The Standard · Strategy and Leadership
Project Planning
Plans projects with AI and stress-tests the schedule, dependencies and risks.
You use an AI assistant to shape scope, work breakdowns, schedules, resources, risks and stakeholder updates. It can reveal missing dependencies and contingencies, but may invent estimates, accept impossible sequences or hide changes behind plans.
The exam for Project Planning is not open yet. A skill opens once its questions are approved and tested. You can practise it free in the meantime.
What it measures
Whatever the skill, the exam rates your work in the same six areas of the Standard. Three are for the value you get from the assistant, and three for the control you keep. Each area gets one of 4 ratings (Emerging, Developing, Proficient, Accomplished). For Project Planning, a strong performance looks like this. What each area includes and excludes.
Value
What you get from the assistant: how far it takes the work, how well you brief it, and the piece you hand in.
- Reaching further
You use the reply to expose overlooked dependencies, replanning options and risks before the project plan reaches stakeholders.
Using the assistant to produce work beyond what you could have produced alone, rather than the same work faster.
- Briefing the assistant
You brief the assistant with scope, milestones, constraints and required plan format for the project audience.
Giving the assistant the reader, purpose and source facts the work depends on, and the form, length and contents you need back.
- The finished piece
You turn the reply into an actionable project plan by reconciling milestones, owners, dependencies and contingencies.
Turning the assistant's output into something a colleague could use: editing it, combining it and adding original thinking.
Control
What you keep in hand: checking its work, keeping information safe, and deciding what stays with a person.
- Checking its work
You check dates, effort estimates, dependencies and risk assumptions against project records before committing the plan.
Checking the assistant's claims, figures and assumptions against the source before the work is used.
- Safety and confidentiality
You keep confidential bid data, staff details and unreleased milestones out of project-planning briefs and outputs.
Handling confidential and personal data, seeing compliance, ethical and reputational risk, and declining unsafe requests.
- Knowing what to delegate
You keep scope trade-offs, resource commitments and schedule approvals with accountable people while delegating structured planning work.
Deciding what to hand to the assistant and what to keep, and at what stakes, before any output exists.
What you do in the exam
Every skill of the Standard is examined the same way, at the same pass mark, in the Applied AI Badge. Two tasks with the assistant and two sets of questions, over 15 minutes. You do real work with an AI assistant beside you, hand in what you would send, then answer follow-up questions about your own work.
- 01
A project scope and work breakdown from requirements, constraints and milestones.
- 02
A dependency-aware schedule and resource plan from changing scope and available capacity.
- 03
A risk register and contingency plan from delivery assumptions and stakeholder concerns.
These are the kinds of task the exam sets. Your exam draws its own from a bank the Examination Board has approved.
- Exam
- Applied AI Badge
- Price
- US$19
- Length
- 15 minutes
- Attempts
- One for each purchase, then a 7-day wait
- Practice
- Free, up to 50 sessions a day
What the badge certifies
What an employer reads
Passed an Institute exam in project planning. They briefed the assistant with scope constraints, caught dependency and risk errors, and delivered a stress-tested project plan.
You earn it in one exam, never by finishing a course.
- Name on the certificate
- Applied AI Badge: Project Planning
- Who it is for
- Project planners, project managers, programme leads and delivery coordinators use this badge to demonstrate planning skill.
- Valid for
- 2 years, then renew
- Verification
- Every badge has a public verification page an employer can open, and a place in the public register if you choose it.
- Marked by
- An AI examiner marks your work against a marking guide and quotes your own words as evidence. A person checks anything borderline.
Near it in the Standard
- Agile Teams
Runs agile work with AI in the loop and the team in charge.
- Change Management
Leads change with AI-assisted analysis and communication and keeps the human case central.
- Event Planning
Plans events with AI and verifies logistics, budgets and commitments.
- Strategic Thinking
Thinks strategically with AI as a challenger and reaches conclusions they can defend.
- Innovation
Uses AI to generate and test ideas and judges which are worth pursuing.
- Decision Making
Makes decisions with AI-assisted analysis and knows when the analysis cannot be trusted.
- Design Thinking
Applies design thinking with AI for research, ideation and prototyping, with users at the centre.
- Stakeholder Management
Manages stakeholders with AI-assisted mapping and communication that stays accurate and discreet.
Everything in Strategy and Leadership, including the level exams that name the whole function.
Practise it before you pay for it
Practice is free (up to 50 sessions a day) and shaped like the exam, with a coach that tells you what to change. It never counts towards a credential, and an exercise you practised is kept out of your exam.
Want to learn it first? AI+ Project Planning covers this skill. No book is required to pass.