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CompTIA
Coming Soon
Project Plus
The course teaches CompTIA Project+ (PK0-005) fundamentals, covering project properties, phases, scheduling, cost, risk, and agile/hybrid methods, enabling learners to manage IT projects effectively across various industries.
Who Should Take This
IT project coordinators, team members, and junior managers with 6‑12 months of project experience benefit from this associate‑level certification prep. It prepares them to recall, apply, and analyze core concepts, positioning them for roles that require disciplined project planning, cost control, risk mitigation, and agile execution.
What's Included in AccelaStudy® AI
Adaptive Knowledge Graph
Practice Questions
Lesson Modules
Console Simulator Labs
Exam Tips & Strategy
20 Activity Formats
Course Outline
71 learning goals
1
Domain 1: Project Properties
3 topics
Project Characteristics and Constraints
- Define the distinguishing characteristics of a project including temporary nature, unique deliverables, progressive elaboration, and defined start and end dates.
- Identify the triple constraint (scope, time, cost) and its extension to include quality, risk, and resources as competing project demands.
- Explain how changes to one project constraint affect the other constraints and apply constraint balancing to maintain project viability.
- Differentiate between projects, programs, and portfolios and describe how each relates to organizational strategic objectives and governance structures.
Project Roles and Organizational Structures
- List key project roles including project manager, project sponsor, stakeholders, team members, and functional managers and describe their responsibilities.
- Describe organizational structures including functional, matrix (weak, balanced, strong), and projectized and explain how each affects project manager authority.
- Apply stakeholder identification and analysis techniques including power/interest grids and RACI matrices to define roles and communication requirements.
- Analyze the impact of organizational structure on project execution and assess which structure is most appropriate for a given project size, complexity, and duration.
Project Selection and Business Case
- Identify project selection methods including cost-benefit analysis, return on investment, net present value, internal rate of return, and payback period.
- Explain the components of a business case including problem statement, proposed solution, feasibility analysis, and expected benefits and costs.
- Evaluate competing project proposals using financial and non-financial selection criteria to recommend the most viable project investment.
2
Domain 2: Project Phases and Lifecycle
5 topics
Project Initiation
- Describe the components of a project charter including project purpose, objectives, high-level requirements, assumptions, constraints, and authorization signatures.
- Apply feasibility analysis techniques to assess technical, economic, operational, scheduling, and legal feasibility before committing project resources.
- Implement initial stakeholder register creation by identifying stakeholders, documenting their interests, influence levels, and engagement strategies.
Project Planning
- Describe the project scope statement including deliverables, acceptance criteria, exclusions, assumptions, and constraints that define project boundaries.
- Apply work breakdown structure decomposition techniques to break project scope into manageable work packages with clear deliverables and ownership.
- Explain resource planning processes including resource identification, allocation, leveling, and the creation of responsibility assignment matrices.
- Implement quality planning by defining quality standards, metrics, acceptance criteria, and quality assurance and control processes for project deliverables.
- Apply communication planning techniques to define stakeholder information needs, communication channels, frequency, and escalation procedures.
- Describe procurement planning processes including make-or-buy analysis, contract types (fixed-price, cost-reimbursable, time-and-materials), and vendor selection criteria.
- Analyze the completeness and consistency of a project management plan by evaluating whether all subsidiary plans address scope, schedule, cost, quality, and risk.
Project Execution
- Explain project execution activities including directing and managing work, managing team performance, and producing project deliverables per the project plan.
- Apply team development techniques including conflict resolution strategies, motivation methods, and leadership styles appropriate to project team dynamics.
- Implement quality assurance processes including audits, peer reviews, and process improvement activities to ensure deliverables meet defined standards.
Project Monitoring and Control
- Describe change control processes including change request submission, impact analysis, change control board review, and configuration management.
- Apply scope verification techniques to confirm deliverables meet acceptance criteria and implement scope change control to prevent scope creep.
- Implement status reporting processes including performance dashboards, variance reports, and milestone tracking to communicate project health to stakeholders.
- Evaluate project performance against baselines and determine appropriate corrective actions when schedule, cost, or quality variances exceed tolerance thresholds.
Project Closing
- List project closing activities including final deliverable acceptance, lessons learned documentation, resource release, contract closure, and project archive creation.
- Apply lessons learned processes by conducting retrospective meetings, documenting findings, and integrating improvements into organizational process assets.
- Assess project success by comparing final outcomes against original objectives, evaluating stakeholder satisfaction, and documenting realized benefits.
3
Domain 3: Project Scheduling
4 topics
Activity Sequencing and Dependencies
- Identify the four dependency types: finish-to-start, start-to-start, finish-to-finish, and start-to-finish and describe when each relationship applies.
- Classify dependencies as mandatory, discretionary, external, or internal and explain how each type affects scheduling flexibility and risk.
- Apply precedence diagramming method to create network diagrams that represent activity sequences, dependencies, and logical relationships.
Duration Estimation Techniques
- Describe duration estimation methods including analogous estimation, parametric estimation, three-point estimation (PERT), and expert judgment.
- Calculate three-point estimates using optimistic, most likely, and pessimistic durations and apply the PERT formula to determine expected activity durations.
- Compare estimation techniques and assess which method is most appropriate given available historical data, project uncertainty, and estimation accuracy requirements.
Critical Path Method and Schedule Development
- Define critical path method terminology including early start, early finish, late start, late finish, total float, and free float.
- Calculate the critical path through a project network by performing forward and backward pass computations to identify activities with zero float.
- Apply Gantt chart creation techniques to visualize project schedules including task durations, dependencies, milestones, and resource assignments.
- Analyze the impact of activity delays on the critical path and assess whether schedule changes require corrective action or baseline revision.
Resource Leveling and Schedule Compression
- Explain resource leveling and resource smoothing techniques and describe their impact on project duration and resource utilization efficiency.
- Apply schedule compression techniques including crashing (adding resources) and fast-tracking (parallel execution) to reduce project duration.
- Evaluate the cost, risk, and quality tradeoffs of schedule compression strategies and determine the optimal approach for meeting revised project deadlines.
4
Domain 4: Project Cost and Risk Management
4 topics
Cost Estimation and Budgeting
- Identify cost estimation categories including analogous, parametric, bottom-up, and three-point estimation and describe the accuracy range of each method.
- Apply bottom-up cost estimation by aggregating work package estimates to develop a project cost baseline including contingency and management reserves.
- Differentiate between direct costs, indirect costs, fixed costs, and variable costs and classify project expenses into appropriate cost categories.
Earned Value Management
- Define earned value management terms including planned value, earned value, actual cost, schedule variance, cost variance, SPI, and CPI.
- Calculate schedule variance (SV = EV - PV), cost variance (CV = EV - AC), schedule performance index (SPI = EV/PV), and cost performance index (CPI = EV/AC).
- Calculate estimate at completion (EAC) using multiple formulas and explain when each EAC formula is appropriate based on current project performance patterns.
- Analyze earned value metrics to determine whether a project is ahead or behind schedule, over or under budget, and recommend appropriate corrective actions.
Risk Identification and Analysis
- Identify risk categories including technical, external, organizational, and project management risks and describe common risk identification techniques.
- Apply qualitative risk analysis using probability and impact matrices to prioritize risks and determine which risks require further analysis or immediate response.
- Describe quantitative risk analysis techniques including expected monetary value, sensitivity analysis, and decision tree analysis for numeric risk assessment.
- Evaluate the overall risk exposure of a project by assessing the cumulative probability and impact of identified risks and their potential interactions.
Risk Response and Issue Management
- List risk response strategies for negative risks (avoid, mitigate, transfer, accept) and positive risks (exploit, enhance, share, accept) with examples of each.
- Apply risk response planning to develop risk register entries including risk triggers, response actions, owners, contingency plans, and fallback plans.
- Implement issue management processes including issue identification, logging, escalation procedures, resolution tracking, and impact assessment on project objectives.
- Assess the effectiveness of risk responses by monitoring residual and secondary risks and determining whether risk response strategies require adjustment.
5
Domain 5: Agile and Hybrid Methods
3 topics
Agile Principles and Frameworks
- State the four values and twelve principles of the Agile Manifesto and describe how they differ from traditional predictive project management approaches.
- Describe the Scrum framework including roles (Scrum Master, Product Owner, Development Team), events (sprint, planning, daily, review, retrospective), and artifacts (product backlog, sprint backlog, increment).
- Explain the Kanban method including work-in-progress limits, flow visualization, pull-based scheduling, and continuous delivery principles.
- Compare Scrum and Kanban frameworks and assess which Agile approach is more suitable for a given team size, project type, and organizational maturity level.
Agile Planning and Estimation
- Describe Agile estimation techniques including story points, planning poker, T-shirt sizing, and team velocity calculation for sprint planning.
- Apply user story writing techniques using the INVEST criteria to create well-formed product backlog items with acceptance criteria and definition of done.
- Implement sprint planning by selecting backlog items based on team velocity, story point estimates, and sprint capacity to create achievable sprint goals.
- Evaluate Agile project progress using burndown charts, burnup charts, velocity trends, and cumulative flow diagrams to identify delivery risks and bottlenecks.
Hybrid and Adaptive Approaches
- Describe hybrid project management approaches that combine predictive planning for well-defined phases with iterative delivery for uncertain or evolving requirements.
- Explain iterative versus incremental delivery models and classify which approach is appropriate based on project characteristics and stakeholder feedback needs.
- Apply continuous improvement principles including retrospective-driven process changes, Kaizen concepts, and feedback loops to optimize project delivery performance.
- Assess project characteristics including requirement stability, stakeholder involvement, team experience, and regulatory constraints to recommend the most appropriate methodology (predictive, Agile, or hybrid).
Scope
Included Topics
- All domains in the CompTIA Project+ (PK0-005) exam guide: Project Properties (21%), Project Phases and Lifecycle (24%), Project Scheduling (18%), Project Cost and Risk Management (20%), and Agile and Hybrid Methods (17%).
- Project characteristics, constraints (scope, time, cost, quality), roles (project manager, sponsor, stakeholders, team), organizational structures (functional, matrix, projectized), and project selection methods including cost-benefit analysis and ROI.
- Project lifecycle phases including initiation (charter, feasibility, business case), planning (scope statement, WBS, schedule, budget, resource plan, quality plan, communication plan, risk plan, procurement plan), execution, monitoring and control, and closing.
- Scheduling techniques including activity sequencing, dependency types (FS, SS, FF, SF), duration estimation methods (three-point, analogous, parametric), critical path method, Gantt charts, milestones, resource leveling, and schedule compression (crashing, fast-tracking).
- Cost estimation, budgeting, earned value management (PV, EV, AC, SV, SPI, CV, CPI, EAC), risk identification, qualitative and quantitative risk analysis, risk response strategies, risk register, and issue management.
- Agile principles and manifesto, Scrum framework (sprints, ceremonies, roles, artifacts), Kanban method, Agile estimation techniques (story points, velocity), hybrid project management approaches, iterative versus incremental development, and continuous improvement.
Not Covered
- Advanced portfolio and program management beyond the project level, including strategic alignment frameworks and enterprise PMO governance structures.
- Deep software engineering practices, coding, DevOps tooling, and technical implementation details beyond project management context.
- Vendor-specific project management tool configurations for platforms like Microsoft Project, Jira, or Monday.com beyond conceptual understanding.
- PMP-level or PMI-ACP-level content depth including advanced mathematical modeling, Monte Carlo simulation implementation, and formal earned value forecasting at completion variance analysis.
- Industry-specific regulatory compliance and domain-specific project management standards outside the general CompTIA Project+ scope.
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