PROJ - Project Management

This course is designed to facilitate an introductory approach to project management and all the essential concepts from both theoretical and applied perspectives. Other concepts discussed in this course are: PM foundations (define the project, project management, and the role of the project manager); project initiation (creating a charter and identifying stakeholders); project planning (creating a scope statement, building a WBS, identifying resources); and creating a PM plan along with some key subsidiary plans.

The use of teams has increased in organizations around the world, but in project management they are an essential component. The project leader must forge a team and ensure that it functions as a cohesive unit to achieve goals and objectives under preset project constraints.  The objective of this course is to prepare students for the professional work environment they will encounter upon graduation. It will prepare them for Project Management careers as productive project team members and eventually skilled project leaders and managers.

This course provides comprehensive knowledge and skills for project communications and stakeholder engagement. Students will master theoretical and applied skills in communication planning, distributing, and managing projects. This course will draw from the following: communication methods for stakeholders; team-building processes and high-performancebuilding teams; and building an effective project communication plan.

This course details the relationships between organizations that create, host and manage projects. Students are introduced to core concepts such as organizational structure, complexity, change management, trust, motivation and incremental innovation.Organizational behavior is the study of both group and individual performance and activity within an organization. Projects are a key vehicle for the execution of organizational strategy, and the effectiveness of that execution is determined to a large extent by governance in projects; project scope management; ethics and professionalism; and project handover, closeout and reviews.

The development and implementation of project governance is key at the onset of the project. Project governance is essentially the “recipe” for the project manager on how to manage a project.  This course provides an integrated introduction to enterprise project, program management and project governance. It also focuses on change management. Students learn the fundamental aspects of modern project management, both managerial and technical from the lens of governance. The key topics associated with this course are organizational governance of projects, governance in projects, governance of the project, and change management.  Other concepts discussed in this course are: project scope management, ethics and professionalism, and project handover, closeout, and reviews.

Agile Project Management (APM) is an iterative approach to planning and guiding project processes. Agility refers to the ability of an organization to rapidly react to unpredictable scenarios, and within the context of product development, responding to unclear requirements. There are several industry domains where agility is being practiced, such as manufacturing, engineering, software development, and supply chain management. This course provides students with a comprehensive overview of the principles, processes, and practices of agile project management. Knowledge of agile development frameworks and agile tools and techniques are introduced. Additional course discussion will include multidisciplinary review of agile literature, agile project management principles, comparison of agile and traditional PM models, and SCRUM.

This course focuses on the understanding and the application of the stakeholder interface with special emphasis on leadership to ensure customer satisfaction, and sustainability. Definitions are discussed as a starting point to identifications of members of the project community, followed descriptions of communications approaches to engage them. Effective stakeholder engagement delivers value to the organization. This course can draw from the following: identifying and engaging stakeholders; managing global projects; and project leadership.

This course introduces advanced topics regarding project schedule, risk and quality management, and cost control as well as providing essential knowledge of scheduling and other topics which include: advanced time, cost, risk, and quality estimating and planning; schedule estimation and management and earned schedule; risk management (identifying and quantifying risks, and risk-response plan); quality management (plan and quality analysis (control charts, Ishikawa diagram, audits)); and resource planning: estimating, balancing.

Many organizations’ projects are delivered through complex supply chains and networks. They have several suppliers, contractors, and customers. There is a substantial amount of project procurement involving these entities and a substantial amount of detailed planning and scheduling occurs. This course begins with an exploration of core principles of project procurement and expands to a consideration of how modern organizations expand their influence beyond simple contractual relationships by considering supply chains.  Additional course discussion will include the processes for planning procurements, foundational knowledge of supply chains and developing a strategy, identifying project procurement needs, including make-or-buy analysis, negotiating and ensuring due diligence and an equitable process when contracting, and determining contract types, risks, and incentives.

This is a capstone course that provides an opportunity to demonstrate the principles of project management. The course integrates learning from the courses in the PM major with other academic courses taken and may involve interdisciplinary partnerships among university departments and/or industry.Contemporary project management utilizes the project management techniques along with modern improvements such as the most current versions of Micro- soft® Project Professional 2016, the sixth edition of the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), and many approaches derived from adaptive (Agile) project management. Contemporary project management also uses many tools and understandings that come from modern approaches to quality and communications, expanded role definitions, leadership principles, human strengths, and many other sources.Experiential learning is a key focus throughout this course.