PMI Project Management Professional

Teams deliver what leaders enable. You set a shared vision, build team agreements, lead through motivation and conflict, and support a team that is distributed, mixed in skill or new to working together.

• Vision, goals and team charters
• Leadership styles and when each works
• Building and developing a team
• Motivation, recognition and emotional intelligence
• Managing conflict and negotiating
• Supporting virtual and distributed teams
• Coaching and removing impediments

You build A team charter and a conflict-resolution plan for a new project team.

Projects succeed through the people who can help or block them. You identify and analyze stakeholders, plan communication, report progress honestly, and adapt your message to each audience.

• Identifying and analyzing stakeholders
• Stakeholder engagement strategies
• Communication planning and channels
• Status reporting and dashboards
• Running effective meetings
• Managing expectations and difficult conversations

You build A stakeholder register and communications plan for one project.

A project starts with a reason. You write a charter, test the business case, set up governance with sponsors and steering groups, and keep the project in line with compliance duties.

• Business case and benefits management
• Writing the project charter
• Governance structures and decision rights
• Sponsor and steering committee roles
• Compliance, standards and regulatory duties
• Authorizing, pausing and stopping a project

You build A charter and governance plan with a business case summary.

Unclear scope sinks projects. You collect requirements, define scope, break it into a work breakdown structure or a backlog, and control change as the work moves.

• Collecting and documenting requirements
• Scope statements and acceptance criteria
• Work breakdown structures
• Backlogs and user stories for adaptive work
• Validating and controlling scope
• Managing scope creep and change requests

You build A scope statement and work breakdown structure for one project.

A schedule is a set of commitments. You estimate activities, sequence them, find the critical path, build a schedule that respects constraints, and use iterations and release plans where the work is adaptive.

• Estimating techniques: analogous, parametric and three-point
• Sequencing activities and dependencies
• Critical path and float
• Resource-constrained scheduling and compression
• Iteration and release planning
• Monitoring progress and adjusting

You build A schedule with a critical path analysis and a compression option.

Cost control rests on honest estimates and early warning. You build a cost baseline, set a budget with reserves, track earned value, and forecast final cost from the data.

• Cost estimating and contingency
• Cost baseline and funding
• Earned value measures and indices
• Forecasting the estimate at completion
• Budgeting and tracking in agile projects
• Cost control and variance response

You build A cost baseline and an earned value report with a forecast.

Quality, people and suppliers decide whether the work meets its purpose. You plan quality, manage physical and human resources, and buy from suppliers under contracts that fit the risk.

• Quality planning and metrics
• Quality assurance and control tools
• Resource planning and allocation
• Procurement strategy and make-or-buy decisions
• Contract types and who carries the risk
• Managing suppliers and closing contracts

You build A quality plan and a procurement approach for one project.

Every project faces uncertainty. You identify risks, assess them, plan responses for threats and opportunities, and handle issues when risks come true, in both plan-driven and adaptive settings.

• Identifying risks
• Qualitative and quantitative assessment
• Response strategies for threats and opportunities
• Risk registers and reporting
• Issues, escalation and problem solving
• Risk in agile and hybrid projects

You build A risk register with responses and an escalation path.

Many projects now mix methods. You work with agile practices such as backlogs, iterations and reviews, and combine them with plan-driven elements in a hybrid design that suits the work.

• Agile principles and frameworks
• Backlogs, user stories and prioritization
• Iterations, reviews and retrospectives
• Metrics for flow and delivery
• Combining predictive and agile elements
• Roles in adaptive teams and the project manager’s part

You build A hybrid delivery plan that mixes a fixed milestone plan with iterative work.

The parts of a project must work as one. You assemble an integrated plan, manage work and knowledge, run change control, and make decisions based on performance data.

• Building the integrated project management plan
• Directing and managing project work
• Knowledge management and lessons learned
• Integrated change control
• Performance reviews and corrective action
• Managing dependencies and interfaces between teams

You build An integrated plan and a change control procedure.

Projects exist to serve the organization. You use organizational process assets and policies, track benefits after delivery, manage organizational change, and respond to external factors that shift the project’s ground.

• Organizational process assets and environmental factors
• Benefits realization and handover to operations
• Organizational change management
• External factors: market, regulation and technology
• Compliance and audit support
• Closing a project or phase

You build A handover and benefits tracking plan for a completed project.

One case carries the whole course. You charter a project, choose an approach, plan and run it through simulated events, and close it with lessons learned and a handover.

• Chartering and choosing the approach
• Planning scope, schedule, cost and risk
• Leading the team through events and change
• Reporting to stakeholders and sponsors
• Closing and capturing lessons

You build A complete project file from charter to closure for a realistic case.