Fundamentals of Project Planning and Management

Welcome to the course -- we're excited you're here! In our first week, we'll gain an understanding of what a project is, what it isn't, and why that matters. We'll consider how projects are defined and a project’s three objectives. We'll look at a model for examining a project’s organization and its stakeholders, and then analyze those stakeholders using a power/interest grid. We'll look at the main reasons why many projects fail and then learn how to measure success. Finally, we'll review the key stages in the project life cycle and highlight the important features of each stage.

During our second week, we'll start digging into the details, focusing on how to develop a project plan. We'll understand why we plan and what a plan should or should not include. We'll discuss the process of scoping out a project and see tools that can help us identify what should be included in our project. We'll learn about sequencing project tasks and the nature of the dependencies among project activates. We'll learn how to determine a project’s duration and critical path, how it is determined, and why it is useful. We'll see how we should schedule a project and, finally, we’ll review how you can make changes to a plan to support your overall project objectives.

In our third week, we'll consider the risk and uncertainties projects face. We'll understand what is risky about projects. We'll identify and assess project risks and prioritize these risks in order to focus our attention on those most impactful to the project. We’ll consider schedule risks in detail and ask, "What is the likelihood of finishing on time? What are the drivers that may cause delays in my project?" We'll see how a project budget can be set to include a contingency. Finally, we'll consider situations with a high degree of ambiguity and identify methods than can useful in these situations.