Project Management 802

Scope, Risk, and Scheduling

Course Introduction

In this course, you will gain experience in defining the scope for a project. You will also acquire experience in developing a complete project overview statement (POS) and a work breakdown structure (WBS). In addition, you will learn the fundamentals of scheduling, including the development of a Gantt chart and a project network. Finally, you will learn to plan for managing risks. You will have opportunities to practice in these areas either on your own or with your team. Whether you are an experienced project manager or are new to the field, this course will teach you concepts and techniques that you can apply to your work right away.

Course Objectives

By the end of this course, you will be able to

• write a complete project overview statement (POS) (Lesson One);
• identify all stakeholders in a project, both internal and external to the organization (Lesson One);
• generate a work breakdown structure (WBS) for a project and test for its completeness (Lesson Two);
• estimate duration and resource requirements for each of the activities in a project WBS (Lesson Three);
• construct a network diagram of project activities and compute the early start, early finish, late start, and late finish times for every activity in the network (Lesson Three);
• identify the critical path in a project network (Lesson Three);
• develop resource loaded schedules (Lesson Four);
• identify and quantify potential risks for a project (Lesson Five); and
• improve your ability to function productively in a group.

Course Overview

This course—Project Planning I: Scope Definition, Scheduling, and Risk Assessment—is composed of five lessons and is designed to be completed in eleven weeks. For most of the lessons, you will submit an assignment on alternating weeks. Other activities include practice exercises.

Completing This Course

To pass this course successfully , you must

• complete and submit all written assignments; and
• participate in specified team activities.

Instructions for completing the assignments are outlined in the individual lessons of this online course.

Optional Materials

The following optional materials will be helpful to you in this course:

• access to standard business productivity software, including word processing and spreadsheet software
• a simple drawing software package for use in this course

Practice Exercises

Practice Exercises allow you to apply the concepts presented in each lesson. These are for practice only and do not need to be submitted.

About the Lessons

Each lesson in this online course provides a reading assignment, a list of objectives, key terms, practice exercises, and an assignment to be submitted for credit. The material included in the lessons is designed to help you put to use new skills as you learn them. Examples are provided from various industries, and interactive exercises and assignments ask that you relate course concepts to your own work situation. These online course materials will also coordinate your reading and writing assignments, as well as your Team Project Notebook deliverables.

Key Terms and Abbreviations

Each lesson includes terms that are important to the concepts you will learn in the lesson. You will not be held responsible for definitions per se, though you will be expected to use the terms in your written work wherever possible. You will find the terms discussed in either the lesson commentary, the assigned readings, or both. There is also a glossary in the PMBOK that you will find helpful.

At the beginning of each lesson, you will also see a list of abbreviations used in the online lesson material. Use this as a reference tool, since there are a number of terms used in project management that are commonly abbreviated.

About the Assignments

Each of the five lessons in this online course includes an assignment to be submitted for evaluation. Assignments 1 through 5 include an "Individual Assignment" that you will work on and submit to the instructor on your own, using a project of your choice. Assignments 2 and 5 also include a "Team Assignment" that you will complete and submit as part of your Team Project Notebook; you are expected to complete the other Team Project Notebook deliverables outside of the Lesson assignments. All the assignments (except Assignment 1) provide a reminder about Team Project Notebook deliverables that you must complete with your team; how you do so is up to each team. One team member (you select) will put these deliverables in the Team Project Notebook.

The following is a preview of the assignments for this course:

Assignment 1: Project Overview Statement (POS)

• Part 1: Team Project Assignment–Recognizing the Value of a POS
  With your team, you will discuss how the POS is used throughout a project, and its importance to different stakeholders.
  
• Part 2: Individual Assignment—Developing a Complete POS
  You will develop a POS for a project of your choice and write a complete POS for it.
  

Assignment 2: Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

• Part 1: Team Assignment—WBS Approach
  With your team, you will decide upon an approach to building the first level of a WBS.
  
• Part 2: Individual Assignment—Creating a WBS
  Using your individual project from Assignment 1, you will create a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) based on the project objectives.
  
• Remember to put the WBS deliverable (3) in the Team Project Notebook.

Assignment 3: Durations, Project Network, Assumptions

• Part 1: Individual Assignment–Estimating Durations
  Using your individual project, you will estimate duration for each of the activities in your WBS and estimate resource requirements for each activity.
  
• Part 2: Individual Assignment–Constructing the Network
  For the same project, you will construct a network representation of the project activities, computing early start, late start, early finish, and late finish times, and you will also identify the project's critical path.
  
• Part 3: Individual Assignment–Assumptions
  You will write a separate report on the assumptions you made in drawing up the project network for the "doghouse project" in Practice Exercise  3.
  
• Remember to put the Project Network deliverable (4) in the Team Project Notebook.
  

Assignment 4: Resource Estimating and Scheduling

• Part 1: Individual Assignment—Gantt Chart
  Using the network representation you created for your individual project in Assignment 3, you will create a schedule in the form of a Gantt chart, identifying project start and end dates, and showing project milestones, schedule float, and the project's critical path. This chart will also illustrate resource use by resource type and time period.
  
  
• Part 2: Individual Assignment—Questions for Reflection
  You will answer three questions and turn them in along with the schedule you create for Part 1.
  
• Remember to put the Resource Estimating and the Schedule deliverables (5 and 6) in the Team Project Notebook.
  

Assignment 5: Risk Management

• Part 1: Team Assignment—Risk Assessment
  Working with your team, you will reach consensus about the three greatest risks for the team project. You will agree upon which of these risks you will attempt to avoid, which you will attempt to mitigate, and which you will accept, and you will incorporate this information into the project overview statement (POS).
  
• Part 2: Individual Assignment—Risk Assessment
  Using your individual project, you will identify at least three risk categories for which you will create a risk matrix for the project. You will select three risks you consider to be the most important and quantify them using the matrix.
  
• Remember to put the Risk Management Plan deliverable (7) in the Team Project Notebook.

Working in a Team

This course, like all the courses in the certificate program, requires that you work as part of a team to complete portions of the assignments (see "Assignments" in this introduction for an overview of each assignment) and to complete program deliverables. This will mean communicating with fellow team members; you can accomplish this required interaction in a variety of ways: through e-mail, phone calls, or informal meetings. Take advantage of the variety of communication options you have available to you, both to accommodate various team members' needs and to enhance teamwork, by selecting the method most suited to the work to be done.

Team Participation Requirements

You are required to interact with your team on an ongoing basis in order to complete the "team" portion of the assignments, and your Team Project Notebook deliverables. How you do that is up to you and your team, but participation counts as half of your grade.

Team Project Notebook Deliverables

Throughout the course, your team will be responsible for putting deliverables in the Team Project Notebook (each team should select one member to put items in the Team Project Notebook). It is your team's responsibility to put these deliverables in the notebook before the end of the program. You will most likely want to do so after you receive your instructor's feedback on related assignments and can integrate any changes into the notebook deliverables. At the end of the program, the instructor of the final course PM 805 will review your Team Project Notebook and provide feedback. Your course instructor can also provide additional guidance in creating your Team Project Notebook deliverables.

Note: Team Project Notebook deliverables do not always correspond to the assignments; each team must work out the what, how, and when for these deliverables. While reminders are placed throughout the course, Team Project Notebook deliverables are due by the last day of the course.

Evaluation and Grading

Because this is a noncredit professional certification program, all submitted assignments are graded on a satisfactory (S) or nonsatisfactory (NS) basis. Other exercises will count toward the participation grade, as noted in individual lessons.

Five written assignments	50%
Participation	50%
Total	100%

Study Tips

Many students who complete the coursework for the certificate in project management find the concepts in this course to be among the most difficult. Students generally have a lot of questions and often request time to work on issues pertaining to scheduling. Knowing this, and knowing your own study habits, devise a successful study strategy for completing the lessons. The following tips may help:

• Each lesson is designed to be completed in two weeks. Plan ahead to give yourself extra time to complete the readings and assignments. If you work full time during the week, you should try to budget extra weekend study time while completing this course. It will be difficult to catch up if you fall behind.
• Practice the concepts and techniques with simple projects (for example, household or garden projects).
• Work with your teammates—try resolving your questions and practicing concepts together.
• Use the lists of learning objectives and key terms at the beginning of each lesson in this online course to direct your study.
• Use the objectives listed at the beginning of chapters in EPM as guides to your study.
• Take advantage of your instructor's expertise!

Using Project Management Software

I ask that you do not use project management software for your work in this course. It has been my experience that, even when students are familiar with the software from activities they perform at work, it often presents a serious barrier to understanding the concepts behind the assignments and exercises in this course. If you do not first acquire a firm grasp of the basic concepts behind the planning and scheduling activities that we will perform, it will be impossible for you to evaluate the outcomes that the software produces; hence, it may produce wrong answers for reasons you don't understand. I therefore ask that you not use project management/scheduling software and that you perform all calculations yourself so that we can both be sure of your understanding.

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