Project Management Archives

Program overview

The Project Management MicroMasters® program from RIT is a graduate level series of courses designed to provide you with the in-depth knowledge and skills needed to be a successful project manager in any industry. This online sequence is a semester’s worth of work from RIT’s Master’s degree and consists of three courses and a final capstone exam.

By earning the MicroMasters® program certificate you will develop the leadership skills needed to effectively manage a team that will meet the expectations of your customers and business goals. Build on your MicroMasters® program certificate by applying to RIT’s School of Individualized Study for a customized master’s degree.

What you will learn

The tools and techniques to manage the comprehensive project management life cycle for a project – from initiation through closing.
To balance the critical tradeoffs of time, cost and scope to meet customer expectations.
The ability to apply best practices across a variety of industries and businesses.
Lead a project to success, and how to capitalize on the leadership and behavioral facets to do so.
To navigate the social and cultural aspects, legal and regulatory practices, technology and infrastructure that influence projects’ success in the global market.

Program Class List

Project Management is one of the most in-demand skills in all industries -- from healthcare to technology and business. Take this one course, or the entire program, to prove your skills to employers.

Learn how to create an organizational environment that supports project success.

Learn what makes global projects uniquely challenging and how to successfully manage projects based in different industries and countries.

Demonstrate the knowledge and skills acquired in the Project Management MicroMasters program, and prepare for graduate level program options at RIT.

Meet Your Instructors

Celine Gullace

Celine is an Instructor of Project Management at the School of Individualized Study at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Celine has over 20 years of experience in business management and teaching. She has a keen interest in influencing business decisions and leading high visibility projects. She is an experienced project management instructor and award winning teacher in mathematics. Celine was born and raised in the South of France and came to the US in 1993 to continue her education. For more information, please contact ritonline@rit.edu.

Leonie Fernandes

Leonie is an Instructor of Project Management at the School of Individualized Study at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She is a certified Project Management Professional with over 25 years of project management experience in large, global corporations in the high tech, manufacturing, healthcare and automotive industries. Leonie has extensive coaching and mentoring in leading projects within the United States and in the global arena. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and master’s degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology. For more information, please contact ritonline@rit.edu.

About this course

Project management is an essential skill-set for many careers and in many contexts in our lives. Introduction to Project Management is an ideal starting point if you need to manage projects at work or at home, while not necessarily being a formally trained project manager. It is also suitable if you are considering undertaking a project in the near future and are seeking to learn and apply essential project management knowledge and skills.

To deliver a project successfully, it’s important to start by clearly identifying what the project is, and what its outcomes will be. In the course, we will show you practical ways to explore and understand your goals from the outset of your project, and to consider all the factors that may affect its execution. Step by step you will learn how to plan, scope, schedule, cost and manage your project from beginning to end. Since every project relies on the people who are delivering it, the course also enables you to explore how you can effectively communicate, manage people and employ leadership skills to successfully deliver your own project.

In Introduction to Project Management, you will learn practical ways to use project management skills, whether your project is large or small. Join us to explore how you can benefit from using project management techniques in your own projects.

What you’ll learn

Core knowledge and applied skills in project management
Essential communication skills to help you manage a project
An understanding of why today’s projects are more complex

Meet your instructors

Frank Schultmann

About Me

Professor Frank Schultmann is currently Professor of Complex Project Management and serves as Director of Project Management for the University of Adelaide. In addition he also holds a Professorship of Business Administration at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Frank studied Industrial Engineering and Management at the University of Karlsruhe (now KIT), completing his doctoral thesis in 1998 and his Habilitation in 2003 at the Faculty of Economics and Business Engineering. Prior to his present positions he was Professor of Industrial Management at the University of Koblenz-Landau and holder of the Chair of Business Administration, Construction Management and Economics at the University of Siegen. His research interests include sustainable production and logistics, decision support, supply chain management and optimization, systems modelling, project management, technology assessment, construction management, and information and communication technologies. This goes along with various industry collaborations. Among others Frank has worked with companies from resource industries, automotive, chemical, construction, security, food, transport and logistics.

Noel Lindsay

About Me

Noel is the Director of the Entrepreneurship, Commercialisation and Innovation Centre (ECIC) and the Academic Director, Singapore Operations, the University of Adelaide, where he is the Professor of Entrepreneurship and Commercialisation. Noel’s research embraces both business and social entrepreneurship. His practitioner-oriented entrepreneurial experience includes co-founding, growing, and harvesting ventures in Australia, South Africa, and Malaysia and he has been a Director of a Sydney-based venture capital fund. His professional accounting experience encompasses the areas of corporate insolvency as well as advisory services to growth-oriented businesses wanting to raise venture finance, and family enterprises wanting to expand. Noel is a Member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners, a Member of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, and a Fellow of CPA Australia.

Anton Jordaan

About Me

Dr Anton Jordaan is CEO of the Australian Skills Development Institute and adjunct teaching faculty at The University of Adelaide’s Entrepreneurship Centre for Innovation and Commercialisation (ECIC), and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Project Management Academy at QUT in Brisbane. He holds an undergraduate degree in Accounting, and postgraduate degrees in Accounting, Business Administration, Advanced Business Practice, and a PhD. He has extensive experience in strategic management, leadership, business development and finance roles, having worked in the public sector, corporate, and entrepreneurial environments - including serving as a director of a stock exchange listed company. Anton is also a member of CPA Australia. Anton has 25 years teaching experience in the delivery of education and training courses to postgraduate students and managers in corporations. He has delivered business improvement and capacity building courses in North America, UK, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. Courses include Project Management, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, and Accounting. He has inter-alia presented customised project management related courses to more than 800 middle and senior finance managers in the Oil and Gas industry internationally since 2008.

John Sing

About Me

Dr John Sing is currently a Company Director and Business Consultant in the areas of project and risk management. After a period of time as a full-time academic, both researching and teaching in the domains of business, finance, project and risk management, John is now involved in consulting and capability building for both public and private sector organisations which are actively seeking to improve on their project management and corporate governance arrangements. John is also an Adjunct Associate Professor with the University of Adelaide and holds a Doctorate from the Southern Cross University, a Masters in Accounting, a Bachelor of Business (Accounting) and a Graduate Diploma in Education.

Scrum Fundamentals LiveLessons provides practitioners with a core understanding of Scrum–the most popular agile method–and helpful advice to help them deliver high quality products that add the most value to their customers.

In this video training, Tommy Norman (CSM, CSP, PSM I, ALM MVP) provides an introduction to Agile software development using Scrum, which is a lightweight, adaptive framework for managing complex projects. It consists of roles, artifacts, and events as well as a simple set of rules to govern the relationships and interactions between them.

This LiveLessons course gives helpful insight into the history of Agile and how its values and principles can focus teams on consistently delivering quality products that immediately add value for the customer. It covers the complete Scrum framework from project initiation, executing Sprints, and delivering a product increment.

What You Will Learn

The history of Agile
The roles, artifacts, and events in Scrum
How to start a Scrum project
Essentials of writing good User Stories
How to maintain your Product Backlog and Release Plan
Agile estimation techniques
How to effectively plan for and execute a Sprint
Agile engineering best practices
How to integrate QA into your Sprints
How to inspect and adapt your process

Who Should Take This Course

Anyone involved in the development of software applications looking for a practical introduction to the Agile framework Scrum.

Course Requirements

Familiarity with the basics of software development projects.

Lesson 1: A History of Agile

Lesson 1 covers a brief history of Agile and how it has evolved over the years. The lesson starts by reviewing how software had previously been done with a more traditional “Waterfall” approach. Viewers learn some of the intrinsic issues often encountered in Waterfall projects. From there, the lesson covers how Agile got its start and evolved into the many frameworks available today.

Lesson 2: Agile Concepts

Lesson 2 covers the underlying concepts behind many of the various Agile approaches. It discusses how to separate the implementation (or mechanism) of a concept from its underlying values and principles. Finally, the lesson touches on the many Agile processes and frameworks that have risen from these concepts and have become more mainstream today.

Lesson 3: An Overview of Scrum

Lesson 3 presents the basic roles, artifacts, and events that make up the Scrum framework. These topics are covered at a high level in this lesson and discussed in more depth in the following lessons.

Lesson 4: Starting a Scrum Project

Lesson 4 begins by demonstration how to establish a Product Vision to act as a compass for the Scrum Team to follow. From there, it covers how to create the initial Product Backlog with good User Stories and then how to prioritize it appropriately. Next, viewers learn how to assemble their Scrum Teams to best deliver their product increments. Viewers also learn the Agile concepts and techniques used for estimating User Stories and how to create a Release Plan to forecast when and what might be done in the future.

Lesson 5: Executing the Sprint

Lesson 5: shows how to start developing a product. It starts off by covering the Sprint Planning Meeting where the team determines what to work on, a Sprint goal is created, and a Sprint Backlog is developed which is the plan for meeting that goal. The lesson then talks about how to work collaboratively as a Scrum Team. This lesson also covers the Daily Scrum, and it gives tips on how to make the most of this meeting. Finally, the lesson covers grooming the Product Backlog to keep a good runway of User Stories prepped and ready for the team.

Lesson 6: Ending the Sprint

Lesson 6 covers holding the Sprint Review and demoing the finished Product Increment to the stakeholders. Next, it talks about delivering that product increment to the users and how to do this as often as possible. Finally, the lesson discusses how to hold the Sprint Retrospective for the team to reflect and strive for continuous improvement.

About LiveLessons Video Training

The LiveLessons Video Training series publishes hundreds of hands-on, expert-led video tutorials covering a wide selection of technology topics designed to teach you the skills you need to succeed. This professional and personal technology video series features world-leading author instructors published by your trusted technology brands: Addison-Wesley, Cisco Press, IBM Press, Pearson IT Certification, Prentice Hall, Sams, and Que. Topics include: IT Certification, Programming, Web Development, Mobile Development, Home and Office Technologies, Business and Management, and more.

Meet your instructor

Tommy Norman

Tommy Norman is Vice President of Agile Operations at Acklen Avenue in Nashville, TN. For over 20 years he has been helping clients build solutions using both Agile and traditional approaches as a CSM/ ACSM/ CSPO/ CSP/ CEC (Scrum Alliance), PSM I (Scrum.org), SAFe Agilist, and an 8 year recipient of Microsoft's MVP award in Application Lifecycle Management. Tommy is the coordinator for the Agile Nashville User Group, director of the Music City Agile Conference, a contributor to InformIt.com, Safari Books Online, Front Row Agile, as well as a frequent speaker at regional and national events. He blogs about Agile at www.tommynorman.com and rambles about most everything on Twitter as @tommynorman. When not working he enjoys being at home with his family of 5, playing guitar, and music. Tommy is the author of several top-rated Pearson LIveLessons videos including: Scrum Fundamentals, Advanced Scrum, Scrum Product Owner and Lean Principles for Scrum.

Course Overview

These easy video tutorials are the fastest way to master modern project management! Project Management LiveLessons teaches the most important elements in project management: organizing your project, developing project scope and risk assessments, planning and scheduling, monitoring and tracking progress, and dealing with the problems most likely to derail your project. Drawing on 25+ years’ experience as a world-class project management consultant, researcher, and instructor, Jeffrey Pinto covers many of the key managerial and technical areas included in the Project Management Institute’s Body of Knowledge (PMBoK). First, Pinto explains what makes projects unique, why they’re so important, and how the project lifecycle is organized. Next, he shows how to prepare crucial project artifacts including scope statements, work authorizations, and Work Breakdown Structures (WBS)… how to manage and mitigate project risks… how to plan and schedule projects and how to create project activity networks… how to use critical path, PERT, and Gantt charts… how to track projects using sophisticated Earned Value techniques… and how to efficiently close or terminate a project and learn the lessons it can teach. Whatever your experience or industry, you can become a more confident, skilled project manager—and fast!

What You Will Learn

The basic elements of projects and how they are organized
How to define a project’s scope
How to systematically manage project risk
How to create project plans and schedules
How to estimate using Critical Path and PERT
How to track and control projects
How to effectively close out projects and learn lessons from them
How to overcome common challenges in day-to-day project management

Prerequisites

No project management experience or knowledge required

Course Overview

Part I explores the rich history of Lean from its beginnings in the 1900s to today. It also reviews the fundamental concepts behind Lean and its offshoots such as Kanban and Lean Product Development so that you have a solid understanding of how and why it has worked so well. The end of Part I takes a look at where Lean and Scrum overlap, where they might conflict, and how best to blend these two approaches.

Part II of this course concentrates on taking what was learned in Part 1 and integrating those principles into a Scrum implementation. Lean is a vast subject with many different facets, so I have chosen to focus on four areas that I have found to best augment a Scrum implementation. We start by exposing hidden work and making it visible so that we can be transparent and identify issues with our overall process. This information then helps us talk about how to optimize the flow of our entire process, not just the part where we are writing code. As we start to master optimization, we might find that time boxes become restrictive, so we cover how to move to continuous delivery and break out of our sprints. Plus we take a deeper look into how we determine the value of the features we are developing so that we can make quick, informed decisions that help us get value to our customers faster. And lastly, I tell you three stories of integrating Lean into Scrum from my own experience to give you an idea of how this can be done.

What You Will Learn

Foundation in Lean principles
Practices for applying Lean principles in a Scrum implementation

Prerequisites

Knowledge of Scrum and Agile principles
Scrum Fundamentals LiveLessons video course by Tommy Norman recommended as a pre-requisite (not required)

Program overview

Are you an IT professional new to project management or a manager who wants to develop more robust project management skills? Perhaps you are looking to forge a career as a full-time project manager (PM). This program will introduce you to the fundamentals of project management, specifically as they apply to the field of information technology (IT).

This program will help you select project management techniques and strategies that best fit your IT project or organization. You’ll also explore how project management offices are organized and how they develop a project portfolio. Throughout the program, you’ll come to understand some of the challenges of the field, including management of diverse teams and projects that are potentially based anywhere in the world. By the end, you’ll determine your own competencies as an IT project manager and will have developed core skills required for this role.

What will you learn

Why IT organizations use project management to deliver business value and how organizational culture can influence the role of the PM and individual projects;
How to describe and distinguish among the major project management methodologies and project lifecycles as applied to IT and to identify strategies for managing distributed teams;
The purpose of a Project Management Office (PMO), high-level strategies to set up, maintain, and close a PMO, and how it can work within your organization;
Techniques to intake, prioritize, and select projects and programs so that they align with an organization’s overall business strategy; and
Which personal and performance competencies are necessary for project management in IT, and strategies for developing those skills.

Program Class List

In this course you will learn project management standards and frameworks that increase efficiency and deliver tangible business benefits.

Learn how a Project Management Office (PMO) works, discover techniques to monitor and control projects and find out how to keep your project portfolio healthy.

Learn how to develop effective project management and leadership skills that are essential for successfully guiding diverse or distributed teams and projects.