Project Management (Part 9) - Taking Your Project Management to the Next Level

In Project Management (Part 9) - Taking Your Project Management to the Next Level, you'll learn ...

• Different types of software that can help you plan and manage your projects more effectively
• Social media tools you can use to enhance the quality and timeliness of project information sharing
• The steps involved in conducting an Earned Value Management (EVM) analysis to determine your project’s schedule and cost performance
• How to project total expenditures at completion using cost and schedule performance indicators
• The advantages and disadvantages of three EV estimation methods: milestone vs. 50/50 vs. percent-complete

Overview

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Credit: 2 PDH

Length: 24 pages

Over the past 25 to 30 years the number of projects in the workplace has skyrocketed. Projects of all types and sizes are now the way that organizations accomplish their work. People who want to devote their careers to planning and managing those projects are vital to their successes.

At the same time, a new breed of project manager has emerged. This new breed may not have set career goals to become project managers, but they do know they must successfully manage projects to move ahead in their careers. Clearly, project management has become a critical skill, not a career choice.

Even though these people realize they need special tools, techniques, and knowledge to handle their new types of assignments, they may not be able or willing to devote large amounts of time to acquiring them, which is where this Project Management course series comes into play.

This course is Part 9 of a 9-part series based on the popular book Project Management for Dummies, 4th Edition, which provides tools and techniques in accordance with PMI’s A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). Each course in the series is stand-alone. Feel free to jump back and forth through the courses depending on your own project-management knowledge and experience and your current needs. However, it is suggested that you complete the series in sequential order if you are new to project management concepts.

This course, Part 9 of the series, shows you how to use available technology to help you plan, organize, and control your project, as well as techniques for evaluating activity performance and resource expenditures on larger projects. You will need to have some prior experience or knowledge in project management to get the most out of this course.

In this course, you’ll learn the role of software in project planning and control. You’ll learn how to support your project management efforts using social media tools. You’ll learn how to estimate earned value. And finally, you’ll learn how to evaluate your project’s performance using EVM.

The courses in this series were written to be direct and (relatively) easy to understand. But don’t be misled — the simple text still navigates all the critical tools and techniques you’ll need to support your project planning, scheduling, budgeting, organizing, and controlling.

For those seeking Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, the tools and techniques provided in this course series are in accordance with PMBOK. In fact, a section is provided at the end of each course module that specifies where the topics in the module are addressed in PMBOK.

It’s important to note that PMBOK identifies what best practices are but doesn’t address in detail how to perform them or deal with difficulties you may encounter as you try to perform them. In contrast, this course series focuses heavily on how to perform the project-management techniques and processes. However, if you’re preparing to take the PMP examination, use these courses as a companion to PMBOK, not as a substitute for it.

From Project Management For Dummies ®, 4th Edition. Copyright © 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey . Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Specific Knowledge or Skill Obtained

This course teaches the following specific knowledge and skills:

• Recognizing software’s role in project planning and control
• Supporting project management with social media
• Keeping track of all the terms and formulas that go with Earned Value Management
• Putting Earned Value Management to use on your project
• Estimating an activity’s earned value

Certificate of Completion

You will be able to immediately print a certificate of completion after passing a multiple-choice quiz consisting of 15 questions. PDH credits are not awarded until the course is completed and quiz is passed.