Your FREE PMP Flashcards 2026 – 300+ Cards

A leadership style where the project manager serves the team — removing impediments, providing what they need, and developing people — to enable a self-organizing, high-performing team.

The team-development model: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning.

The first team stage: members come together, polite and uncertain; the leader provides direction.

The stage where conflict surfaces as members assert ideas; the leader coaches and resolves conflict.

The stage where norms and trust form and the team begins to work effectively together.

The stage where the team is high-performing and largely self-organizing; the leader delegates.

The final stage where work completes and the team disbands; recognize and release members.

The ability to recognize and manage your own emotions and to read and influence others' emotions; the basis of leading people.

Self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill.

A responsibility assignment matrix marking who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed for each task.

The person who does the work to complete the task.

The single person who owns the outcome and signs off — exactly one per task.

Subject-matter experts whose two-way input is sought before a decision.

People kept up to date one-way on progress and decisions.

Collaborate, compromise, smooth (accommodate), force (direct), and withdraw (avoid).

Working together to a win-win that addresses everyone's needs — the most effective, durable conflict mode and the usual PMP answer.

Each party gives up something for a partial win — a lose-lose middle ground.

Emphasizing agreement over differences and conceding your position; a temporary fix.

Pushing one viewpoint at others' expense — a fast win-lose outcome that breeds resentment.

Retreating from or postponing a conflict, leaving it unresolved; can buy a cooling-off period.

Collaborating (problem-solving / confronting) — address the root cause and build a win-win.

Any individual, group, or organization that can affect, be affected by, or perceive itself affected by the project.

Identify stakeholders, analyze (power/interest/influence), plan engagement, then manage and monitor engagement.

A tool classifying stakeholders by power and interest to decide how closely to engage each one.

High power, high interest — partner with and actively involve them.

High power, low interest — meet their needs without overloading them.

Low power, high interest — communicate often; they care about the project.

Low power, low interest — minimal effort.

A document the team creates defining its values, agreements, ground rules, and how it will operate.

Explicit, team-agreed expectations for behavior and collaboration, enforced by the whole team.

A team that decides internally how to accomplish its work rather than being directed task-by-task.

A team whose members work from different locations; needs extra-clear communication and tools.

Maslow's hierarchy: physiological, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization needs.

Hygiene factors (e.g., pay, conditions) prevent dissatisfaction; motivators (e.g., achievement, recognition) drive satisfaction.

Theory X assumes people dislike work and need control; Theory Y assumes people are self-motivated and seek responsibility.

Coaching builds specific skills/performance now; mentoring is a longer-term relationship developing the whole person.

Reaching agreement through good-faith discussion; aim for win-win outcomes that preserve the relationship.

Fully concentrating on, understanding, and responding to a speaker to build shared understanding and trust.

Delegating authority and decisions to the team so members own outcomes — central to servant leadership.

A servant-leader duty: clearing blockers and obstacles so the team can keep delivering value.

Ensuring stakeholders and the team have a common view of goals, scope, and success.

Leadership inspires and aligns people toward a vision; management organizes and controls work and resources.

Assuming someone good at one thing will be good at another (e.g., promoting a strong engineer to manager).

Listen, empathize, coach, facilitate, remove impediments, and develop the team's autonomy.

Use emotional intelligence to read morale, defuse tension, and motivate the team.

Schedules, priorities, and resources cause more project conflict than personality clashes.

Only after collaborative resolution genuinely fails or the issue is beyond your authority.

Entrusting authority and decisions to a capable team while staying available to remove blockers.

A group technique to generate many ideas without early judgment, used in planning and risk ID.

Brainstorming plus voting to rank ideas by priority.

Anonymous rounds of expert input with feedback to build consensus and reduce bias.

Scoring options against weighted criteria to choose objectively.

Inevitable and can be healthy when managed openly; the PM addresses it early.

Reinforce desired behavior; should be timely, fair, and valued by the recipient.

Placing the team in one physical space (e.g., a war room) to boost communication.

Co-location of project team members; unrelated to organizational structure type.

A document listing stakeholders with their interests, influence, and engagement needs.

Classifies stakeholders by power, urgency, and legitimacy.

Compares current vs. desired stakeholder engagement (unaware → leading).

The team itself creates it, which builds buy-in and ownership of the rules.

Be transparent, consistent, and reliable; trust is the foundation of a high-performing team.

Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement — your fallback if talks fail; strengthens your position.

A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result, with a definite start and end.

Operations are ongoing and repetitive; a project is temporary and produces a unique result.

A group of related projects managed together to gain benefits not available from managing them separately.

A collection of projects, programs, and operations managed as a group to meet strategic objectives.

The document that formally authorizes the project, names the PM, and grants authority to use resources.

The PM's unique work of coordinating all the subsidiary plans and processes into one coherent whole.

The approved, integrated document defining how the project is executed, monitored, and closed.

A hierarchical decomposition of the total project scope into deliverables and work packages.

The lowest level of the WBS — the unit you estimate, schedule, and assign.

The WBS captures all the project work and only the project work; nothing outside it is in scope.

The approved scope statement, WBS, and WBS dictionary used to measure scope performance.

Uncontrolled changes or additions to scope without going through change control.

Adding features or work the customer didn't request — wasted effort and added risk.

Adding detail to plans as more is known; healthy, unlike uncontrolled scope change.

A grid linking each requirement to its origin and deliverable to ensure all are met.

The single process for reviewing, approving, and managing changes across the project.

A chartered group that reviews and approves or rejects requested changes.

A formal proposal to modify a document, deliverable, or baseline; routed through change control.

An approved version of scope, schedule, or cost against which performance is measured; changed only via change control.

The longest path of dependent activities through the schedule; the shortest time to finish the project.

How long an activity can be delayed without delaying a later milestone.

Delay an activity can absorb without delaying the project end date.

Delay an activity can absorb without delaying the next (successor) activity.

Zero total float — any delay delays the whole project.

Compressing the schedule by adding resources to critical-path activities; increases cost.

Compressing the schedule by running activities in parallel that were sequential; increases risk.

An overlap that lets a successor activity start before its predecessor finishes.

A required delay between a predecessor and a successor activity.

A significant point or event in the project with zero duration.

A visual of activities and their logical dependencies used to find the critical path.

The approved, time-phased budget (excluding management reserve) used to measure cost performance.

Budget held for unknown-unknowns; not in the cost baseline; needs management approval to use.

Budget for identified (known) risks; part of the cost baseline.

An integrated method combining scope, schedule, and cost to measure and forecast performance.

The authorized budget for the work scheduled to be done by a given date.

The budgeted cost of the work actually completed by a given date.

The real cost incurred for the work completed by a given date.

The total authorized budget for the project's planned work.

CV = EV − AC. Negative means over budget; positive means under budget.

SV = EV − PV. Negative means behind schedule; positive means ahead.

CPI = EV ÷ AC. Greater than 1 is under budget; less than 1 is over budget.

SPI = EV ÷ PV. Greater than 1 is ahead of schedule; less than 1 is behind.

Forecast total cost. When current performance continues, EAC = BAC ÷ CPI.

The expected cost to finish the remaining work; ETC = EAC − AC.

How far off budget the project will finish; VAC = BAC − EAC.

The cost efficiency needed on remaining work to hit the budget; TCPI = (BAC − EV) ÷ (BAC − AC).

A value above 1 is favorable; exactly 1 is on plan; below 1 is unfavorable.

Every formula starts with EV; divide for an index (CPI, SPI), subtract for a variance (CV, SV).

Quality is conformance to requirements; grade is a category of features. Low quality is always a problem; low grade may be acceptable.

Process-focused activities that build confidence the project will meet quality requirements.

Product-focused activities that verify deliverables meet requirements.

The total cost of conformance (prevention, appraisal) plus non-conformance (failure) costs.

Quality is built in (prevention), not inspected in; prevention is cheaper than fixing defects later.

A fishbone diagram that traces a problem to its potential root causes.

A bar chart ordering causes by frequency — the 80/20 rule highlights the vital few.

A chart tracking a process over time against control limits to detect out-of-control variation.

An uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, affects a project objective.

Plan, identify, perform qualitative analysis, perform quantitative analysis, plan responses, implement & monitor.

The artifact recording identified risks with probability, impact, owner, and planned responses.

Prioritizing risks by probability and impact, usually with a probability-and-impact matrix.

Numerically modeling the combined effect of top risks on cost and schedule.

Avoid, transfer, mitigate, accept, or escalate.

Exploit, share, enhance, accept, or escalate.

Eliminate the threat entirely, e.g., by changing the plan.

Shift the threat's impact to a third party, e.g., insurance or a contract.

Reduce the probability or impact of the threat.

Take action to make the opportunity certain to happen.

Increase the probability or impact of an opportunity.

Partner with a third party best able to capture the opportunity.

Take no proactive action; for threats, often hold a contingency reserve.

Raise a risk outside the project's authority to the right level to own it.

A new risk created by implementing a risk response.

The risk that remains after responses have been applied.

Obtaining goods or services from outside the project team, governed by contracts.

A set price for the work; the seller carries most of the cost risk.

Pays the seller's allowable costs plus a fee; the buyer carries more cost risk.

Pays hourly/unit rates with no fixed total; cost risk is shared.

A description of the procurement item detailed enough for sellers to bid and deliver.

Deciding whether to produce a deliverable in-house or procure it externally.

Planning, creating, distributing, and managing project information to the right people.

Number of channels = n × (n − 1) ÷ 2, where n is the number of people.

Push sends info to recipients (email, reports); pull lets recipients retrieve it (portals, wikis).

Knowledge gained during the project, recorded so future projects benefit; part of OPAs.

Finalizing all activities, getting acceptance, releasing resources, and archiving documents.

Choosing predictive, agile, or hybrid based on the project's certainty, change rate, and context.

The framework of rules, roles, and decision rights guiding how a project is directed and controlled.

A record of current problems (issues) that need resolution, with owners and status.

A quantitative technique comparing options' expected monetary value under uncertainty.

EMV = probability × impact; used to compare risky options.

Estimate = (optimistic + 4 × most likely + pessimistic) ÷ 6, smoothing estimation uncertainty.

The buyer/customer formally accepts completed deliverables; about acceptance, not correctness.

Control scope monitors and manages scope changes; validate scope gets formal acceptance.

Plan near-term work in detail and later work at a higher level, refining as you go.

Estimating using a similar past project; fast but less accurate (top-down).

Estimating using a statistical relationship (e.g., cost per unit) and known quantities.

Estimating each work package and rolling them up; accurate but time-consuming.

Determining contingency and management reserves for schedule and cost.

Crashing (add resources, more cost) or fast-tracking (parallelize, more risk).

Adjusting start/finish dates to balance resource demand; can extend the schedule.

Adjusting within float so resource use stays under a limit without changing the critical path.

The most common dependency: a successor can't start until its predecessor finishes.

A hard logic dependency inherent to the work (e.g., build walls before roof).

A preferred (soft) sequence based on best practice, not a hard requirement.

SV in dollars; SPI shows schedule efficiency as a ratio (EV ÷ PV).

A structured review to confirm the project follows quality policies and processes.

Examining a deliverable to verify it conforms to requirements (a QC activity).

A structured tool listing items to verify during quality control or risk identification.

A bar chart showing the distribution of data, used in quality analysis.

A chart plotting two variables to reveal a relationship or correlation.

A diagram of process steps used to find quality problems or improvement points.

A grid ranking risks by their likelihood and effect to prioritize them.

A risk breakdown structure groups risks (technical, external, organizational, PM).

The person accountable for monitoring a risk and carrying out its response.

Low-priority risks recorded for periodic review rather than active response.

An indicator that a risk is about to occur or has occurred.

Shows which risks have the most potential impact on the objective.

A quantitative technique modeling many outcomes to assess overall project risk.

RFP, RFQ, and IFB used to solicit seller proposals or quotes.

The factors used to evaluate and choose a seller (price, capability, etc.).

Confirming all contract work and terms are complete and formally closing the agreement.

A contract clause excusing performance due to extraordinary events beyond control.

Interactive (meetings/calls), push (email/reports), and pull (portals/wikis).

Sender encodes, transmits through a medium with noise, receiver decodes and acknowledges.

Keeping affected parties informed of decisions, issues, and resolutions.

Documents and deliverables produced by the project (plans, logs, reports, registers).

Sharing tacit and explicit knowledge across the team and into the organization.

A review at a phase boundary to decide whether to continue, change, or end the project.

Controlling versions of deliverables and documents to ensure consistency.

A risk is a future uncertainty; an issue is a current problem already happening.

Management reserve (which is added for unknown-unknowns and needs approval to use).

Connects the project to the wider organization: compliance, value/benefits delivery, and organizational change.

The documented justification for a project — its need, options, costs, and expected benefits.

Confirming a project's intended value and benefits are actually achieved, often after it closes.

The plan describing how and when a project's benefits will be delivered and measured.

Producing outcomes that meet stakeholder needs and create value, not just deliverables.

Future cash flows discounted to today minus the investment; a positive, higher NPV is better.

The percentage gain from a project relative to its cost; higher is better.

The time for a project's cumulative inflows to recover the initial investment; shorter is better.

Benefits divided by costs; greater than 1 means benefits exceed costs.

The discount rate at which a project's NPV is zero; higher IRR is generally better.

When projects cost the same, the higher NPV is the stronger financial choice.

Planning and managing adherence to laws, regulations, standards, and organizational policy.

Potential non-compliance is identified and handled like any other project risk.

New regulations, market shifts, or technology that the PM monitors and responds to via change control.

Conditions outside the team's control — culture, market, regulations — that influence the project.

The organization's own plans, processes, policies, templates, and knowledge bases used on projects.

EEFs are external conditions you adapt to; OPAs are internal assets you use and add to.

Preparing and supporting people to adopt a new way of working so project benefits stick.

A project can finish on time and on budget yet fail if the intended value never materializes.

Ensuring the project supports the organization's strategy and goals; reason to start or stop it.

Functional, matrix (weak/balanced/strong), and projectized — they set the PM's authority level.

Lowest in functional, highest in projectized; matrix is in between by type.

An organizational body that standardizes and supports project governance; supportive, controlling, or directive.

A healthcare data project must meet privacy rules (e.g., HIPAA); compliance gaps are risks to address early.

Legal/regulatory, safety, quality/standards, and organizational policy.

Considering environmental, social, and governance impacts in project decisions.

External shifts the PM must assess for impact on scope, value, and viability.

Periodically confirming the project still delivers value; if not, recommend stopping it.

Delivering value means achieving outcomes and benefits, not merely producing deliverables.

Often a business sponsor, accountable for realizing benefits after the project ends.

Staff grouped by specialty; the functional manager has authority, the PM little.

The whole organization is structured around projects; the PM has high authority.

Shares authority between functional and project managers (weak, balanced, or strong).

Provides templates, training, and lessons learned; low control.

Requires compliance with frameworks and methodologies; moderate control.

Directly manages projects; high control.

An iterative, change-driven approach that fixes time and cost and flexes scope by priority to deliver value early.

A plan-driven approach that fixes scope up front; best for stable, well-understood work.

A delivery approach blending predictive and agile elements, tailored to the project.

High uncertainty, fast-changing requirements, and a need for early, frequent feedback.

Stable, well-defined requirements with fixed scope and low expected change.

Individuals & interactions, working software, customer collaboration, and responding to change.

A short, fixed-length timebox (often 1–4 weeks) producing a usable increment.

An agile framework delivering work in sprints with set roles and ceremonies.

Product owner, scrum master, and developers (the development team).

Owns and orders the product backlog to maximize value; the voice of the customer.

A servant leader who facilitates Scrum, coaches the team, and removes impediments.

The cross-functional team members who build the increment each sprint.

Sprint planning, daily standup, sprint review, and sprint retrospective.

The team selects backlog items it can complete and sets a sprint goal.

A short daily sync covering progress, plan, and impediments.

Demonstrating the increment to stakeholders to gather feedback.

The team inspects how it worked and commits to improvements.

An ordered, evolving list of everything that might be needed in the product, owned by the product owner.

The set of backlog items the team commits to deliver in the current sprint.

A short, user-centered requirement: 'As a [role], I want [goal] so that [benefit].'

The team's shared, explicit criteria for an increment to be considered complete.

The amount of work a team completes per iteration, used to forecast future capacity.

A relative estimate of effort/complexity for a backlog item, not a time estimate.

The smallest releasable product that delivers value and enables learning.

An agile method that visualizes work and limits work in progress (WIP) to improve flow.

A cap on how many items can be in a workflow stage at once, to improve flow and surface bottlenecks.

A visual board showing work items moving through workflow columns.

Scrum is cadence- and commitment-based (sprints); Kanban is flow- and WIP-limit-based (continuous).

A chart showing remaining work over time within a sprint or release.

A chart showing completed work climbing toward total scope over time.

A highly visible display (e.g., board, charts) that broadcasts project status to everyone.

The scrum master/PM facilitates and removes impediments rather than directing the team's tasks.

Ongoing work to add detail, estimates, and order to backlog items.

Fixing a maximum duration for an activity to focus effort and force prioritization.

Releasing usable pieces of the product over time so value and feedback come early.

Continuous improvement — the team identifies what to keep, drop, and try next.

Iterative refines through repeated cycles; incremental delivers in usable pieces; agile uses both.

Decisions based on observation and experimentation (transparency, inspection, adaptation).

Transparency, inspection, and adaptation.

A timeboxed investigation to reduce uncertainty about an approach or estimate.

A large body of work that can be broken down into multiple user stories.

A group of related epics or stories aligned to a goal.

Conditions a user story must meet to be accepted as done.

Good stories are Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, and Testable.

A consensus estimating game using relative story-point cards.

Mapping which features/increments will be delivered over upcoming iterations.

Facilitate openly and safely so the team owns its improvements.

An agile chart showing work in each state over time to reveal bottlenecks.

Lead time spans request to delivery; cycle time spans work start to finish.

What did I do, what will I do, and what's blocking me?

A clear, shared statement of the product's purpose guiding backlog priorities.

Helping teams and organizations adopt agile mindsets and practices effectively.

The Project Management Professional certification from PMI, validating the ability to lead and direct projects.

The Project Management Institute, the body that issues the PMP and publishes the PMBOK Guide.

PMI's A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge; the 7th edition is principle-based.

A PMI/Agile Alliance guide to agile and hybrid approaches, referenced by the PMP.

People (42%), Process (50%), and Business Environment (8%) on the current exam.

180 questions in 230 minutes with one optional 10-minute break (current exam).

About half the questions are agile or hybrid; the other half are predictive.

Pass/fail set by an expert panel; no fixed % cut score; per-domain ratings are reported.

Above Target, Target, Below Target, and Needs Improvement, reported per domain.

35 contact hours plus either a 4-year degree + 36 months or a HS/associate + 60 months leading projects.

Valid for 3 years; renew with 60 PDUs in PMI's Talent Triangle.

Rebalances weights to People 33%, Process 41%, Business Environment 26%; same three domains.

Be proactive, serve and empower the team, deliver value, and confront problems collaboratively.

Stewardship, team, stakeholders, value, systems thinking, leadership, tailoring, quality, complexity, risk, adaptability & resilience, change.

Stakeholders, team, development approach & life cycle, planning, project work, delivery, measurement, uncertainty.

Deliberately adapting the approach, processes, and artifacts to fit the specific project context.

The phases a project moves through from start to close; can be predictive, iterative, incremental, or adaptive.

The person or group that funds and champions the project and is accountable for enabling its success.

The balance among scope, schedule, and cost (with quality at the center).

Initiating, planning, executing, monitoring & controlling, and closing.

Integration, scope, schedule, cost, quality, resource, communications, risk, procurement, and stakeholders.

PMI's skill model: Ways of Working, Power Skills, and Business Acumen.

A Professional Development Unit; 60 are needed every three years to maintain the PMP.

Agile flexes scope and fixes time/cost; predictive fixes scope and flexes time/cost.