Project Management Fundamentals (PM Fund)

A well-planned, well-managed project provides clarity, reduces risk, controls cost, and delivers value to the business. In this course, you will learn the fundamentals and best practices of project management through hands-on, real-world exercises.

Ensure that you are delivering business value by assessing a projects business case, identifying stakeholders and their relationship to your project, capturing product requirements, and establishing quality metrics to guide the development of your product and reassess the business case.

Define product scope to provide clarity for project delivery and create a work breakdown structure to define project scope for the team.

Manage your project within the planned budget and schedule by managing change and identifying and managing risks, assumptions, and constraints. Track the delivery of business value and close projects out cleanly.

By the end of this course, you should have gained a good understanding and experience of the core competencies that make a successful project manager.

Students pursuing a university-recognized and/or accredited certificate in Canada or continuing education units in the US must attend at least 90% of class time, participate in class exercises and section-knowledge checks, and score at least 70% on an end-of-class, multiple-choice assessment.

PMI is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc. This is a Byod course. Students should bring a PC, Mac, or tablet to class in order to access digital course materials. Students can download a copy of the course materials in their MyGK account.

Skills Gained

• Articulate the relevance of core project management competences.

• Identify key project goals and assumptions and set the stage for value delivery.

• Understand how to identify stakeholders and assess how to engage with them during the project.

• Meet stakeholder informational needs by creating an actionable communication plan.

• Articulate product scope as part of the charter.

• Become familiar with the process of eliciting and capturing requirements.

• Create the WBS and dictionary that would deliver the scope in the project charter.

• Perform a more detailed and systematic assessment of risk.

• Articulate guiding quality characteristics for the project.

• Sequence activities, create schedule, and estimate the cost of the project.

• Manage change in projects.

• Track value delivery in projects.

• Understand the basics of a project retrospective.

Who Can Benefit

• Anyone who is involved in, or affected by, projects or change management within an organization, including project managers, IT project managers, project coordinators, team leaders, product managers, program managers, project team members, subject matter experts, analysts, stakeholders, and senior managers who want to get more out of their project teams

• Anyone in a leadership role who will benefit from an introduction to the art and science of project management

• You should not take this course if you have taken IT Project Management or Applied Project Management. The subjects covered are the same.

Course Details

• Foundations

  • Formal vs. informal project management

  • Project Management Institute (PMI) framework

  • Project management life cycle

• Initiating

  • Role of the project manager

  • Project charter

  • Stakeholder identification and assessment

  • Progressive elaboration

• Planning

  • Planning around project constraints

  • SMART objectives

  • Converting objectives into requirements

  • Decomposition of requirements into a work breakdown structure

  • Developing a work breakdown structure dictionary

  • Principles of estimating time and cost

  • Analyzing work and estimating duration of work packages

  • Determining sequence of work packages

  • Network diagramming and critical path analysis

  • Budgeting resources and cost control

  • Ensuring that all management responsibility areas are included in the project plan

  • Analyzing risks for probability and impact

  • Mitigating and planning risk contingencies

  • Preparing baselines for scope, time, and cost

  • Obtaining stakeholder sign-off

• Executing, Monitoring, and Controlling

  • Team-building principles and priorities

  • Status and performance reporting

  • Management by exception

  • Keeping stakeholders informed and involved

  • Steering performance back to the baseline

  • Integrated change controls

• Closing

  • Transitioning the product or service

  • Capturing lessons learned for the organization

  • Final report to stakeholders

• Exercises

  • Formal vs. Informal Project Management

  • Analyze Stakeholders

  • Convert Vague Objectives into SMART Objectives

  • Create a Work Breakdown Structure

  • Estimate Effort and Duration for Work Packages

  • Perform Network Diagramming and Determine Critical Path

  • Estimate Resource Costs for Work Packages

  • Analyze and Plan for Risk

  • Manage Project Change

  • Review Lessons Learned

• Hands-On Exercises

  • Project Management Terminology

  • Establish the Project Background and Develop the Project Mini Charter

  • Stakeholder Identification and Analysis

  • Project Roles and Responsibilities

  • Responsibility Assignment Matrix

  • Defining Assumptions and Constraints

  • Communications Planning

  • Risk Planning

  • Change Management Planning

  • Develop the WBS

  • Activity Definition

  • Estimate Activity Duration

  • Calculate the Critical Path

  • Develop the Project Schedule

  • Project Controls

  • Calculating Earned Value

  • Manage Expectations

  • Plan for Closure

  • Evaluate PM Competencies

• Exercises

  • Formal vs. Informal Project Management

  • Analyze Stakeholders

  • Create a Project Charter and Present to Sponsor

  • Begin Discovery Planning: Scope Analysis

  • Quickly Estimate Time and Cost for Work Packages

  • Overall Risk Review

  • Summarize and Report to Management: End Discovery Planning

  • Begin Iterative Planning: Update Strategy and Revise Scope Documents

  • Time Analysis: Estimating and Network Diagramming

  • Cost Analysis

  • Risk Analysis: End Iterative Planning

  • Baseline Planning: Create PMB and Report to Management

  • Monitor and Control: Manage Discovered Change

  • Closure: Lessons Learned Survey