PMP Exam Prep Course 35 PDUs/Hours Updated for the 2026 Exam

Explore how the PMP exam is built on the Exam Content Outline, not just PMBOK or Agile guides; download the outline to study topics, domains, tasks, and outcomes.

Master the PMP certification process: complete the 35-hour class, submit the PMI application, wait 3–5 days for approval, then schedule and take the exam to become PMP certified.

Identify the four PMP eligibility buckets, each needing 35 hours of education and corresponding experience. Understand PMI GAC accreditation and start the application plan.

Learn the PMP exam question types, including scenario-based questions, enhanced matching and graphics items, multiple-choice, multi-response, point-and-click, and risk management matches, with 80% of questions MCQ.

Maintain your PMP by earning 60 PDUs every three years through classes, PMI chapters, webinars, Udemy courses, and work experience; stay certified by renewing before the deadline.

Discover the PMP content origins from PMI materials, using the PMBOK Guide, Agile Practice Guide, and Exam Content Outline to master processes, terms, and agile hybrid concepts.

A project is a temporary initiative in a unique context that creates value, has a start and end date, and delivers a unique output.

Discover how to break large initiatives into coordinated programs of related projects and bundle them into portfolios to maximize overall value delivery, meet strategic objectives, and deliver measurable benefits.

Differentiate project management from operations management by comparing temporary projects with defined start and end dates to ongoing operations with no end date, such as sales, finance, and it support.

Projects enable change by delivering new products, upgrading existing ones, and improving internal processes to move an organization from its current state to a desired state.

project governance provides a framework and decision-making models to guide project management activities—scope, schedule, budget, risks, and stakeholders—and defines roles and responsibilities to align with organizational goals.

Explore the PMBOK's 40 processes and seven performance domains, and learn to initiate, plan, execute, monitor and control, and close projects with governance, scope, schedule, finance, stakeholders, resources, and risks.

Explore leadership styles such as laissez-faire, servant, charismatic, transactional, transformational, and interactional, and learn how to apply servant leadership in agile teams.

Explore how artificial intelligence, including machine learning, deep learning, and generative AI like GPT, enhances project management and productivity, with exam-focused guidance on risks and AI relevance.

Adopt a holistic view of projects, seeing scope, finance, schedule, risk, and governance as one interconnected system where changes in one area affect others, guiding root-cause identification and decision making.

Integrate sustainability across project areas by balancing societal, social, economical, and environmental outcomes, and avoid or minimize negative impacts using the sustainability pyramid.

Explore the project lifecycle and phases from start to finish, including phase gate reviews, cost of change, risk and uncertainty, and the role of stakeholder feedback in delivering value.

Explore adaptive projects from product vision to backlog and iterations, using feedback in agile cycles to refine requirements, and prepare for exam questions on adaptive versus predictive approaches.

Master the PMP focus areas and the 40 project management processes across initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing, delivering deliverables and utilizing the project charter.

Governance integrates the six other domains to guide project decisions and optimize value delivery, scalable from lightweight adaptive to comprehensive large predictive projects, with metrics and indicators guiding corrective action.

Master common ITTOs in the PMP certification exam prep course by understanding inputs, tools and techniques, and outputs across the PMBOK eighth edition, without memorizing each item.

Identify organizational process assets as internal assets, including templates, policies, procedures, knowledge repositories, previous project plans, and lessons learned to guide project planning and execution.

Explain that project documents are many inputs to PMBOK processes, not part of the project management plan, with templates provided for exam preparation.

Learn how expert judgment, powered by subject matter experts, guides cost estimates, schedules, risks, and quality across planning, execution, and monitoring control in projects.

Data drives project decisions by gathering, analyzing, and presenting information to stakeholders. Learn how to apply data gathering, data analysis, and data representation as essential tools throughout the project lifecycle.

Maps learners through all 40 PMBOK processes, while providing filled and blank templates, including risk and issue logs, for Mary's Consulting project.

Apply expert judgment, brainstorming, and stakeholder meetings to craft a charter outlining high-level scope, deliverables, and risks, then use a ram/raci chart and a project canvas to assign roles.

Determine external goods and services, perform a make-or-buy analysis, and select, manage, and close a vendor through a 10-step procurement process inspired by the PMBOK guide.

Plan scope management teaches defining, validating, and controlling project scope, and how to create the scope management plan and requirements management plan, including defining the WBS.

Update the project management plan with the scope and requirements management plans, detailing how scope is defined, validated, and controlled, and how requirements are elicited, analyzed, and prioritized.

Learn how to create and validate requirements documentation and traceability matrices, define acceptance criteria, and distinguish business, stakeholder, and solution requirements to guide project scope.

Develop scope structure by applying inputs from the project management plan, scope management plan, scope statement, and requirements documentation to create the scope baseline, WBS, and the WBS dictionary.

Plan schedule management defines how the project schedule will be planned, developed, managed, and maintained, and outputs a schedule management plan with methodologies, tools, accuracy targets, thresholds, and reporting formats.

Master PMBOK schedule steps: define activities, sequence, estimate effort and duration, and adjust; learn to create the activity list, project schedule network diagram, and manage iterative refinements.

Learn common estimation techniques for time, cost, and resources, including expert judgment, analogous and bottom-up estimates, parametric formulas, and relative size estimation with Agile story points using the Fibonacci sequence.

Identify the critical path and critical chain methods, and learn how forward and backward passes determine early starts, early finishes, late starts, late finishes, and slack for project schedules.

Plan financial management defines how project costs and revenue will be estimated, budgeted, funded, and controlled, using inputs like the charter and management plans to shape the financial plan.

Develop activity cost estimates using the financial management plan to assign comprehensive costs for each activity, including labor, materials, and equipment, recognizing estimates can change and reflecting cost trade-offs.

Learn to produce and document activity cost estimates tied to the work breakdown structure. Apply analogous, parametric, and bottom-up methods, and define the basis of estimate.

Plan stakeholder engagement shows how to create a stakeholder engagement plan and a stakeholder engagement matrix to keep stakeholders engaged, using iterative assessment and methods like product demos and meetings.

Examine plan communications management inputs and tools, including ITTOs and the communications channel formula. Apply expert judgment and stakeholder engagement planning to craft the communication management plan.

Plan resource management by defining the resource management plan, detailing how to estimate, acquire, manage, and release physical and HR resources, with roles, responsibilities, and a team charter.

Assess project risk by evaluating probability, impact, and effects on objectives using qualitative and quantitative analysis, in an iterative prioritization process.

Explore risk analysis inputs, tools, and outputs in project management, including expert judgment, risk management plan baselines, EMV, Monte Carlo simulations, tornado diagrams, decision tree analyses, and risk register updates.

Master risk response tools and outputs for positive and negative risks. Apply acceptance, transfer, escalate, avoidance, mitigate, exploit, and enhance to shape the risk register and related outputs.

Capture and share project knowledge to drive organizational learning by building a lessons learned register, leveraging explicit and tacit knowledge, and using after-action reviews and storytelling to improve future projects.

Execute the communication management plan to collect, create, distribute, store, and dispose project information for timely stakeholder updates. Learn inputs, tools, and skills for effective, tailored, two-way communication.

Monitor and control projects by comparing work performance data to the plan, generating work performance information, and delivering status reports to keep the project on scope, schedule, and budget.

Navigate to the final step in monitoring and controlling: validate scope, where the customer formally accepts the verified deliverable to close the project and confirm quality.

Keep the project on schedule by monitoring actual progress, updating the schedule, and applying change control; leverage agile velocity and backlog practices to forecast and adjust.

Define value as the worth, importance, or usefulness of something, driven by perspective, and in projects, measure benefits relative to effort, cost, and organizational strategic objectives.

Master the Scrum process from product backlog to sprint delivery, daily standups, reviews, and retrospectives, learning value-based prioritization and incremental releases under the product owner.

Explore the Scrum framework's three pillars—transparency, inspections, and adaptation. Learn the three roles: product owner, Scrum master, and development team, focusing on backlog, prioritization, and self-managed work.

Define a shared Definition of Done at project start to ensure the team and customers globally agree on completion, including tests, documentation, and output requirements.

Explore lean software development inspired by the Toyota production system, focusing on eliminating waste, empowering teams, delivering fast iterations, building quality in, and amplifying learning to maximize customer value.

Explore the scaled agile framework (SAFe) for enterprise-scale software delivery, integrating lean, agile, and DevOps principles to align multiple teams with business goals and ensure quality.

Explore agile roles—delivery team, product owner, and scrum master—and how they build increments, run standups, and conduct sprint reviews, guided by a servant-leader agile project manager.

Explore how individual and team development unfold through Shu-Ha-Ri and the Dreyfus model, then master Tuckman's five stages: forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning for effective project teamwork.

Engage the team to solve agile problems by leveraging their practical expertise, consensus, and broad knowledge base.

Master negotiation by understanding who you negotiate with, practicing give and take, using emotional intelligence, and keeping the customer's needs central to drive project success.

Explore key motivation theories—Maslow, Herzberg, X/Y, Z, expectancy, and McClelland’s needs—and how reward and expert power help manage agile and traditional projects.

Master adaptive agile planning by incrementally delivering value, continuously replanning based on product backlog changes, engaging the team and customer, and tailoring estimates and processes to manage high uncertainty.

Value-driven delivery focuses on delivering increments that provide customer value, ensuring every project returns measurable benefits such as revenue growth, cost reduction, or compliance.

Explore how task boards, especially Kanban boards, act as information radiators in Agile, showing work in progress, testing, and completion, with burn up charts and cumulative flow diagrams revealing progress.

Develop collaboration and stakeholder engagement to deliver successful products through three practical games—remember the future, prune the product tree, and speedboat—clarifying acceptance criteria, feature prioritization, and project risks.

Read the cumulative flow diagram to track work from ready through development, testing, and deployment, identify bottlenecks, and use data and the theory of constraint to improve an agile project.

Explore burnup and burndown charts to track completed versus remaining work. Learn velocity charts and backlog points to gauge agile team pace for PMP exam relevance.

Study how variances and trends reveal performance patterns through metrics like velocity, burn up and burn down charts, lagging and leading indicators, and story points to forecast sprint outcomes.

Learn a standardized risk management process from the PMBOK Guide applicable to agile and traditional projects, covering planning, risk identification, qualitative and quantitative assessment, responses, implementation, and continuous monitoring.

Learn how to manage agile outsourcing with flexible contracts that support collaboration and timely feedback. Use change-for-free, graduated fixed-price, and fixed-price work packages to balance time, cost, and scope.