Deeply Practical Project Management

Summary

Complexity is the challenge in project management. Adding a lot of complex processes won't help. Simplicity and practicality is the solution.

This reference provides a deeply practical description of how to use the Project Management Institute (PMI(R)) best practices to manage your projects through every stage of their life-cycle. The PMI processes are mapped across the project time-line, and the specific actions you need to take, and documentation you need to prepare, are explained at each step in a cohesive, easy to follow thread. The use of software tools to support each step of the process is described. Templates are provided for all the key project management documents.

The material has been refined for more than ten years with feedback from thousands of people from dozens of organizations in both industry and government. It is proven, practical, and complete, providing an end-to-end road-map that you can use as a checklist to apply the PMI process to your projects of any size, in any domain, to maximize their scope, schedule, cost, and risk performance. After reading this book, you will not only understand project management, you will be able to implement it.

Whether you have a project you need to manage right now, or just wish to get a solid grounding in deeply practical application of the PMI processes, this book can help. It'll also help you have more fun. Done right, project management is fun. I hope you have fun with the skills you acquire from this reference!

Instructor

William Stewart is a Project Management Institute certified Project Management Professional (PMP), has managed projects from $250K to $55M using the PMI processes and worked in senior roles on projects up to $3B, and delivered more than 200 onsite project management courses to more than 2,000 people. He has worked for the Canadian Federal government, large corporations, academia, and founded a software startup. He has hands-on experience with project management, systems integration, systems engineering, and software engineering. He earned a Ph. D. in computer science for discovery of an algorithm that creates geodesic domes from spherical distributions in multiple dimensions in optimum space and time. He has refined this course for more than ten years to provide the most deeply practical description of how to get the most benefit from the PMI processes on real projects.

Objectives

This reference provide the information you need to be able to:

Very efficiently plan your project to figure out the scope, schedule, budget, and risks before it starts. Get stakeholder buy-in and senior management support at the beginning of the project, and maintain it throughout. Manage scope change as the project progresses so you can find the things inevitably missed, without making it better and better until it blows up. Manage the schedule critical path so you can focus on the most important items, without getting bogged down in the weeds. Manage the budget, and its most important drivers, to obtain the best cost performance possible. Identify the risks, mitigate them as early as possible, and manage the risk budget so surprises can be handled within the project plan. Constructively communicate with the sponsor, customer, and stakeholders about the project progress, and obtain their assistance when needed. Understand how to use the key software tools to support the project management life-cycle. Gain a deeply practical understanding of the PMI process for those that wish to obtain a PMP certification.