Introduction to Project Management

Welcome to “What is Project Management?” After watching this video, you will be able to define project management, identify the six types of project
management constraints, and explain the benefits of
effective project management The Project Management Institute
defines project management as follows: “Project management is the use
of specific knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to deliver
something of value to people.” Examples of projects might include
the development of software, the construction of a building, or a
relief effort after a natural disaster. Projects can be generally defined as
a collection of tasks, activities, and deliverables that must be carefully
organized and executed to produce value. Project managers are the people responsible for managing this organization
and the delivery of projects. Because project management is first and
foremost about the management of projects, this makes it distinct from
general or operations management. While general management involves
the ongoing management of a team, project management begins and ends with a project. Project management begins
when a project is kicked off, and it ends when all project requirements have
been completed to the customer’s satisfaction. Although the informal process of
managing projects has existed for centuries, project management as a distinct
practice emerged in the mid-20th century. It was born out of a need in the
aerospace, engineering, pharmaceutical, and telecommunications industries to
manage projects of increasing complexity. Effective project management allows companies
to increase the success rate of projects, mitigate project risks, and reduce overall costs. For team members, effective project
management allows them to better understand their roles and responsibilities,
collaborate, and utilize resources. A key aspect of project
management is understanding your project’s requirements. The entire
team should agree on the project’s goals. Often, projects are kicked off
by developing requirements. Today, projects are everywhere. We live in a Project Economy, in which projects are the primary method by which work
is accomplished, and value is produced. Project management skills are key for
success in a project-based economy. Project management involves a range of skills, including technical knowledge
to interpersonal skills. As a result, it is relevant to a
wide variety of roles and situations. Learning project management can be
helpful to everyone, ranging from a student working on a science project to an
executive negotiating personality disputes. Project management helps prevent organizations from simply jumping into a
new project without a plan. Without proper management, many projects
fail to meet their original objectives, if they are completed at all. Project management provides focus
and direction for the project team. It allows businesses to outline their
requirements from the beginning, apply project management techniques,
and monitor project activities. This mitigates risk by preventing resources
from being wasted or put into failed projects. Project management may reduce risks, but it does not guarantee that projects will
not encounter any problems or surprises. Project management will, however, provide standardized practices that can
be used to respond to and prevent risk. There are six types of constraints to
keep in mind when planning a project. These are cost, scope, quality,
risk, resources, and time. Cost is the project’s budget. Project management balances the budget so that
projects neither overspend nor underspend. Scope is both the desired features and functions of the final product and the
work required to deliver them. Accurately estimating scope is a
crucial part of the planning process. Project quality refers to the standards
the project must meet to be effective. The final product must be able
to accomplish its intended task, deliver the expected benefits and value, or both. It must additionally meet certain levels of
availability, reliability, and maintainability. Managing risk means addressing external
factors that can potentially harm your project. It refers to both the probability of these
negative events and the consequences if they do. Resources are what is needed
to accomplish the project. This includes people, equipment, facilities, funding, and anything else required
to deliver the final product. Time is the time needed to finish a project. Tasks and their estimated durations must be accurately identified and estimated to
ensure that projects stay on schedule. Balancing these six types
of constraints throughout project delivery is the challenge
that project managers address. The benefits of effective
project management include: Managing budgets and timelines,
so that projects are able to be successfully completed within
the planned budget and timeframe. Improving productivity,
efficiency, and quality of work. Addressing project risks proactively. Improving communication between
team members and with stakeholders. Increasing customer satisfaction by
planning and meeting expectations. In this video, you learned that project management is the application of knowledge, skills, and tools to a project to deliver
intended outcomes and produce value, considers constraints including cost,
scope, quality, risk, resources, and time, has many benefits, including managing budgets
and timelines, improving productivity, addressing project risks, improving communication,
and increasing customer satisfaction.

Welcome to Expert Viewpoints:
What do project managers do? In this video, we will hear from several
project managers explaining what project managers do and discussing examples of
their involvement with their projects. If you ever have an opportunity to go ahead and talk with any kind of an
experienced project manager, ask them what their job description is. In most cases, you'll hear something like my job is to go ahead and provide new
products and new services on time, within budget and hopefully within the
scheduled timelines that the customer requires. Project managers are responsible for
scheduling organization of the overall project, and in reality, they're actually owners
of the project and are held responsible. Many projects require budgeting,
making sure we have resource alignment. Building those relationships between business
stakeholders and internal stakeholders. I like to believe that project managers are
the cement that holds everything together. You're the person who's in the
middle, organizing everything and bringing all the necessary elements together for
successfully completing the work at hand. And this means that you're working
with everyone from upper management down to every member of your team and
figuring out how do you get them into the optimum position for doing the very best work. Next, we will hear about examples of
projects that these experts worked on and they will tell us a little bit about
their involvement as a project manager. It starts right from the beginning. We work internally with cross-functional
teams including our sales team. Our pre-sales team, the consultants, even our technical account managers
for some or our customer success managers we go ahead and start building the
internal relationship from the kickoff call. We build an external relationship
with our stakeholders. We also help with scheduling, organizing
everything, making sure everybody is involved that should be on the calls, or just should be notified for any reporting. So recently I worked with a small
company to help them move their systems, move their customer information to a new
customer relationship management tool. So there was some technology
that was being changed. We needed to train their
employees on a new system, and there was lots to be done in terms of
creating some automations, transferring the data, and really doing that training and
creating things like FAQs and documentation. So one of my roles for one of my roles for
the project was to be the project manager. And so the first thing that I
did was I met with the company, met with a couple of people on the team. One of the first things that I
did was meet with some people on the team to talk about what
the project objectives were. Our project goals were and kind of
get a basic sense of the timeline. Now, let me tell you about a
project I did years ago because it was really an epiphany about what
makes a great project manager. Years ago I was specializing
in fixing troubled projects, projects that were over budget, behind schedule, and I was down in Sarasota, Florida managing an HR
software development project for Arthur Anderson, and the project was millions of dollars
over budget and over a year behind schedule. Within three weeks, everything was
ticking and everyone was shocked that the project was back on schedule and
was hitting deadlines every week finishing key pieces of it, and what I found was, the most
important thing that a project manager can do is being the person who
can translate between the business and the dev team in a way that makes it possible
for everybody to get what it is they want. Recently I’ve been working for Green
River College here in the Seattle area. The college and I decided that perhaps
coming up with a new continuing education program for a business analyst
track was a very, very good idea. We used something called the PDCA methodology.
PDCA stands for: plan, do, check, act. And this is a methodology that is tried and true. First of all, we did our planning. We took a look at the potential curriculum, the potential audience, how long
this particular course should take. Then we went into the D, which stands for do,
we developed all of the different courses. The next step was C, which plans for check. What we did was we ran a quick beta class. We got feedback from a lot of
the different participants. We upgraded what we needed to go ahead
and fix and then finally the A was act. We're now ready to go ahead and roll out
this new curriculum on a full-time, basis. An example of a project that I have worked on is a
cybersecurity course in the cybersecurity program for UC Berkeley, and my involvement in that
process was working with external stakeholders, which were the faculty, working with
our internal stakeholders, which were several different types of roles, there were people who were working on
graphics where that course people who are working at production for that course and
that people who are also on the support end. So, my role was to make sure that
external stakeholders were very clear on the different milestones that
they had to accomplish in order to make sure that the internal stakeholders
were able to do their job and that we were able to successfully launch the
course on time for our online students.

Welcome to “Program, project, portfolio
– What’s the difference?” After watching this video, you will be able
to: Compare and contrast a program, a project,
and a portfolio in project management. And differentiate between project, product, and
portfolio managers. The terms project, program, and portfolio
are often confused or used interchangeably. However, these terms have distinct meanings
in the context of project management. First, what is a project? The Project Management Institute, also known
as PMI, defines a project as a “temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product,
service, or result.” Projects are temporary, meaning they have
a clear beginning and end. They are complete when the project goals are
achieved or when the project is no longer viable. Projects can stand independently or be part
of a larger program or portfolio. A successful project meets or exceeds the
stakeholders’ expectations. Projects are distinct from operations. To determine if what you are working on is
a project, ask yourself the following questions: Is it unique? Is there a way to determine when the project
will be completed? Is there a way to measure stakeholder satisfaction? It is a project if you have answered yes to
all these questions. An example of a project might be a social
media campaign for a product. This meets all three criteria from the previous
slide: it is unique because the product will launch
only once, it has an end state because after launch the project concludes, and produces measurable value, such as the
percent increase in product usage after the campaign. Next, a program is a group of similar or related
projects managed as a group rather than independently. Programs are most useful when a group of projects
sees benefits from being managed that it wouldn’t see individually. The goal of a program is to realize the advantages
for the entire organization. Implementing programs makes it easier to determine
which projects produce value for the business. Like projects, programs are temporary organizations. When all projects in a program are complete,
the program is also complete. All programs share four traits. They are: Large, incorporating multiple projects with
a wide scope. Long-term, as it takes a while for a business
to see the benefits from multiple projects. General, able to encompass a range of relevant
projects. Strategic, serving the overall strategic goals
of the organization rather than a single project. An example of a program might be all marketing
campaigns that use multiple channels for a single product, including social media platforms, digital
advertising, and print advertising. While the individual marketing campaigns in
each channel serve as separate projects; together they form a single marketing program. By contrast, a portfolio is a group of programs
and projects within the same organization. These programs and projects may or may not
be related. Like programs, portfolios are useful when
a group of projects and programs would benefit from being managed as a whole. Unlike programs and projects, managing a portfolio
is a continuous process, and new programs and projects are included
in the portfolio as they are started. All portfolio elements must align with the
company’s overall strategy and goals. The goal of a portfolio is to help an organization
meet its long-term objectives. If a project is a social media campaign, and
a program is the entire marketing campaign on multiple channels, then a portfolio would be all the projects
and programs that concern the product. A portfolio could include all social media
campaigns for all of the organization’s products. This might include marketing and other departments
such as production, design, and distribution. As there are differences between a project,
program, and portfolio, there are differences between a project manager, program manager,
and portfolio manager. A project manager has a responsibility to
ensure that an individual project is managed within time, cost, and quality constraints. They typically focus on how to get work done
at a tactical level, and their day-to-day tasks mainly focus on timelines, resource
allocation, and assigning tasks. A program manager, on the other hand, is responsible
for ensuring a larger group of projects is completed. They are focused on ensuring that the overall
program is meeting key business objectives. Their day-to-day tasks mainly involve resource
management across multiple projects, improving processes and tools, and tracking long-term
timelines and large budgets. A portfolio manager is responsible for ensuring
that groups of programs that may not be related to one another are being delivered and that
they are contributing to broader business objectives. They are primarily focused on ensuring that
the portfolio of programs is aligned to the overall organizational strategy. Day to day, they meet with executives, build
portfolio-level roadmaps to provide direction to program and project managers, and track and balance resources and costs
across multiple programs. In this video, you learned that: A project is an endeavor that is unique, temporary,
completable, and measurable. A program is a collection of projects that
is large, long-term, general, and strategic projects. A portfolio is a collection of projects and
programs that is ongoing and aligns with the organization’s strategic objectives.

Welcome to “The Role Project
Management Plays in Projects.” After watching this video, you will be able to: List traits of successful project management Explain the six aspects of a project
that a project management addresses Explain the purpose of monitoring
and reporting on a project As you have learned previously, project
management is utilizing skills, tools, and knowledge to manage projects successfully. It is used not to manage day-to-day operations
but to manage temporary and unique projects. Karen Tate is president and founder of
The Griffin Tate Group, Incorporated, a Project Management Institute Charter
Global Registered Education Provider specializing in training for the
project management community. She says, “Trying to manage
a project without project management is like trying to play a
football game without a game plan.” Successful project management
helps create successful projects. Project management aims to: Prevent projects from going
over budget or running late, Provide tools like work breakdown structures, client information sheets, and project
plans to help teams navigate their work, Clarify roles and
responsibilities across the team, Communicate across all project team members
and key stakeholders to build alignment, Manage how the project is delivered, including
clarifying dependencies and downstream impacts, Assess and manage risks and
issues that the project faces, Drive quality assurance for
the outputs of the project, Monitor and report on results to the
team, leadership, and key stakeholders, The purpose of a project is to achieve a
particular objective and produce measurable value. The objective of project management, on the other hand, is to control how
these project goals are achieved. Project management is about estimating
and controlling six constraints: scope, schedule, financials,
risk, quality, and resources. The project scope establishes objectives,
requirements, and extent of the work. A project schedule determines how
and when the work is executed. Project financials determine how
much can be spent to achieve the project’s goals and should be
managed for budgeting purposes. A project risk assessment identifies any
events that may have a negative impact on any other of the project constraints and
puts a plan in place to mitigate those risks. Project quality includes the standards
and criteria set by stakeholders and is managed through quality assurance processes that
review a project’s performance on a regular basis Lastly, the project’s resources
include the people, equipment, or technology required to complete a project. You’ve learned that an example of a project
would be a social media campaign for a product. The successful completion of a social
media campaign project would involve determining the objectives of
the social media campaign and any requirements and scheduling
social media campaign releases. It would also include estimating the
cost, ensuring the social media meets the organization’s quality standards, assessing
risks such as making sure advertised assets are in place in a timely fashion, and allocating
the appropriate personnel for the work. Monitoring the status of a project
is crucial to project management. In order to control these six constraints,
projects must be regularly monitored. While monitoring a project’s progress against
the required objectives and deliverables, project managers may find they need to
adjust the project’s schedule or budget. Monitoring may also identify
risks or resource issues that may require requirements to be altered. When monitoring a project’s progress,
project reporting is regularly needed to communicate the project’s status
to the team and stakeholders. Reports should maintain and update the project’s schedule and progress against the
requirements and deliverables. Reports may also contain budget information. As a project’s schedule and
budget are living documents, they may change as the project progresses. Reporting communicates these changes
regarding the project to the team. Regular reporting should convey information
that accurately assesses, reports on, and notifies team members about any other
changes to the project as necessary. Project managers may use digital tools
to monitor and report on their projects. Project management monitoring
tools are used to track the tasks, due dates, who is responsible, spending,
issues, and status of project assets. For reporting, they may have a
presentation template they update weekly to communicate the status
and issues to key stakeholders. They may also have email templates they use
to send out reports on a regular cadence. In this video, you learned that: Successful project management keeps
projects within budget and on time, provides needed tools to the team, clarifies
responsibilities, facilitates communication, manages delivery and risk, drives
quality, and monitors and reports results Project management seeks to
control the scope, schedule, financials, risk, quality,
and resources of the project Monitoring is used to assess the progress
of a project against its deliverables, whereas reporting communicates
this progress to the team

Welcome to Expert Viewpoints: What’s a project? In this video, we will hear from project managers
describing what a project entails and the role project management plays in a project’s
success. Question number one is, what's a project for
me to correctly respond to that question, I'll share the project Management Institute's
three-phase definition of a project. First and foremost, a project is unique. Every project is different. A project manager needs to really understand
how each project is different and tailor their planning accordingly. Secondly, every project has a defined beginning
and a defined end. It's very, very important for the project
manager to not only understand when the project begins, but how it's going to end as well. What will you do with the final product or
service? Who will you transition it to? the third piece
of the PMI definition is all projects are achieved through progressive elaboration. What do we mean by that? When we first begin a project, we really don't
understand what the total scope of the project is. The first step that you're going to take is
creation of a project charter. This explains the scope at a very, very high level. Level progressive elaboration means that as
we continue to go ahead and understand the details of the project, we become more and
more detailed and more and more granular until at the end we have a project plan that is
detailed to the point where you can execute the project. Simply put, it's a sequence of tasks that
have an outcome. With that, it could be easy as making a PB
and J. Okay, so you start with two slices of bread,
peanut butter, and jelly, but it's the overall outcome. How do you go ahead and create the task in
order to complete your PB and jelly? That way you can enjoy it. A project can be called any work that is gathered
around a specific set of goals. So what is it that the business wants to accomplish, and putting it together and understanding
how you're going to accomplish it. So in my experience as a project manager,
a project is something that really kind of has an end date. It has a specific goal that a team or company
is trying to accomplish, and it's really something that is pretty contained in and of itself. A project can be anything. My focus has been in online learning but a
project can be anything that has a deadline that is going to mark its launch or its delivery. So my focus has been in digital products for
online learning, but it can be anything. What role does project management play in
a project’s success? Well, one of the things that you'll learn
is RACI. This is a way of defining roles and responsibilities
for a particular team member. R stands for responsible, A accountable, C console, and I inform. In a nutshell, the project manager is responsible
to do work accountable for the outcomes of the work. A consultant in terms of providing expertise
and needs to be a provider of information and a receiver of information as well. We are the key responsible players that are
responsible for the overall project itself. When it comes to the outcome, somebody is
going to have to go somewhere and be like who's responsible. They go to the project manager. They have to manage scope, budget and schedule
in order to have a successful project. Sometimes we might go a little bit out of
budget, but where do we budget out from? Is it going to be from the scope and we're
going to do less scope? Or do we slow down the schedule or speed it
up if we have it increased budget? So this can, you know, vary from team to team,
project to project, but very often includes the project manager in gathering the business
requirements, working with the business analysts and the
business side all the way up to the C-suite to understand what the business. And then starting the planning. You have everything from the diplomacy that
you have to do in terms of working and inspiring those that are on your team to dealing with
troubleshooting when things go wrong and things will go wrong. I believe that a good project manager really
helps make a project successful because they help move that project along. They help resolve any issues or blockers they
have relationships with all of the stakeholders and they're really able to get clarification
on questions if members of the team have questions, they're able to resolve issues if people on
the team have issues. They're the person making sure that all of
the different stakeholders are keeping to their milestones and ultimately, they're the one responsible, or at least one
of the people responsible for making sure that the product launches on time. And if for any reason it doesn't launch on
time that the proper communication channel has been opened so that it's not going to
happen on time, that there's a plan, that someone knows that it's not going to
happen on time and that there's a Plan B. So, they're the person shuffling every single
different step along the way, making sure that everyone is successful.