INSC 71000, Project Management

COURSE PURPOSE

A project is any temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service (for use within or outside a firm).  A marketing study, a consulting job, an information technology implementation, an improvement or change initiative, and a product development effort are all examples of projects.  This course deals with the major concepts and basic techniques of project management (PM).  It aims to (1) familiarize students with the problems and issues confronting project managers and (2) provide students with the vocabulary, concepts, insights, and tools to address these issues.  As a first course in PM, it provides an overview of several areas and knowledge of foundational tools.  As a generic course in PM, it tries to avoid over-emphasis on the way PM is done in any single industry.

Covered topics emphasize project planning and scope, time, cost, quality, rework, and risk management.  Throughout, we look at projects primarily from three perspectives:  (1) an integrated processes perspective, stressing that all activities and functions must work together in an organized way, (2) a risk management perspective, stressing that all work done on and decisions made regarding a project should serve to reduce the risk of an unwanted outcome, and (3) a stakeholder value perspective, stressing that management actions and processes should seek to provide balanced value to stakeholders.  Throughout, we will stress the managerial insights and the underlying assumptions.  We relate the topics to practical issues in students’ workplaces, and I provide exposure to a variety of sources of PM information for students’ future use and awareness.  The course incorporates discussion questions, written problem sets, case studies, and a “study project” assignment wherein each student collects information about and interviews participants in an actual industrial project.

This is not a “prep course” for the Project Management Institute’s (PMI) Project Management Professional (PMP) certification exam, although we will cover a great amount of material relevant to that preparation, introduce what it is about to those who don’t know, and give students classroom hours that should count towards certification.

In this course, we deal mainly with smaller projects (1-30 people) and basic PM tools.  A follow-on course, INSC 71010 Program Management, deals larger projects (30+ people), multi-project enterprises, project selection, and additional PM tools and applications.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

·         Understand the role of PM in the firm

·         Understand the fundamentals of a process-based project

·         Understand basic PM activities

·         Understand the role of quantitative modeling for decision support

·         Analyze project time, cost, performance, and risk characteristics

·         Apply statistical and simulation techniques to account for uncertainty and risk

·         Apply PM tools and perspectives to analyze case studies

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