PMP 2026 Study Vault

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Process Domain

4 min read

Process Domain

Exam weight: 41% of PMP exam questions

ECO Tasks and Enablers

Task 1: Develop an integrated project management plan and plan delivery

  • Assess project needs, complexity, and magnitude.
  • Recommend a project management development approach (predictive, adaptive/agile, or hybrid).
  • Determine critical information requirements (e.g., sustainability).
  • Recommend a project execution strategy.
  • Create an integrated project management plan.
  • Estimate work effort and resource requirements.
  • Assess consolidated project plans for dependencies, gaps, and continued business value.
  • Maintain the integrated project management plan.
  • Collect and analyze data to make informed project decisions.

Task 2: Develop and manage project scope

  • Define scope.
  • Obtain stakeholder agreement on project scope.
  • Break down scope.

Task 3: Help ensure value-based delivery

  • Identify value components with key stakeholders.
  • Prioritize work based on value and stakeholder feedback.
  • Assess opportunities to deliver value incrementally.
  • Examine the business value throughout the project.
  • Verify a measurement system is in place to track benefits.
  • Evaluate delivery options to demonstrate value.

Task 4: Plan and manage resources

  • Define and plan resources based on requirements.
  • Manage and optimize resource needs and availability.

Task 5: Plan and manage procurement

  • Plan procurement.
  • Execute a procurement management plan.
  • Select preferred contract types.
  • Evaluate vendor performance.
  • Verify objectives of the procurement agreement are met.
  • Participate in agreement negotiations.
  • Determine a negotiation strategy.
  • Manage suppliers and contracts.
  • Plan and manage the procurement strategy.
  • Develop a delivery solution.

Task 6: Plan and manage finance

  • Analyze project financial needs.
  • Quantify risk and contingency financial allocations.
  • Plan spend tracking throughout the project life cycle.
  • Plan financial reporting.
  • Anticipate future finance challenges.
  • Monitor financial variations and work with the governance process.
  • Manage financial reserves.

Task 7: Plan and optimize quality of products/deliverables

  • Gather quality requirements for project deliverables.
  • Plan quality processes and tools.
  • Execute a quality management plan.
  • Help ensure regulatory compliance.
  • Manage cost of quality (CoQ) and sustainability.
  • Conduct ongoing quality reviews.
  • Implement continuous improvement.

Task 8: Plan and manage schedule

  • Prepare a schedule based on the selected development approach.
  • Coordinate with other projects and operations.
  • Estimate project tasks (milestones, dependencies, story points).
  • Utilize benchmarks and historical data.
  • Create a project schedule.
  • Baseline a project schedule.
  • Execute a schedule management plan.
  • Analyze schedule variation.

Task 9: Evaluate project status

  • Develop project metrics, analysis, and reconciliation.
  • Identify and tailor needed artifacts.
  • Help ensure artifacts are created, reviewed, updated, and documented.
  • Help ensure accessibility of artifacts.
  • Assess current progress.
  • Measure, analyze, and update project metrics.
  • Communicate project status.
  • Continually assess the effectiveness of artifact management.

Task 10: Manage project closure

  • Obtain project stakeholder approval of project completion.
  • Determine criteria to successfully close the project or phase.
  • Validate readiness for transition (e.g., to operations team or next phase).
  • Conclude activities to close the project or phase (e.g., final lessons learned, retrospectives, procurement, financials, resources).

Exam angle

  • Development approach selection (Task 1): wrong = default to agile because it’s modern; right = match approach to requirements certainty, team experience, regulatory context, and stakeholder availability — justify the choice
  • Integrated change control (Task 1 / Task 9): changes to baselines must be approved BEFORE implementation — scenarios where the team implements then asks for approval are always wrong
  • Value-based delivery (Task 3): business value drives backlog priority — this is the product owner’s call, not the team’s and not the PM’s; wrong answers have PM or team deciding what to build next
  • Schedule metrics by approach (Task 8): SPI/CPI apply in predictive (EVM-based); velocity and burndown apply in adaptive — mixing them in the same scenario is a trap
  • Procurement (Task 5): contract type determines who bears cost risk — fixed price = seller bears risk; T&M = buyer bears risk; cost-plus = buyer bears most risk — contract selection scenarios test this logic
  • Project closure (Task 10): formal acceptance must come from sponsor or customer — PM cannot self-certify completion; cancelled projects still require formal closure activities

My notes

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