Deeply Practical Project Management (16 PDUs)

How to apply the PMI project management processes in the simplest, most practical way, with a professional 44M example.

Created by: William Stewart PhD, PMP, PPM
Project management made practical

What Will I Learn?

• "Finally an online course that teaches the 'how' of project management from an experienced veteran." – Karin Brame
• One comprehensive course that covers the entire PM process, with a realistic, complete, professional $44M example.
• How to get stakeholder and senior management support at the beginning of your project, and maintain it throughout.
• The practical essentials of Project Manager communication, team management, negotiation, and leadership.
• How to plan your project with less than 5% (!) of the overall effort, so everyone has realistic expectations before you start.
• How to avoid the top three causes of project failure, and manage the top three drivers of project success.
• The critical importance of the project requirements, with best practices for documentation, review, and approval.
• Practical advice on building your work breakdown structure (WBS), and when to break it down further.
• Why the precedence diagram is your most important PM tool, even more important than the Gantt schedule.
• Five techniques for estimating, the tricks to estimating within +/- 10%, and how to handle estimating error.
• A complete, animated example of how to calculate the critical path, and why schedule is almost always more important than budget.
• How to decide whether to build or buy, the best type of contract structure, and the best way to make the award.
• How to prepare the final project plan, brief management, provide options, stay truthful, and protect your career.
• The essentials of building the best project team, and delegation, motivation, and resolution of personnel conflicts.
• How to manage scope so you find the things inevitably missed, but don’t let scope creep blow up your project.
• Use the critical path to focus on the most important items, intelligently reallocate resources, and make the PM’s job easier and easier.
• Track the budget and manage its key drivers to obtain the best cost performance possible.
• Identify the risks up front, mitigate them early, and manage your project to stay within the risk budget.
• The most effective things you can do to manage quality and ensure the customer is happy with the project result.
• Use earned value management (EVM) to objectively estimate future cost and schedule performance.
• Ask the stakeholders for guidance when your project is in trouble in the most productive and constructive way.
• Use scenario based verification to sign off requirements and make sure the customer is happy with the project result.
• Best practices for gathering lessons learned to find both what went well and what can be improved, and easily gather them as you go.
• Close your project, write a final report, and hold a project celebration so everyone can transition to their next challenge.
• A complete example of professional project management documentation for the $44M “Magical Devices Version 3” project.
• The document “Project Planning With MS Office” describing how to use Miscrosoft apps to document your scope, schedule, and budget.
• Six practice quizzes, nine project management document templates, a 250 page slide deck, and six summary checklists.
• Gain a deeply practical understanding of the PMI process for those that wish to write an exam and obtain a certification.

Requirements

• Comprehensive, in-depth coverage of the entire project management process, with a wealth of practical tips for experienced project managers.

Target audience

• Project managers that want a deeply practical description of how to apply the project management process in real life.
• Anyone that wants to understand the practical essentials of the project management best practices.
• Managers and leaders: includes a mini course on communications, team management, negotiation, and leadership.