PMP Certification Prep Bootcamp

What you will be able to do

• Explain the project life cycle, the process groups, and how organizational structure shapes a PM's authority
• Write a project charter and build a stakeholder register with a power and interest assessment
• Lead a team through conflict, motivation, and the stages of team formation
• Build a work breakdown structure and control scope against a baseline
• Draw a network diagram, find the critical path, and choose between crashing and fast-tracking
• Run earned value management: calculate CPI, SPI, EAC and TCPI and diagnose a struggling project
• Build a risk register with qualitative and quantitative analysis and the correct response strategies
• Apply agile and hybrid approaches, and read PMI situational-judgment questions the way the exam intends

What is inside

14 modules, 70 lessons. Each module ends in a graded quiz and most carry an assignment.

1. 01

   Project Management Foundations & the Project Environment

   Before you learn a single formula, you need the vocabulary and structure PMI builds the entire exam on: what a project actually is, the five process groups every project moves through, how an organization's structure changes what authority a project manager really has, and the ethics code the exam tests through situational judgment questions, not memorization. This module follows Fenwick Outdoor Co., a fictional mid-size outdoor gear company, through its Trailhead Launch Project, a new product line paired with a new order-fulfillment and inventory system, as the running example for every lesson. You finish able to define a project correctly, place any project activity into the right process group, read an org chart for what it tells you about a PM's real authority, and reason through an ethics scenario the way PMI expects.

   5 lessons · 15 quiz questions · assignment

2. 02

   Starting the Project: Business Case, Charter, and Stakeholder Identification

   Before a project manager writes a single task on a schedule, real authorization work has to happen: a business case that justifies spending the money, a charter that formally puts someone in charge, and a rigorous look at everyone the project will affect. This module walks through all three using Fenwick Outdoor Co.'s Trailhead Launch Project, a fictional mid-size outdoor gear company launching a new product line alongside a new order-fulfillment and inventory system, with real worked numbers throughout. You finish able to build a defensible business case, write a charter that actually authorizes work, and produce a stakeholder register and assessment worth using.

   5 lessons · 15 quiz questions · assignment

3. 03

   Leading and Building the Project Team

   This module covers the People domain of the PMP exam: how a project manager forms a team, chooses a leadership style that fits the person and the moment, manages conflict without destroying trust, and applies real motivation theory instead of guesswork. Every concept is worked through the same case: Fenwick Outdoor Co.'s Trailhead Launch Project, a nine-month effort to launch a new backpacking gear line called Ridgeline while standing up a new order-fulfillment and inventory system called SummitFlow. You finish able to diagnose a team's stage, pick a defensible leadership response, and resolve conflict the way PMI expects, not the way instinct suggests.

   5 lessons · 15 quiz questions · assignment

4. 04

   Communication and Stakeholder Engagement

   Communication is not a soft skill on the PMP exam. It is where the exam tests judgment hardest: which method fits which situation, how to read and move a stakeholder's engagement level, and how to keep a steering committee informed without burying it in noise. This module builds the Trailhead Launch Project's full communications management plan and stakeholder engagement assessment matrix, then puts both to work in a status meeting, a variance-driven report, and a head-on conflict with a resistant VP of Sales.

   5 lessons · 15 quiz questions · assignment

5. 05

   Scope Management: Defining and Controlling What's In and Out

   Scope is the boundary line of every project: what work delivers the product, and what does not. This module follows Fenwick Outdoor Co.'s Trailhead Launch Project from raw stakeholder requirements through a real work breakdown structure, a locked scope baseline, and the two processes PMI exam questions love to blur together: formally accepting a finished deliverable and controlling change to the baseline that defines it. You finish able to build a defensible WBS, write a WBS dictionary entry that actually protects a project, and correctly separate scope creep from a properly approved change.

   5 lessons · 15 quiz questions · assignment

6. 06

   Schedule Management: Building and Controlling the Timeline

   Marcus Reyes rebuilt Trailhead Launch's schedule from the ground up after the month 9 Cascade Tooling Partners crisis, and this module teaches you to do exactly what he did: turn a raw activity list into a real precedence network, run the critical path method by hand, and defend every date with math instead of a gut feeling. You will sequence Trailhead's remaining Systems Integration and Testing and Pilot Launch work, estimate durations with analogous, parametric, and three-point techniques, find the 32-day critical path and its float, compress it to 30 days through crashing and fast-tracking, and read a real schedule variance at a Day 15 status check. Every number in this module is one you compute yourself, not one you memorize.

   5 lessons · 15 quiz questions · assignment

7. 07

   Cost Management: Budgeting, Estimating, and Earned Value

   This module builds the single most formula-heavy, highest-leverage stretch of the PMP exam: cost estimating, the cost baseline, and full earned value management. You will work every calculation with real numbers from the 12-month Trailhead Launch Project at Fenwick Outdoor Co., a fictional mid-size outdoor gear company launching its new Alpine Series product line alongside TrailTrack, a new order-fulfillment and inventory system. By the end you will estimate, baseline, measure, diagnose, and forecast a project's cost performance the same way a PMP-certified project manager does on the job.

   5 lessons · 15 quiz questions · assignment

8. 08

   Quality Management: Planning, Assurance, and Control

   Quality on the exam and on the job comes down to three distinct jobs done at three different times: planning what quality means and what it will cost, managing the process so defects do not happen in the first place, and controlling the deliverable to catch the ones that slip through anyway. This module builds all three around a single running defect at Fenwick Outdoor Co.'s Trailhead Launch Project, worked with real cost figures, a real Pareto chart, a real control chart, a real sampling plan, and a full root-cause analysis from symptom to fix. By the end you will be able to classify a cost of quality line item, tell Manage Quality from Control Quality without hesitating, read a Pareto chart and a control chart correctly, design a basic acceptance sampling plan, and run a 5 Whys analysis that actually finds the root cause instead of stopping at the first excuse.

   5 lessons · 15 quiz questions · assignment

9. 09

   Risk Management: Identification Through Response and Monitoring

   Risk management is where a project manager stops reacting to problems and starts pricing them in advance. This module walks the full risk cycle through Fenwick Outdoor Co.'s Trailhead Launch Project: identifying risks and building a real risk register, scoring them with probability and impact, quantifying the costliest few with expected monetary value and a decision tree, and choosing the exam-tested response strategy for each one. It closes with a live risk reassessment, complete with a risk audit, an emergent risk, and real reserve dollars won and spent.

   5 lessons · 15 quiz questions · assignment

10. 10

    Resource and Procurement Management

    Resource and procurement management is where the PMP exam gets mathematical, and where real projects quietly go over budget when a project manager skips the math. This module covers estimating and acquiring the people and materials Fenwick Outdoor Co.'s Trailhead Launch Project needs, leveling and smoothing resource conflicts without blowing the schedule, and running a full procurement cycle for the Waypoint fulfillment system: choosing the right solicitation document, scoring vendors on more than price, picking a contract type that allocates risk correctly, and administering that contract from signature through final payment. Every calculation, from parametric resource estimates to the Point of Total Assumption, uses real Trailhead numbers you work by hand.

    5 lessons · 15 quiz questions · assignment

11. 11

    Integration Management: Tying the Whole Project Together

    Integration is the connective tissue running under every other knowledge area: the project management plan pulls every subsidiary plan and baseline into one coherent whole, Perform Integrated Change Control is the single gate every scope, schedule, cost, or quality change has to pass through, and formal closing is what actually proves the work is done. This module follows project manager Marcus Reyes through the Trailhead Launch Project at Fenwick Outdoor Co., building the plan, directing the work, running the change control board, reading real earned value numbers, and closing the project out, exactly the way PMI frames Integration Management on the exam. You finish able to place any artifact correctly inside or outside the project management plan, run a change request through a change control board, calculate and interpret CPI, SPI, and EAC from real numbers, and state precisely what closing a project or phase requires.

    5 lessons · 15 quiz questions · assignment

12. 12

    Business Environment: Compliance, Benefits Realization, and Organizational Change

    This is PMI's smallest tested domain by question count, and the one most candidates under-prepare for because they spend their study time on process mechanics instead. You will follow Fenwick Outdoor Co.'s Trailhead Launch Project through its final stretch: a CPSC compliance gate, a worked benefits realization calculation with a real payback period, a change adoption plan built on pilot data, an external tariff shock that hits the cost baseline, and the organizational process assets Trailhead leaves behind for the next Fenwick project. You finish able to tell a fixed compliance constraint from a negotiable scope item, calculate whether a project's benefits case actually pays back its investment, diagnose an adoption gap with the ADKAR model, and know exactly what belongs in an OPA versus an EEF.

    5 lessons · 15 quiz questions · assignment

13. 13

    Agile and Hybrid Project Approaches

    Roughly half of today's PMP exam is agile and hybrid content, and this module builds that foundation on the same Trailhead Launch Project you already know. You will watch Fenwick Outdoor Co. stand up a real Scrum team for its fulfillment system, shift a testing crew onto Kanban, blend both with the predictive manufacturing track already covered in earlier modules, and read the velocity and burndown numbers that tell a project manager the truth before a milestone does. You finish able to pick the right life cycle for a given piece of work, run Scrum's events and artifacts correctly, and forecast schedule risk from real sprint data instead of a gut feeling.

    5 lessons · 15 quiz questions · assignment

14. 14

    PMP Exam Strategy, Situational Judgment, and Final Practice

    This closing module steps back from individual knowledge areas to the exam itself: how PMI actually structures and times the test, how to read a situational judgment question the way PMI intends it to be read, and why the textbook-correct answer sometimes differs from what an experienced project manager would do on the job. You finish with a personal study and review plan, real worked practice under timed, mixed-domain pressure using Fenwick Outdoor Co.'s Trailhead Launch Project, and a fifteen-question quiz that deliberately blends every domain this bootcamp has covered, exactly the way PMI's real exam does.

    5 lessons · 15 quiz questions · assignment