crafting a procurement statement of work and terms of reference (TOR).

Send bid documents to gather quotes or proposals. Use RFIs, RFQs, or RFPs and outline contract types: firm fixed price, fixed price with incentive, cost reimbursable, and time and materials.

Explore cost reimbursable contracts in project management, including cost plus fixed fee, incentive fee, and award fee, plus time and materials, while emphasizing clear scope, pre-contract negotiation, and ADR.

Explore the hierarchy of AI systems from AI and machine learning to deep learning and generative AI, and learn about LLMs, GPTs, and ChatGPT.

Discover AI key concepts for project management, including genetic algorithms, the branch and bound technique, and technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality as covered for your PMP exam.

Learn how business analysts elicit requirements from stakeholders, ensure the solution meets needs, and align scope, quality, and testing to boost return on investment and customer satisfaction.

Explore a typical agile approach with roles like product owner and scrum master, and practices such as product backlog, user stories, sprints, and acceptance criteria to deliver value.

Coordinate sprint planning to match velocity and sustain pace, track progress with daily standups and a Kanban board, deliver a usable increment, review outcomes, and continuously improve.

Explore the 12 agile clarifying principles that translate the manifesto into practice. Emphasize early value, frequent increments, collaboration, sustainable pace, and simple, high-quality software through self-organizing teams and retrospectives.

Explore the new new product development game, the Harvard white paper that inspired Scrum and agile, rooted in the Toyota system, with six steps, Kanban and lean thinking.

Drive value with customer-driven metrics of quality, delivery, and cost, using pull systems. Improve flow with takt time and line balancing, and develop quality with error proofing and genshi genbutsu.

Explore Scrum artifacts, including the product backlog, sprint backlog, and usable increment. Learn how the product goal guides work and how the definition of done yields a releasable increment.

Explore Crystal Clear, the agile framework that emphasizes frequent delivery, reflective improvement, and osmotic communication, with strategies like early victories, walking skeletons, and two-week iterations.

Explore scalable agile techniques, focusing on Scrum of Scrums to connect multiple teams toward a common goal, raise blockers, and commit to upcoming work, like a weekly or fortnightly update.

Apply 12 distilled agile coaching tips to boost PMP exam success and real-world delivery: use sprints for small increments, form a cross-functional self-managing team, and keep a visible information radiator.

Discover how an agile PMO acts as a value-driven, invitation-oriented, multidisciplinary hub that provides tools, templates, and coaching to enable self-organizing project delivery and centers of excellence across programs.

Create epics in the product backlog, decompose them into user stories with story points, and move items into the sprint backlog using the epic panel.

Analyze burndown and velocity reports to track sprint progress against the trend line, watch for spikes from added work, and use the product roadmap and epics in Jira for stakeholders.

Explore co-location and the kanban board to boost rapid feedback through rich information cues, visualize work, limit work in progress, and swarm to unblock bottlenecks in agile sprints.

Balance tacit and explicit knowledge in agile teams, using storytelling and empiricism to reveal outcomes, including sprint reviews, while fostering T-shaped generalizing specialists and growing I-shaped peers.

Lead with service in agile teams by removing blockers and shielding the team from distractions. Grow capabilities through pairing and swarming, promote self-management, and foster psychological safety and active facilitation.

Explore agile estimation using relative sizing and story points, leveraging Fibonacci sequencing to size backlog items and break down large work into sprint-sized user stories.

Prioritize the product backlog using compliance with regulations and customer-valued prioritization, informed by net promoter score, Moscow, and relative ranking, including work-in-progress limits and benefit-to-cost considerations.

Compute the cost of delay by dividing the expected profit by the delivery duration to prioritize features from highest to lowest value, then apply Kano analysis to classify must-haves, satisfiers, and delighters.

Integrate quality into every agile process to reduce cost of quality, by frequent verification and validation through peer reviews, sprint reviews, pair programming, side-by-side programming, automated testing, and continuous integration.

Learn test-driven development and behavior-driven testing, from red-green-refactor cycles to given-when-then acceptance criteria, timeboxed sprints, spikes, ceremonies, and continuous integration with automated unit tests.

Learn how technical debt arises from quick fixes and how refactoring simplifies code in Agile by removing duplication, lowering coupling, and increasing cohesion to keep the same output.

Measure agile project performance by applying OKRs and KPIs to track team progress, sprint deliverables, and product health, using specific targets like increasing signups and reducing churn.

Learn how kaizen drives small, daily improvements to reduce waste and meet customer quality, speed, and cost goals, using the five whys and fishbone (Ishikawa) analysis.

Explore agile risk management from the product backlog to retrospectives, using a pre-mortem, risk-adjusted backlog, and time-boxed spikes to reduce high-impact risks and improve process outcomes.

Tailor project processes to content, team, product, and regulations, using PMO guidance and approaches like agile or waterfall, and iteratively build quality amid complexity through the n(n-1)/2 communication channels.

Develop leadership with emotional intelligence by practicing self-awareness, self-management, empathy, and social skills to engage stakeholders; use collaborative decision-making, design thinking, and respectful conflict management.

Explore development approaches and project lifecycles to align deliverables with stakeholder value, comparing agile and waterfall, cadence, project phases, and predictive or adaptive methods.

Match the development approach to product innovation, requirements certainty, and organizational structure; choose agile, predictive, or a hybrid lifecycle. Align phases—feasibility, design, build, test, deploy, close—with cadence and phase gates.

Develop awareness of project environment and uncertainty using pesl and vu ca, apply systems thinking, prototype and experiment, and use reserves to manage volatility and risk.

Brainstorm risk responses with your team using a risk breakdown structure, then avoid, transfer, mitigate, or accept threats, exploit opportunities, and review contingency reserves within budget and schedule constraints.

Tailor the project approach by selecting an initial development method—predictive, adaptive, or hybrid—using a suitability filter and aligning with governance, PMOs, and ongoing improvement.

Explore Hertzberg's hygiene and motivational factors, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and McClelland's theory of needs—achievement, power, affiliation—and McGregor's X, Y, Z.

Explore complexity models like the Stacey matrix and Kuhnivan framework to navigate uncertainty, then apply team development and planning sweet spot with Tuckman's ladder, Drexler-Sibbett, and conflict models.

Examine life cycle assessment from cradle to grave and make-or-buy analysis to compare costs, then apply probability and impact matrices, regression, sensitivity analysis, and value stream mapping to optimize projects.

Explore agile meetings from kick-off and sprint planning to daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, and retrospectives; apply impact mapping, CTQs, MoSCoW, modeling, and timeboxing.

Explore data artifacts and visualization techniques in project management, including affinity diagrams, burn up/down charts, CFD, Ishikawa diagrams, Gantt charts, lead time charts, dashboards, and prioritization matrices.