Certified Project Manager (C|PM) — Lesson 2: Planning, Schedule, Resources, Cost, Quality, Procurement, and Baselines

Learning Objectives

• Explain the roles, services, data, settings, dependencies, and decision criteria governing work breakdown and project schedule.
• Implement and validate resource planning, cost baseline, and quality planning using controlled evidence and clear acceptance criteria.
• Evaluate the condition where a basic control passes but cost baseline fails because resource planning data, configuration order, or dependency assumptions differ and select a proportionate corrective response.

Detailed Topics

• work breakdown applied to the course scenario, expected behavior, dependencies, controls, risks, and evidence.
• project schedule applied to the course scenario, expected behavior, dependencies, controls, risks, and evidence.
• resource planning applied to the course scenario, expected behavior, dependencies, controls, risks, and evidence.
• cost baseline applied to the course scenario, expected behavior, dependencies, controls, risks, and evidence.
• quality planning applied to the course scenario, expected behavior, dependencies, controls, risks, and evidence.

Instructor Demonstration

The instructor traces a project manager delivering a technology initiative while balancing scope, constraints, governance, stakeholder expectations, and measurable outcomes. The walkthrough connects tools, configurations or analysis logic, system messages, decisions, and evidence captured in the project charter, integrated plan, control register, and closure report. It also tests the exception where a basic control passes but cost baseline fails because resource planning data, configuration order, or dependency assumptions differ.

Hands-On Exercise

Complete a controlled, authorized EC-Council exercise covering Planning, Schedule, Resources, Cost, Quality, Procurement, and Baselines and preserve the verified result in the project charter, integrated plan, control register, and closure report.

1. Confirm scope, authorization, prerequisites, versions, identities, dependencies, and acceptance criteria.
2. Execute the workflow while recording settings, outputs, events, decisions, and system messages.
3. Test normal behavior, one boundary condition, and the stated exception without targeting real third-party systems.
4. Document corrections, evidence, ownership, retest criteria, rollback or recovery, and handover actions.

Scenario Analysis

• Identify which object, service, policy, setting, or sequence most strongly influences work breakdown.
• Compare two defensible responses and explain technical, security, operational, legal, and support trade-offs.
• Determine how the project charter, integrated plan, control register, and closure report should be approved, retained, retested, and updated.

Troubleshooting Guidance

Start where expected behavior first differs from the observed result. Check authorization, prerequisites, identity, configuration order, data quality, version compatibility, connectivity, status, resource limits, and evidence separately. Treat “a basic control passes but cost baseline fails because resource planning data, configuration order, or dependency assumptions differ” as a hypothesis until logs, settings, captured outputs, and retest outcomes confirm the cause.

Validation Checklist

• Required components, identities, permissions, settings, safety controls, and dependencies are present.
• The project charter, integrated plan, control register, and closure report connects each conclusion to objective, reviewable evidence.
• Normal processing, a boundary condition, dependency behavior, and the stated exception were tested.
• Corrections, ownership, retest criteria, rollback or recovery, documentation, and operational handover are complete.

Lesson Outcome

Learners can apply Planning, Schedule, Resources, Cost, Quality, Procurement, and Baselines, explain the resulting security, governance, business, or operational behavior, and defend the outcome through the project charter, integrated plan, control register, and closure report.