Westchester Community College, State University of New York

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Foundations of Project Management

3 Day Class

Course Description:

In today’s dynamically changing business environment, projects are initiated under tighter budgetary, resource and time constraints than ever before. This seminar focuses on the core project management skills required to manage any project and will provide the attendees with proven "real life" tools and techniques applied to a case study.

Course Goals:

• Develop a foundation in core project management concepts.
• Apply core project management concepts to managing projects.
• Discover and apply project management tools and techniques applicable to each phase of a project’s Life Cycle.

This course is designed to be a foundation course in project management for those individuals and groups who are working on projects in any application area.  The course will use published industry best practices and relate them to the management of these projects.
For the purposes of this class, it is assumed that your organization uses some kind of development and deployment model similar to the following phases:

1. Concept / Initial Planning
2. Planning / Development
3. Construction
4. Installation
5. Maintenance / Support

With this in mind, we will introduce the project management concepts in the portion of the life cycle (Concept, Planning, Construction, Installation, and Maintenance) where they would seem most likely to be performed.  This is not to suggest that the process flow will occur this way on every project, but rather to follow a linear progression of new topics introduced in a way that hopefully follows your development process.  Project management processes are performed iteratively throughout the project life cycle, so there is no real one-to-one mapping of project management processes to life cycle phases.

Course Outline:

Unit 1 – Introduction

Course Goals
Student Introductions
Class Objectives
Class Materials
Class Norms

Unit 2 – The Project Management Framework

What is a Project?
Project Objectives
The Triple Constraint
What is Project Management?
Role of the Project Manager
Program Management/Portfolio Management
Role of the PMO
Phases and Life Cycles
What is a Process?
PMBOK® Guide Processes, Process Groups and Knowledge Areas

Unit 3 – Concept Phase

Building a Business Case
Project Stakeholders
Project Initiation
The Project Charter
The Project Scope Statement
Key components of Charter/Scope Statement

Project Objectives
Project Approach
Product Scope Description
Project Requirements
Project Boundaries
Project Deliverables
Product Acceptance Criteria
Assumptions/Constraints
Summary Schedule
Summary Budget
Initial WBS
Initial Defined Risks
Approvals

Unit 4 – Development Phase

Defining Project Scope
The Work Breakdown Structure
Developing the Schedule

Activity List
Activity Sequencing
Duration/Resource Estimating
Schedule Development
Schedule Compression

Developing the Budget
Project Quality Management
Project Communications Planning
Project Risk Management
The Performance Measurement Baselines

Unit 5 – Construction Phase

Executing Processes
Perform Quality Assurance/Quality Control
Team Development
Monitoring Project Progress
Controlling variance
Risk Monitoring and Control
Integrated Change Control

“PMBOK” is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

Unit 6 – Installation Phase

Acceptance of project deliverables
Transition of project’s product
Transitioning the Project team

Unit 7 – Maintenance/Support Phase

Post-Implementation Reviews
Process Improvements
Enhancements

Unit 8 – Project Closeout

Closing out a project
Contract closure
Administrative Closure
Project Archives
Gathering Lessons Learned
Course Closure