“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” – Albert Einstein
Would you like to both understand project management *and* know how to implement it in the simplest, most deeply practical way?
Based on more than 25 years of experience managing projects from $250K to $55M, this course provides a deeply practical description of how to use the tried and true Project Management Institute (PMI) best practices to manage your projects through every stage of their life-cycle. First an overview is provided of all the key project management concepts. Then the project management processes are mapped across the time-line, and the specific actions you need to take and documentation you need to prepare at each step are explained in an easy to follow thread. The use of software tools to support the process is described. The role and key skills of the Project Manager is explained. The course is end-to-end, comprehensive, divided into more than 200 videos of just a few minutes long, and easy to understand.
The course content has benefited from more than ten years of improvement from thousands of people from dozens of organizations. It is proven, practical, and complete, providing an end-to-end road-map that you can use as a checklist to apply the project management processes to your projects of any size, in any domain, to maximize their scope, schedule, cost, and risk performance. If you have a project you need to manage right now, or just wish to get a solid grounding in practical application of the standard project management best practices, this course can really help. You will also earn 16 Professional Development Units (PDU's) - 9 Technical, 4 Leadership, 3 Strategic.
What you'll learn
- How to get stakeholder buy-in and senior management support at the beginning of your project, and maintain it throughout.
- The three fundamental messages of PM triple constrain, how they inter-relate, and how they affect risk.
- How to play your project VERY efficiently, so you know the scope, schedule, budget, and risks before you start.
- How to manage the top three drivers of project success to solve most of the problems on most projects.
- The critical importance of the project requirements, with best practices for documentation, review, and approval.
- How to build the work breakdown structure (WBS), your scope baseline, and when to break it down further.
- Why the precedence diagram is your most important tool for planning and managing your project.
- How to estimate the project resources, material, services, time, and cost, and handle estimating error.
- Why the critical path means schedule is more important than cost, with a step by step animated example.
- The key criteria for deciding whether to build or buy, and the best type of contract and award procedures.
- How to prepare and brief the project plan, provide options to meet the triple constraint, and stay truthful.
- How to build the project team, key hiring criteria, delegation, motivation, and resolution of personnel conflicts.
- How to manage scope so you find the things inevitably missed, but don't make it so good that it just blows up.
- How to manage the critical path to focus on the most important items without getting bogged down in the weeds.
- How to manage the budget and its key drivers to obtain the best cost performance possible.
- How to identify the risks, mitigate them as early as possible, and stay within the risk budget.
- The two most effective things you can do to manage quality and ensure the customer is happy with the project result.
- How to use earned value management (EVM) to project cost and schedule performance objectively.
- How to communicate constructively with the stakeholders about the project status, and obtain their assistance when needed.
- How to use scenario based verification to ensure customer satisfaction with the project result.
- How to conduct lessons learned events to find out what did not go well and did go well, and easily gather them as you go.
- How to close your project team to ensure everyone is treated fairly and free to proceed to their next challenge.
- How to use the key software tools to support the project management life-cycle - WBS, precedence diagram, and Gantt chart.
- Six practice quizzes, get copies of nine key project management document templates and six summary checklists, and earn 16 PDU's.
- Get recommendations for free open source software to support the project management process.
- Gain a deeply practical understanding of the PMI project management best practices for those that wish to obtain a PMP certification.
