19% of the exam - about 2.5 hours - 14 practice questions
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Reading
A Project Management Plan (PMP) is the CM's master document. It defines how the project will be executed, monitored, and controlled. On the CCM exam, expect questions asking you to identify what belongs in a PMP versus other documents, like a schedule or a budget standing alone.
Not to be confused with: if you're also taking this site's PMP course, that's a different PMP, Project Management Professional, PMI's certification. Same three letters, unrelated meanings; this lesson's PMP is always the Project Management Plan document.
The Project Charter: authorization, not planning
The charter comes first and does one job: it formally authorizes the project and names the CM's authority level. It states objectives, a scope summary, and who can commit resources and make binding decisions on the owner's behalf. Without a charter, the CM's authority is not formally established, a subtle but commonly tested point. The charter is typically issued by the owner or sponsor and works alongside the owner-CM agreement, which sets out the authority delegated to the CM. In practice, an unauthorized CM has to escalate every decision, which is exactly the inefficiency the charter exists to prevent.
The charter is not one of the PMP's subsidiary plans. It precedes the PMP and authorizes it. Treat these as two separate documents doing two separate jobs: the charter authorizes, the PMP plans execution. The exact list of subsidiary plans varies by owner and framework; this course uses these eight as its working list.
The nine governance documents at a glance
Project Charter (precedes and authorizes the PMP): Formal authorization of the project; states objectives, scope summary, and the CM's authority level.
Scope Management Plan: How scope will be defined, verified, and controlled, including a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).
Schedule Management Plan: Methodology (typically CPM, Critical Path Method), update frequency, and baseline control process.
Cost Management Plan: Estimating basis, budget structure, cost control and reporting procedures.
Quality Management Plan: Quality standards, inspection and testing protocols, and acceptance criteria.
Communications Management Plan: Who gets what information, how often, and through what channel.
Risk Management Plan: How risks will be identified, assessed, and responded to (expanded fully in Module 7).
Procurement Management Plan: Contracting strategy, prequalification approach, and bid or award process.
Stakeholder Management Plan: Identifies stakeholders and defines engagement strategy (expanded in Day 5).
Exam tip: a charter authorizes; a PMP plans execution. If a question describes a document that grants the CM authority to spend project funds and commit resources, that's the charter. If it describes how that spending will be tracked, that's the Cost Management Plan.
The charter authorizes the project; the PMP that follows organizes the eight subsidiary plans an exam question may ask you to sort a scenario into.
The PMP is integrated, not eight independent silos
A scenario question sometimes describes a change that looks like it belongs to one plan, but actually forces updates across several. A schedule acceleration decision (Schedule Management Plan) usually changes crew size and equipment costs (Cost Management Plan), which can change safety exposure and inspection sequencing (Quality Management Plan). The exam rewards recognizing that a single decision can require coordinated updates across the PMP, not treating each subsidiary plan as if it existed in isolation.
Baselines and integrated change control
Once the scope, schedule, and cost plans are approved, they become baselines: the fixed reference points performance is measured against. A baseline does not mean frozen forever. It means any change follows a formal path rather than an informal one: a change request is submitted, its impact on scope, schedule, cost, and quality is analyzed together, an authorized party approves or rejects it, and only then is the baseline formally revised. Skipping this path, even to accommodate a well-intentioned field fix, is exactly the kind of shortcut the exam tests as the wrong answer.
Only an approved change updates the baseline. A field fix made outside this loop, however reasonable, is the process failure the exam is checking for.
Progressive elaboration: the PMP is not finished at Day 3
The version of the PMP created early in Pre-Design or early Design is intentionally less detailed than the version in place by Construction. Progressive elaboration means the plan is refined in successive iterations as more accurate and complete information becomes available, without abandoning discipline or losing the baseline history. A scenario that shows a CM adding detail to the Cost Management Plan as design milestones are reached is not evidence of poor planning; it is the plan working as intended.
Why this matters for the exam
Charter-versus-PMP and baseline-versus-change-control are two of the most reliable "sort the scenario" question types in this domain. Anchor on two questions: does this document authorize, or does it plan execution? And is this change happening inside the formal control loop, or outside it?
Practice Questions
1. Which document formally establishes the CM's authority level on a project?
The RFI log
The Project Charter
The approved baseline schedule
The punch list
Answer: b. The Project Charter is the authorizing document. It names the CM and states what the CM may decide alone. Schedules, punch lists, and logs are execution tools, not grants of authority.
2. A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is primarily a tool of the:
Scope Management Plan
Risk Management Plan
Quality Management Plan
Communications Management Plan
Answer: a. The WBS decomposes the total scope into manageable pieces. Everything else, cost accounts, schedule activities, quality checks, hangs off it, but its own home is the Scope Management Plan.
3. CPM stands for:
Cost Performance Metric
Critical Path Method
Contract Procurement Model
Construction Phase Milestone
Answer: b. Critical Path Method. It identifies the longest path of dependent activities through the schedule, which determines the shortest possible project duration.
4. Which PMP component defines who receives what project information, how often, and by what channel?
Cost Management Plan
Procurement Management Plan, including the bid and award process
Communications Management Plan
Quality Management Plan
Answer: c. The Communications Management Plan answers who, what, how often, and by what channel. Getting this wrong is a common cause of stakeholder conflict that had nothing to do with the work itself.
5. Without a formal charter, what is true of the CM's authority?
It is not formally established
It defaults to full authority over the owner
It transfers automatically to the architect
It is set by the contractor
Answer: a. Without a charter, the CM's authority is simply undefined. It does not default upward or transfer elsewhere. In practice this means every decision has to be escalated, which is exactly the inefficiency the charter prevents.
6. Which plan governs inspection and testing protocols and acceptance criteria?
Risk Management Plan
Stakeholder Management Plan
Scope Management Plan
Quality Management Plan
Answer: d. Inspection protocols, testing frequency, and acceptance criteria are all quality definitions. They belong in the Quality Management Plan, which is what makes acceptance objective rather than negotiable.
7. A subcomponent describing contracting strategy and the prequalification approach belongs to:
Cost Management Plan
Procurement Management Plan
Schedule Management Plan
Communications Management Plan
Answer: b. Contracting strategy and prequalification are procurement decisions made before bids are solicited. They belong in the Procurement Management Plan.
8. A baseline is best defined as:
The approved reference version of scope, schedule, or cost used to measure performance and variance
A synonym for the Project Charter
An informal estimate made before Pre-Design
A document that can never be changed under any circumstance
Answer: a. A baseline is fixed for measurement purposes, not permanently frozen. It changes only through formal, approved change control, which is what makes it useful as a comparison point.
9. A field team implements a scope change immediately because it seems obviously reasonable, without submitting a change request. This is:
Only a problem if the change adds cost, since schedule and quality impacts do not need approval
Acceptable as long as the owner finds out eventually
Correct, since obviously reasonable changes don't need approval
A process failure, since it bypasses impact analysis and formal approval
Answer: d. Even a reasonable-looking change can have schedule, cost, or quality consequences that were never analyzed. Integrated change control exists precisely to catch what "obviously fine" misses.
10. Which best describes why the PMP's subsidiary plans should be treated as integrated rather than independent?
Only the Cost Management Plan ever needs updating, because cost is the one plan that changes after baseline approval
Integration only matters after Construction begins
They aren't related; each plan is self-contained
A single decision, like accelerating the schedule, can require coordinated updates across cost, quality, and other plans
Answer: d. A schedule acceleration can drive up crew size and cost and change inspection sequencing. Treating plans as silos misses exactly the kind of cross-impact the exam tests.
11. Progressive elaboration means:
Each subsidiary plan is written once and never revisited
The plan is deliberately vague forever
The plan is refined in successive iterations as more accurate information becomes available, without abandoning the baseline history
Only the charter can ever be updated
Answer: c. A PMP appropriately gets more detailed as the project moves from Pre-Design toward Construction. That is the plan maturing on schedule, not evidence of a poorly written original plan.
12. A scenario describes a document that grants the CM authority to spend project funds and commit resources. This is:
The Risk Management Plan
The Cost Management Plan
The Project Charter
The Communications Management Plan
Answer: c. Granting authority is an authorization function, which is the charter's job. The Cost Management Plan describes how spending is tracked, not who is allowed to authorize it.
13. The four steps of the integrated change control loop, in order, are:
Update the baseline, submit the request, approve it informally, then analyze impact
There is no fixed order
Approve, analyze, request, update
Request, analyze impact, approve or reject, update baseline
Answer: d. A change request is submitted first, then its cross-plan impact is analyzed, then an authorized party decides, and only an approved change updates the baseline.
14. Which of the following is NOT one of the PMP's subsidiary plans?
Stakeholder Management Plan
Quality Management Plan
Project Charter
Procurement Management Plan
Answer: c. The charter is a separate, preceding document that authorizes the project. It is not one of the PMP's own subsidiary plans, even though it is easy to lump it in with them.
Micro-Assignment
Using the Day 1 delivery-method scenario you wrote, draft a one-page PMP outline for that project: list the charter plus all 8 subsidiary plans and write one sentence under each stating what it would specifically cover for your scenario. Then write one sentence describing a plausible field change and trace it through the four-step change control loop. This becomes the seed of a reusable field-tools notebook.
Glossary
Project Charter
Document formally authorizing the project and the CM's authority; precedes and is separate from the PMP.
WBS (Work Breakdown Structure)
Hierarchical decomposition of total project scope into manageable work packages.
Baseline
The approved version of a schedule, budget, or scope used to measure performance and variance.
Integrated change control
The formal process of submitting, analyzing, approving or rejecting, and only then incorporating a change into the baseline.
Progressive elaboration
Refining a plan in successive iterations as more accurate and detailed information becomes available.
Change request
A formal proposal to modify a document, deliverable, or baseline, submitted for impact analysis and approval.
Subsidiary plan
Any of the component plans (scope, schedule, cost, quality, communications, risk, procurement, stakeholder) that together make up the PMP.