• Introduction to Project Management

An introduction to the six visual pathways of how we see things when it comes to understanding project management.

• 1.2 6 Pathways of Project Management 

We can now look at Project management through the same six pathways that our brains are so good at. People who have a vested interest in the project are called stakeholders.

• 1.3 Course Structure: Simplified Framework 

You will find out how this course will be structured to live up to its name, the Simplest Guide to Project Management.

• 1.4 System Thinking

We will also use another visual technique to make things simpler for us. We will use the concept called Systems Thinking to visualise all of the inputs and outputs feeding into the various processes of Project Management.

• 1.5 Project Timeline

We will be keeping track of all the project documents that are developed as we go along in this course.

• 1.6 Pyramid Project

To understand the various concepts of Project Management thoroughly and clearly, we will use a fictitious example from ancient history.

• 2.1 Project

A project is a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.

• 2.2 Project Management 

Project Management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements.

• 2.3 The Matrix Environment

In a strong-matrixed environment, the project manager has a lot of control over resources and largely makes most decisions on the project.  

• 2.4 Enterprise Environmental Factors and Organisational Process Assets

When you work on projects you will realise that not everything is under your control. It is important to realise these factors as influencing inputs to many processes.

• 2.5 Project Constraints

On almost every project there are limitations on resources that can be put into a project. Project Constraints can be defined as the Scope, Time and Cost.

• 2.6 Process Groups

There are five main process groups: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring & controlling, and closing.

• 2.7 Integration Management

Integration Management is to pull together the various pieces of the project into a cohesive whole and it is here that we think of all of the high-level work that needs to be done on the project.

• 2.8 Stakeholder Management

Stakeholder Management is an important step in identifying the people, groups or teams that could impact, or be impacted by the project itself and who have an important stake in the outcome of the project.

• 2.9 Scope Management

The Scope Management is a process of defining what work is required as part of the project and then making sure that only that work gets done.

• 2.10 Schedule Management

The time management knowledge area is concerned with estimating the duration of the various activities during the project, when they are scheduled, and in what sequence.

• 2.11 Cost, HR, Quality and Risk Management

The Cost Management knowledge area deals with estimating the cost of resources and establishing budgets.

• 2.12 Communication and Procurement Management

This is the general communication that occurs between the various stakeholders, the project team members, and other parties involved in the project.  

• 2.13 Knowledge Areas and Process Groups

Learn how the five process groups relate to other knowledge areas such as Integration Management and Stakeholder Management.

• 3.1 Develop Project Charter

When initiating a project, it’s important to know the who and the why of a project. Understand how to answer those questions with this video walkthrough.

• 3.2 Project Charter Template

A Project Charter includes an Executive Summary, a Project Description, and the Business Problem that the project solves. You will also include any Risks and Assumptions.

• 3.3 Timeline View of Project Documents

At this point, we have the Project Charter document ready in the Initiating phase.

• 4.1 Identify Stakeholders

It is important to identify who are all the important people in the project. Those people have a vested interest in the project and are called stakeholders.  

• 4.2 Stakeholder Register Template            

See what a typical Stakeholder Register Template looks like and fill one out with this video walkthrough.

• 4.3 Timeline View of Project Documents

The Initiating phase is now complete with our two documents ready.

• 5.1 Project Scope

We are now in the planning phase. Planning entails walking through the project and getting it organised well before the actual work on the project begins.

• 5.2 Collect Requirements

Requirements are the characteristics of the individual component of the product or the service that becomes the scope of the project.

• 5.3 Define Project Scope

Now it is time to document exactly what is going to be delivered as part of the project in a Project Scope Statement.

• 5.4 Create WBS: Work Breakdown Structure

The WBS is defined as the deliverable oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work to be executed by the project team to accomplish all project objectives.

• 5.5 Project Scope Baseline

The Scope Baseline is the initial agreed upon scope between the parties involved. It is used as a benchmark to refer back during later phases to compare to in case of changes or variations from it.

• 5.6 Timeline View of Project Documents

We now have the scope baseline ready, so we now know what needs to be done on the project in terms of the overall scope.

• 5.7 Microsoft Project

These next lectures will briefly introduce you to the Microsoft Project programme so that you will quickly know how to get started with it.

• 5.8 MS Project – User Interface Explained

In this lecture, we will be discussing the major features of Microsoft Project 2013.

• 5.9 MS Project – Entering Scope Items

Decomposition is a technique to divide the project scope into manageable components of work. It helps to accurately estimate cost, resources, and timelines for the entire project.

•  6.1 Define Activities  

We will now cover the dimension of time in project management. Schedule Management aims to determine when a project happens including important milestones and deadlines.   

• 6.2 Sequence Activities

It is important to logically arrange the activities on a timeline and identify the dependencies that exist between them.

• 6.3 Estimating Activity Durations

This process estimates the amount of time taken by each activity to complete given the previous prerequisite’s activities are in place.

• 6.4 Develop Schedule Process 

This is an important process because it produces a key deliverable on the project called the project schedule.

• 6.5 Critical Path Method

You will learn about a scheduled path diagram for the Critical Path Method.

• 6.6 Compressing Schedule: Crashing and Fast-tracking     

Another technique that is used to modify the project schedule, is used to shorten the project schedule without changing the project scope. This is schedule compression.

• 6.7 Timeline View of Project Documents

At this point, we now have all the elements that answer the question of at what point in time should things be done on the project.  

• 6.8 Microsoft Project – Entering Activities and Duration 

We will now start entering all the information we collected about the project activities into the Microsoft Project application.

• 6.9 Microsoft Project – Sequencing Activities & Creating Gantt Chart

From the sequence diagrams that we constructed earlier, we can determine the order of project activities.

• 6.10 Microsoft Project – The Project Schedule

The last step is to create the project schedule itself. This is automatically constructed in Microsoft Project once all the activities that define the entire scope of the project are entered into it.

• 7.1 Estimated Costs 

These are the Cost Management, Quality Management, Resource Management, and Risk Management knowledge areas.  

• 7.2 Determined Budget

We can determine the budget by aggregating the costs of all the activities that we determined in the previous process of estimation.

• 7.3 Timeline View of Project Documents

At this point, we have the project budget ready so we now know how much money it will take to work on this project.

• 7.4 Estimate Activity Resources

We can now determine the number of resources on each activity, this is done in the resource management knowledge area.

• 7.5 Timeline View of Project Documents 

At this point, we know how much project resources are needed to deliver on the project objectives.

• 7.6 Plan Quality

It is not enough to simply deliver a project within its defined scope boundaries. Quality is the measure of to what extent you are satisfying the customer, or the sponsor, by meeting their requirements on the project.

• 7.7 Timeline View of Project Documents

By finishing the plan quality process, we now have the quality metrics available which will help us in the future to control the project.

• 7.8 Introduction to Risks

Risks on projects are uncertain events that matter. This means should they occur; they have an impact on the objectives of the project.  

• 7.9 Identify Risks

In the planning phase of Risk Management, we will go through three processes that will create an important output called the Risk Register.

• 7.10 Perform Qualitative Risk Analysis 

Now it is important to address which risks are of immediate concern and which ones require your immediate attention.

• 7.11 Perform Quantitative Risk Analysis

Now a lot of data and mathematical calculations are used to quantify the various risks. This is done by using various modelling techniques.

• 7.12 Plan Risk Responses

The most important part of the planning phase of risk management is to obtain the risk responses using the Plan Risk Responses.

• 7.13 Timeline View of Project Documents

We are now equipped with the risk register and now we know how many risks are anticipated on the project, and to what magnitude are those risks going to impact the project objectives.

• 8.1 Plan Communication

When the project is ongoing and the real products or services to be delivered are far from the delivery date, the most important output for the customers is the project communication itself.

• 8.2 Timeline View of Project Documents

We now know when we should communicate with all the stakeholders to transmit relevant and necessary information.

• 8.3 Plan Procurement 

Procurement is about identifying what goods or services you are going to purchase from outside the organisation and how you will make them available.  

• 8.4 Timeline View of Project Documents

We now have the make or buy decisions we made finalised on the external vendors we will engage during the execution of the project.

• 9.1 HOW are things done on the project 

There is one last important process that needs to be completed in the planning phase, but first, let us go over what we have done so far.

• 9.2 Develop Project Management Plan 

This is the last process of the planning phase, and it lays out the guidelines for how the project is done with a roadmap.   

• 9.3 Individual Management Plans

The individual management plans are obtained by asking the question – how will we manage each of the aspects of the project that we have discussed so far?

• 9.4 Timeline View of Project Documents

At this point, we have all the management plans from the individual knowledge areas which means we have a good understanding of how we will manage each of those areas.

• 9.5 Timeline View of Project Documents-2 

This is the conclusion of the planning phase where we now have the Project Management Plan which is going to be a big help when we move into the execution phase.

• 9.6 Direct and Manage Project Work 

We are now at the executing stage of the process. The project teams can now get to work with the approved plan. The process that will guide us is in the Integration Management Knowledge Area.

• 9.7 Timeline View of Project Documents

We now have the Work Performance Information which is the data about the project which indicates the project health.

• 9.8 Manage Project Knowledge

There are “lessons learned” in project management terminology that will influence future projects. This is the Manage Project Knowledge section which is found in the executing phase.

• 9.9 Timeline View of Project Documents

At this point, we now have the Lessons Learned Register which we have now started to build based on our observations.

• 9.10 Monitor and Control Project Work  

Here you will constantly check for deviations from the project management plan and ensure that the project work is on track as laid out in the management plans.

• 9.11 Timeline View of Project Documents     

We now have the change requests in the monitoring and controlling phase that is being initiated to readjust the project in terms of the scope, schedule or cost.

• 9.12 Perform Integrated Change Control 

In this lecture, you will learn how to manage changes to the project that are introduced in the middle of the project.

• 9.13 Steps to perform Change Control 

Learn how to take the various change requests and get them approved at the end so that they become a part of the project.

• 9.14 Timeline View of Project Documents   

We now have the approved change requests that are being finalised to implement in the execution phase.  

• 9.15 Budget at Completion: BAC 

This is an essential topic in project management for the controlling of costs and the managing of budgets.

• 9.16 Planned Value: PV            

The Planned Value is the cost of work that has been authorised and budgeted for a scheduled activity or WBS component during a given time or phase.

• 9.17 Earned Value: EV 

The Earned Value is the value of work completed to date as it compares to the budgeted amount assigned to the work component.

• 9.18 Schedule Variance (SV) & Schedule Performance Index (SPI) 

The SV is the difference between the earned value and the planned value. The SPI is the ratio of the earned value and the planned value.

• 9.19 Actual Cost(AC), Cost Variance and Cost Performance Index

The Actual Cost is the cost of completing the work component in each period. The Cost Variance is the difference between the earned value and the actual cost.

• 9.20 Budget Forecasting – Estimate at & to completion 

We can now forecast how we will perform on the project in the future – If the amount of money that currently exists is enough for us to finish the project right on time and under the budget.

• 9.21 Close Project or Phase

All projects have a defined end, this is now the closing part of the project. The project team has built the required product or service and is ready to deliver it to the customers or sponsors.

• 9.22 Timeline View of Project Documents

We are now in the closing phase, we have Product/Sales Transition, Lessons Learned and Organizational Process Asset Updates. 

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