PMI-SP study guide
PMI-SP · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The PMI Scheduling Professional (PMI-SP)® is one of the specialized certifications offered by the Project Management Institute, listed by PMI alongside its risk, business analysis, agile, construction, and PMO credentials. It is aimed at practitioners whose core responsibility is building, maintaining, and defending project schedules rather than at general project managers: schedulers, planners, schedule analysts, cost/schedule integrators, and project controls specialists who work inside earned value or critical-path-driven environments. The PMI-SP study guide has 5 sections and about 1,633 words.
01Schedule Strategy
Schedule strategy is the set of decisions made before a schedule model is built. It selects the scheduling method (critical path method, critical chain, rolling-wave, agile or hybrid, or a simple milestone-driven bar chart for small work), the scheduling tool and its degree of standardization across the enterprise, the schedule levels produced (for example an L1 executive summary, L2/L3 control schedule, L4/L5 execution detail), the coding and WBS structures, calendar and resource conventions, and the governance rules: who may status, revise, baseline, and archive the model.
348 words, about 2 min02Schedule Planning and Development
Development flows: WBS decomposition, activity definition, sequencing, duration and resource estimating, calendar assignment, then network calculation. Know the precedence diagramming method and its four relationship types (FS, SS, FF, SF), plus mandatory, discretionary, and external dependencies.
349 words, about 2 min03Schedule Monitoring and Controlling
The control cycle starts at a status date: capture actual start/finish dates, actual durations, remaining durations, and resource usage, then re-run the network. Measure progress consistently (duration-based, units-based, or earned-value-based percent complete) and state which you used.
317 words, about 2 min04Schedule Closeout
Schedule closeout confirms that every planned activity is finished or formally cancelled, all open ends and dangling logic are resolved, remaining durations are zero, and the deliverables have been accepted. It then captures the as-built schedule: actual start and finish dates, actual durations, actual resource usage, and the sequence as it truly occurred.
313 words, about 2 min05Stakeholder Communications Management
Identify stakeholders, analyse their interest, influence, and information needs, then document the communication plan: who receives what, in which format, at what frequency, through which channel, and who owns it. Match format to audience.
306 words, about 2 min