Project Management

Project management has been proven to be the most effective method of delivering products within cost, schedule, and resource constraints. Gain a working knowledge of the basics of project management that can be instantly applied to any project. This course will provide the skills to ensure your projects deliver on time and on budget. Learn to define and manage scope via the elicitation of requirements and the creation of a detailed work breakdown structure, create a defensible and realistic project schedule and budget, develop and manage the project team, identify and manage risks, and understand the project procurement processes.

The success of projects is dependant upon people and how effectively they work and communicate with one another. You will reflect upon your role as a manager/ leader within a project management framework. Explore concepts of human behavior, motivation, problem solving, decision-making, influence, conflict management, and organization structure. Build skills in recognizing and managing project stakeholders, communications, team development, and working with virtual team members, via presentations, case studies, readings, essays, and discussions.

Procurement management has become a vital project management skill, as organizations increasingly outsource all but their core competencies. Understand the scope of procurement management in the contemporary project management environment and the role and responsibility of the procurement manager. Learn to establish project scope, develop a procurement management plan, select the proper contract type, define strategic teaming agreements, evaluate and select suppliers, and track supplier performance.

Project success is achieved by project managers and teams skilled in coping with project risks. Making good decisions and using proven processes requires both training and experience. Gain in-depth practice applying subjective and quantitative methods to an actual project situation. Learn from peers through risk analysis exercises, case studies, and persuasive presentations. Discover how to recognize, assess, and respond to project risks in an appropriate, cost effective manner in order to make better decisions.

Earned value is a technique for defining and establishing project scope, schedule and cost in order to align with executive management expectations. Learn to use the earned value method to establish a realistic project baseline, calculate a range of estimates-at-completion (EAC), and apply effective methods for keeping your project budget and schedule on target. Develop the strategies to effectively monitor, measure, and control costs and schedule. Set project standards and metrics to measure project success and forecast results. Hands-on exercises in this course will demonstrate how earned value can be used on any project of any size.

This course establishes the essential steps to plan a project by developing a performance measurement baseline (PMB) to integrate the project cost and schedule information. During execution of the plan, compare schedule and cost progress data to actual performance to date by applying earned value metrics (EVM). Use EVM to determine project costs and schedule variances and to forecast the likelihood of completing the project within the established PMB. Explain variances and likelihood of recovery.

No organization has unlimited time, money, or resources. For that reason, cost management can be used to evaluate the benefits and expenses of the project in relation to other potential projects before a selection is made. Learn to evaluate and analyze the financial viability and non-financial issues. Review basic financial terms and concepts that influence project selection decisions and understand all aspects of project planning. Discover how to prepare a cost estimate and budget in addition to considering ways how to monitor and control cost and manage changes to the cost baseline.

Managing a complex project often requires a systems approach. This course provides an overview of the systems engineering disciplines including architecture, life cycle costing, mission analysis, product verification and validation, defining functionality, and dealing with technical trade-offs.

Learn the skills needed to enhance the outcomes of managing projects. Gain knowledge of the fundamentals of project scheduling and the key area of knowledge for planning projects using Microsoft Project for Windows 2007. This course will emphasize the importance of defining the total project with the use of a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS); then formally issuing and controlling the project with the use of a Project Master Schedule (PMS).

Gain advanced skills and knowledge in building and managing complex projects using Microsoft Project for Windows 2007. Review scheduling techniques and methods used to support Critical Path Method, the performance of Risk Analysis, and for the management of multiple projects in an integrated team environment. Learn to identify and resolve common problems, use methods for debugging the schedule, and develop custom reports. Study and apply techniques for the use of Earned Value method of performance measurement, tracking the progress of projects, resource loading methods, and advanced techniques for budget development.

Review the nine knowledge areas in the PMBOK® Guide and the key concepts in Professional Responsibility. Prepare to pass the PMP® Examination with a focus on understanding how to integrate the detailed project management processes. To measure your preparedness for the exam, this course will provide exercises, practice questions, practice exams, and practical tips from Project Management Professionals®. The content of this course is fully compliant and aligns with the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) - Fourth Edition.

Learn how the structured approach of business process improvement (BPI) can be performed at all levels in an organization. Through a series of training activities, you will learn how to select, design, sell, implement, and institutionalize the changes necessary for effective BPI. Determine the process flow of a project, evaluate ineffective use of time, and change the process for improved effectiveness. In addition, collaborate on a class project that will allow for application of techniques to organization's processes and procedures.

The rapid development of hardware and software products, services, and operational processes has become a major factor in the competitiveness of virtually every enterprise. This mandate results from accelerating change in market demand, available technologies, and the business environment itself. The methods described in this course enable dramatic reductions in project cycle time while maintaining effective control over budget, resources, risk, and delivered value. Firms that have embraced these concepts have reported up to 75 percent reduction in project life-cycle, while displaying dramatic improvements in non-recurring cost and customer satisfaction. This intensive, hands-on course explores all aspects of rapid development, including elimination of organizational time barriers, methods for bounding project scope, the continuous-flow development process, practical techniques for product/process co-design, and several advanced strategies for exploiting knowledge reuse and economies of scope on quick- turn projects. Each topic is reinforced by interactive exercises that demonstrate how development teams can strip wasted time from time-sensitive projects.

Managing multiple projects typically presents unique challenges compared to the management of one large project. Build on your existing skills in the areas of scope, time, cost, risk, human resources, leadership and teambuilding through a combination of lecture and team-based learning exercises. Learn to select the most effective strategies and responses for multiple, small independent projects, portfolios, or large programs. Individual and group exercises will explore scheduling techniques and honing in on an assessment of project environments through stakeholder analysis. An adaptable multi-project simulation will also reinforce the benefits of cooperation for mutual gain.

Managing an IT project in an enterprise poses unique challenges. This course focuses on those elements of project management that are of greatest interest to IT workers. Topics include requirements definition and use-case analysis, performance metrics, risk determination and mitigation, task identification, scheduling, verification and testing, and version control. One of the goals of the course is to help IT staff members work more productively with business analysts, who frequently initiate IT projects.

In many projects, risks arise because of deficient communications between the project manager and stakeholders such as the project sponsor, functional or resource managers, the client, customer, end users, and the project team. Typical include: a misunderstanding of the project's link to strategic goals, misinterpreting project priority, obstacles to defining project scope, misaligned expectations for resource commitment, assumed risk tolerance level, and appropriate responsiveness to possible changes. The goal of this course is to significantly reduce risks arising from poor communications by applying risk management techniques to stakeholder management. Communications management and risk management have traditionally been handled as separate processes, each producing separate outputs in the project plan. In this workshop, however, these processes are integrated to develop more effective communications that can improve a project manager's ability to manage key stakeholder risks.

Develop the tools and techniques to manage a large, complex program. This one task covers a vast amount of territory; jetliners, to ships, high-rise construction, to large public work projects. Learn how to take all of these individual projects and integrate them together for a successful program. Managing a program can be significantly more challenging than managing just one project. Discover the complexity of programs and how to successfully manage unique groups of multifaceted projects so that all elements finish within a pre-determined order and are integrated with one another.