Course Description
Participants gain a basic understanding of the nature of projects, differentiating project management from operations management. The program provides hands-on experience with tools used for planning, scheduling, estimating, control, and closeout elements common to all projects, regardless of industry or environment. No matter the business or position within the organization, everyone manages projects and can improve performance with the knowledge available through this course.

Includes the following topics
• Project Team Structure
• Action Plans
• Work Breakdown Structure
• Gant Charts
• Network Diagrams
• Responsibility Charts
• Critical Paths
• Top-down vs. Bottom-up Budgeting
• Methods of Cost Estimating
• Critical Chain
• Negotiation skills
• Estimating

Course Outline
1) Overview
a) What is a Project?
b) Project Management vs. General Management
c) The Three Goals
i) Balancing the goals – “Any two, but not all three.”
ii) Other goals
(1) Additional organizational goals
(2) Additional individual goals
(3) Conflict of organizational vs. individual
d) Project Life Cycles – J curve vs. S curve
e) Risk Management
f) The Project Portfolio Process
i) Project types
(1) Derivative Projects
(2) Platform Projects
(3) Breakthrough Projects
(4) R&D Projects
2) The Project Manager
a) The PM’s roles
i) Facilitator
ii) Expediter
iii) Negotiator
iv) Fire fighter
b) The PM’s Responsibilities
c) PM Selection
d) Project Organization
e) The Project Team
3) Project Planning
a) Meetings - Types and Content
b) Planning Tools
i) Action Plan
ii) Work Breakdown Structure
iii) Linear Responsibility Chart
iv) Design Structure Matrix
4) Budgeting/Estimating
a) Budgeting
i) Top-down
ii) Bottom-up
b) Cost Estimating
i) Work Element Costing
ii) Overhead and Other Costs
iii) Impact of Budget Cuts
(1) Role of management
(2) Role of PM
c) Budget Uncertainty
d) Risk Management
5) Scheduling
a) Vocabulary of Scheduling
b) The Gantt Chart
c) Networks
i) Activity on Arrow
ii) Activity on Node
d) The Critical Path
i) Finding the Critical Path
ii) Managing the Critical Path
e) Managing Risk
i) Duration Uncertainty
(1) Probabilistic Durations
(2) Why Are Projects Always Late?
(a) Limits on Duration Improvement
(b) Unlimited Slippage
ii) Critical Path “what-ifs?”
iii) Gantt Chart “stacks”
6) Resource Allocation
a) Identifying Scarce Resources
b) Sharing Resources Among Projects
c) Resource Leveling
d) Expediting the Project
i) Fast-tracking
ii) Crashing
7) Control and Monitoring
a) The Feedback System
b) Selecting Monitored Data
c) Data Collection and Analysis
d) Reporting
e) Control Systems and Tools
f) Change Control
g) Scope creep
8) Project Termination
a) When is it Over?
i) Substantial completion vs. final completion
b) Final Documentation
c) Project Post-mortem
i) What went right?
ii) What went wrong?
iii) What would you change?

Total Course Hours: 20

Format: Your choice of delivery modes:
8 sessions, 2.5 hours each session; or,
7 sessions, 3 hours per session

Cost: $2100 for course (not per participant)
$20 per participant for text.

E.g., total costs with 10 participants:

Course: $2100
Materials: $200
Total Costs: $2300 ($230 per participant)