Curriculum
PMP® Exam Prep Mastery — Fall 2026
Founders Cohort Orientation
0/1
WEEK 1 – PMP FOUNDATION & PMI MINDSET
0/4 
WEEK 2 – People Domain (Leadership & Team Performance)
0/4 WEEK 3 – Process Domain (Planning & Scope Control)
0/4 WEEK 4 – Process Domain (Execution & Monitoring)
0/4 WEEK 5- Agile, Hybrid & Execution Approaches (Ways of Working)
0/4 WEEK 6 – Integration, Execution Flow & Decision-Making
0/5 WEEK 7 – Exam Strategy & Application Readiness
0/3 WEEK 8 – Final Calibration & Exam Readiness
0/2 Extras
0/3 Session 7: Integrate the Plan — Then Lead the People
Meeting ID: 875 6602 9896 Passcode: 958630
Hour 1 — 7:00–8:00 PM — Integrate Plans (Lesson 3H)
7.1 Where We Are in the Course Arc
Sessions 1 and 2 built the Business Environment foundation. Sessions 3 and 4 covered stakeholder identification, team formation, and project approach. Sessions 5 and 6 completed the full planning arc — scope, schedule, resources, budget, risk, and quality.
Lesson 3 is complete after tonight. The shift is from artifacts to people.
Three anchors for everything covered tonight:
- The project management plan is not complete until all subsidiary plans are integrated and assessed for dependencies and gaps — that is the work of Lesson 3H
- Integrated Change Control and Organizational Change Management are two completely different processes that the exam deliberately confuses — knowing the distinction is required
- The People domain represents 42% of the PMP exam and tests judgment, not memorization — tonight introduces the leadership framework that underpins every People domain question you will see
EXAM APPLICATION A question about a PM who “changes the schedule baseline without submitting a change request” is testing integrated change control. A question about a PM who “assigns tasks to individual agile team members” is testing leadership and empowerment. Both share the same underlying principle: the PM works within defined processes and empowers the people closest to the work. |
7.2 Why All Subsidiary Plans Must Integrate
The project management plan is not a collection of separate documents. Your resource plan drives your cost estimate. Your cost estimate becomes your cost baseline. Your risk assessment shapes your contingency reserve. Your quality standards are embedded in your scope acceptance criteria. Change one element and it ripples through the others.
| Approach | How Plans Are Integrated |
| Predictive | Subsidiary plans and baselines are formally consolidated. Dependencies and gaps are assessed before work begins. A change control plan governs how baselines can be modified. |
| Adaptive | Integration is continuous — agile ceremonies (sprint planning, retrospectives, reviews) align plans and priorities every sprint. No single consolidated plan document, but integration still happens. |
| Hybrid | Predictive components follow formal consolidation. Adaptive components integrate through agile ceremonies. The PM must manage both integration points simultaneously. |
EXAM APPLICATION Project management plan = how the project is managed (subsidiary plans + baselines). Project documents = artifacts used during execution (risk register, issue log, stakeholder register). When a question says “the PM updated the project management plan,” it is referring to a subsidiary plan or baseline — not the risk register. |
7.3 Two Things Called “Change Management”
Integrated Change Control is the process of managing approved changes to the project’s baselines — scope, schedule, and cost. A change is identified → a formal change request is submitted → the CCB reviews the impact → the change is approved, rejected, or deferred → if approved, the affected baselines and plans are updated → the change is logged → stakeholders are notified.
Organizational Change Management is the process of managing people through a transition — a new system, a restructure, a new methodology, a cultural shift. It is not about plan documents. It is about human behavior.
| Type | What It Governs | Exam Signal |
| Integrated Change Control | Changes to scope, schedule, or cost baselines. CCB. Change requests. Change log. | “The sponsor requested additional scope” / “The schedule baseline needs to change” |
| Organizational Change Management | People’s readiness, resistance, and adoption of something new. Communication and training plans. | “Team members are resistant to the new system” / “Stakeholders are not prepared for the transition” |
EXAM APPLICATION Watch for this trap: “The sponsor asked the PM to compress the schedule. The PM updated the schedule baseline to reflect the new dates.” This is a change control violation — the sponsor’s verbal request is not an approved change request. No exceptions, even for the sponsor. |
7.4 Integrated Change Control — End to End
No change to a baseline without a formal approved change request — even if the sponsor asks verbally.
| Step | What Happens |
| 1. Identify | Anyone — team member, stakeholder, PM, or sponsor — can identify the need for a change. |
| 2. Submit | Formal change request documented. Not an email. Not a verbal request. |
| 3. Analyze | PM assesses impact on scope, schedule, cost, quality, risk, and stakeholder expectations. |
| 4. CCB Review | Approve, reject, or defer. Authority levels matter. |
| 5. Communicate | All affected stakeholders informed of the outcome. |
| 6. Implement | If approved, change implemented and all affected baselines updated. |
| 7. Log | Change log updated with decision, rationale, and baseline changes. |
Four types of changes — all require this process when they affect a baseline:
| Change Type | What It Means |
| Corrective action | Realigns performance to the plan — addresses current variances. May not require a change request if it does not change a baseline. |
| Preventive action | Reduces the probability of future negative performance. Same threshold as corrective action. |
| Defect repair | Fixes an identified flaw in a project component. |
| Scope addition | Adds work not in the original authorized scope. Always requires a formal change request — no exceptions. |
EXAM APPLICATION Corrective and preventive actions do not always require a formal change request — only when they affect a baseline. Scope additions always require a formal change request and CCB approval. The trigger word is “baseline.” |
7.5 Managing Complexity
Three strategies for working with complexity (ECO 2.9.5):
- Decouple: Separate parts of the system to reduce interplay. Understanding how a piece works on its own reduces the overall problem size.
- Simulate: Model how a similar system has operated. Use analogous projects, prototypes, or pilot deployments to test assumptions before committing to the full plan.
- Iterate: Accept that you cannot plan everything in a complex environment. Build in regular cycles of work, review, and adaptation.
POLL — Which Action Requires a Formal Change Request? Ang Fen is PM on the Shawpe Lifestyle Centre project. During execution she takes four separate actions. Which ONE requires submitting a formal change request to the CCB before proceeding? A. She updates the stakeholder register after a new VP joins the sponsor organization. Answer: B. The key word is “baseline.” A, C, and D are legitimate PM actions that do not affect a baseline and do not require a change request. |
EXAM SIGNAL If a question shows a PM adjusting the schedule baseline at the sponsor’s request without a change request — that is the problem, not the solution. All baseline changes require formal change control. |
Hour 2 — 8:10–9:00 PM — Lead the Project Team (Lessons 4A, 4B, 4C)
7.6 Leadership Styles (Lesson 4A)
Lesson 4 is the People domain — 42% of the PMP exam. It tests whether you can apply the right leadership behavior for the right situation. There is no single correct style.
| Style | What It Means | PMI Prefers When |
| Servant Leadership | Prioritize team needs. Remove blockers. Enable self-organization. Serve rather than direct. | Default for agile. Most People domain questions reward servant behaviors. |
| Situational | Adapt style to team member’s readiness — directive for low experience, delegating for high experience. | Team is new, struggling, or individual capability varies significantly. |
| Transformational | Inspire a shared vision. Motivate change. Challenge people to reach beyond current capability. | Organizational change scenarios. Long-term cultural shifts. |
| Transactional / Directive | Clear instructions, defined expectations, formal authority. | High-stakes or time-critical situations only. Rarely the right first answer on People domain questions. |
Leading vs. managing. Management uses formal authority to direct actions and control outcomes. Leadership uses influence, inspiration, and empathy. People domain answers lean toward leading behaviors — listening, coaching, empowering, facilitating.
EXAM APPLICATION The most dangerous wrong answer on People domain questions sounds decisive but bypasses the people. “The PM told the team member to correct their performance immediately” — PMI considers this a leadership failure. The right answer always involves listening and coaching before directing or escalating. |
7.7 Emotional Intelligence — Four Components
| Component | What It Means | Exam Signal |
| Self-awareness | Knowing your own emotions and how they affect your behavior and decisions. | “The PM recognized their frustration was affecting how they communicated with the team.” |
| Self-regulation | Managing your emotional responses — pausing before reacting, composure under pressure. | “The PM lost their temper when challenged.” ← Low self-regulation. Wrong answer. |
| Empathy | Understanding others’ feelings. Reading emotional cues. Responding to the human reality, not just the task. | “The PM noticed the team member seemed disengaged and sought to understand before addressing the performance issue.” |
| Social skill | Using all four components to build relationships, manage conflict, communicate clearly, and influence without authority. | “The PM aligned competing stakeholder interests by addressing each person’s underlying concern.” |
EXAM APPLICATION EI questions appear as “what does the PM do when…” scenarios. Look for emotional cues in the stem: “frustrated,” “disengaged,” “morale dropped.” The PMI answer always acknowledges the emotional reality before addressing the task. |
7.8 Creating a Collaborative Team Environment (Lesson 4B)
Psychological safety means team members feel safe to speak up, ask questions, report problems, and take risks without fear of punishment or ridicule. Teams with low psychological safety hide problems early. Risks become issues. Issues become crises.
The PM creates psychological safety through:
- Transparency — sharing information openly, including bad news
- Consistent follow-through — doing what you say you will do
- Protecting dissenting voices — never punishing someone who surfaces a problem
- Modeling vulnerability — acknowledging your own uncertainty and mistakes
Team charter and ground rules. The team charter formalizes how the team will work together — decision-making approach, communication norms, conflict resolution process, and escalation path. In agile, this is the working agreement. The PM facilitates creation, enforces it consistently, and revisits it when it is being violated.
Virtual and distributed teams (ECO 1.11): Establish defined overlap hours. Create explicit documentation norms. Build in deliberate relationship time. Check in individually more often than with co-located teams.
EXAM APPLICATION A team where “members do not raise concerns in meetings” or “problems only surface after they have become critical” is signaling a psychological safety failure — not a communication plan problem. The fix is behavioral and cultural, not administrative. |
7.9 Empowering the Team (Lesson 4C)
Empowerment = bounded authority to the people closest to the work. It does not mean no oversight — the PM remains accountable for project outcomes.
How to empower effectively:
- Define decision boundaries clearly. If the team does not know where their authority ends, they will either over-reach or constantly ask permission.
- Ensure the team has the information they need. Empowerment without information is exposure.
- Provide psychological safety to make mistakes. Empowered teams that are punished for good-faith decisions stop making decisions.
In agile, empowerment is structural. The team pulls work from the sprint backlog — the PM does not assign stories to individuals. The team commits to what they can complete — the PM does not dictate the commitment.
EXAM SIGNAL A PM who “assigns the highest-priority story to the senior developer” is describing the problem in agile — not the solution. Teams pull work; PMs do not assign it. A PM who “loses their temper when challenged” is showing low self-regulation — always wrong on the exam. |
7.10 Integrated Scenario — Shawpe Lifestyle Centre
PRACTICE SCENARIO — Apply Everything Ang Fen is PM on the SLC IT infrastructure modernization project, three months into execution. Three situations arise in the same week: Situation 1: Eugene Lowe calls and says: “I need you to add the loyalty points module to this release. It’s a priority. Just update the plan.” The loyalty module was not in original scope — estimated 6 additional weeks of work. Situation 2: A new contract developer (4 weeks in) has been missing daily standups and submitting work that consistently fails the Definition of Done. The team has started complaining informally. Situation 3: In the sprint retrospective, two senior devs reveal they have been working around a broken integration testing environment for 3 weeks rather than raising it — because the last time someone raised a tooling issue, the PM responded with frustration. Q1 — Eugene’s Request: Ang Fen cannot simply update the plan. The loyalty module is a scope addition — it requires a formal change request, impact analysis, CCB decision, and if approved, updates to all three baselines. Eugene’s verbal instruction is not an approved change. Q2 — Underperforming Contractor: PMI-preferred first action is a private 1:1 conversation. Approach with curiosity: “How are you feeling about the work? What is getting in the way?” Leadership style: situational. Removal is a last resort after coaching and a defined improvement period. Q3 — Broken Psychological Safety: Three weeks of workarounds instead of one raised issue is a direct signal the team does not feel safe surfacing problems. The root cause is Ang Fen’s own past reaction. She must: (1) acknowledge the pattern without being defensive, (2) commit to a different response, (3) demonstrate it immediately by thanking the team and fixing the environment without drama. Safety is rebuilt through behavior, not words. |
Session 7 Takeaways — Eight Anchors
- 1The project management plan is an integrated system — changing one component affects others. All plans must be assessed for dependencies and gaps before execution begins.
- 2Integrated Change Control = baselines. Organizational Change Management = people through transitions. The exam uses both in the same question deliberately — never confuse them.
- 3No change to a baseline without a formal approved change request — even if the sponsor requests it verbally. This applies in all life cycles.
- 4Four change types: corrective action, preventive action, defect repair, scope addition. Scope additions always require a change request. The others may not, depending on baseline impact.
- 5Servant leadership = remove blockers, enable the team, prioritize team needs. Not passive — servant leaders make hard calls in service of the team and the outcome.
- 6EI four components: self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, social skill. Look for emotional cues in the question stem.
- 7Psychological safety = teams that feel safe surface problems early. The PM creates safety through transparency, consistent follow-through, and protecting people who raise issues.
- 8Empowerment = bounded authority to the people closest to the work. In agile, the team pulls — the PM does not assign. Empowerment does not mean no oversight.
Before the Next Session
High Priority
- Complete the People Domain Practice Set in the LMS — do it cold, 45 minutes, before the next session
- Review the Leas conflict escalation model in your Study Guide — you will need it Session 8
Medium Priority
- Glossary: Servant Leadership · Situational Leadership · Psychological Safety · Team Charter · Integrated Change Control · Organizational Change Management · Empowerment · Emotional Intelligence
- Preview L4D (Support Team Performance) and L4G (Manage Conflict) in your Study Guide — Session 8 covers both
Optional
- Write down one team situation from your current work — identify what leadership style was used and whether it was the right choice
Lesson Materials
