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Project managers are catalysts for change. Learn how to manage projects from beginning to end using proven project management techniques. After completing this learning path, you'll have the skills and knowledge to manage simple projects as well as complex, enterprise-wide initiatives.
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Learn how to effectively manage a project, keeping it on time, in budget, and in scope.
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Practice using Microsoft Project with best practices.
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Develop essential project management skills.
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First Course Project Management Foundations
Project management is a set of techniques that anyone can apply to achieve goals and make projects more successful. Project management can be used to guide small, simple projects as well as complex enterprise-wide initiatives. Bonnie Biafore has always been fascinated by how things work and how to make things work better. In this course, she explains the fundamentals of project management, from establishing project goals and objectives and building a project plan to managing resources and work, meeting deadlines, and closing the project. Along the way, she provides tips for communicating, holding meetings, keeping a project on track, and gaining customer acceptance. This course provides exercises for most videos based on a healthcare/IT case study project.
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Identify the definition of project management.
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Explore the similarities and differences between traditional and agile project management.
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Determine how organizational structure affects projects.
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Explore the fundamentals of analyzing project stakeholders.
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Examine the best ways to identify a project goal.
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Determine the best ways to choose a strategy.
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Examine strategies to gather requirements.
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Identify the fundamentals of developing a project budget.
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Distinguish the best ways to craft a quality plan.
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Conclude the best steps to take when determining the processes for procuring resources.
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Second Course Project Management Foundations: Ethics
Your overall success as a project manager depends upon your ability to identify and manage ethical issues. Ethical behavior is also a requirement for good standing with the Project Management Institute (PMI). To boost your reputation and increase project participation and success, you need to learn how to conduct your project in an ethical way and solve any complications that may arise—due to conflicts of interest, business pressure, or even fear of failure. Join PMP Bob McGannon in this course, as he examines the core values of ethical projects and the different ethical standards that can be applied to project management. Bob also shows how to develop and apply a framework for ethical decision-making that balances your organization’s unique cultural expectations with your own personal standards.
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Describe three ethical values used in project management.
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Identify three strategies for showing regard for time and brainpower when communicating.
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Explain the consequences of violating a mandatory ethical standard put forth by PMI.
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Summarize the characteristics of PMI’s aspirational standards.
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Determine whether a situation provides evidence for an aspirational standard.
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Recognize three common challenges present during projection initiation and planning.
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Third Course Project Management Foundations: Requirements
Project requirements are how project managers determine what the business needs and align the project’s goals. Requirements also form the basis for defining a project’s scope, assigning resources, and performing acceptance testing. In this course, Daniel Stanton, PMP, introduces an easy, 10-step process to manage the requirements for any project. Find out how to determine applicable standards, identify your stakeholders, gather and analyze requirements, prioritize them, and document your findings. Daniel also explains how to solicit approval for project requirements and manage ongoing change requests.
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Describe how to appropriately manage requirements.
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Differentiate between plans intended to draw requirements from stakeholders and keep stakeholders engaged.
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Define terms used in stakeholder analysis.
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Identify the 10 attributes of project requirements.
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Review the appropriate methods for determining project requirements priorities.
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Fourth Course Project Management Foundations: Schedules
Discover how to build project schedules that help you accomplish your project goals on time and within budget—while being flexible enough to accommodate change. In this course, trainer and PMP Bonnie Biafore teaches you how to proactively manage project schedules. Learn how to develop a plan for schedule management; identify activities and milestones; estimate costs; allocate and negotiate for resources; and manage the schedule over time. Bonnie introduces techniques to uncover and resolve schedule conflicts, shorten timeframes, and reduce costs. By the end of the course, you'll have learned the skills you need to meet stakeholder expectations and adapt to changes as they arise over the life of the project.
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Developing a schedule management plan.
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Identifying project activities
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Adding milestones
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Organizing work
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Estimating duration and work
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Handling lag in dependencies
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Defining resources
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Assigning resources to activities
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Working with part-time and remote workers
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Fine-tuning assignments
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Optimizing schedules
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Managing and changing schedules
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Fifth Course Project Management Foundations: Budgets
Budget is key to controlling a project's outcome—and one of the 10 foundational knowledge areas of the Project Management Body of Knowledge. In this course, designed for project management professionals and other leads who need to get a handle on their costs, author and PMP® Bob McGannon shows you how to manage your project's budget. Explore fundamentals such as the work breakdown structure, costing standards, and capital vs. operating costs. Then learn how to build, manage, and monitor a project budget. Plus, get practical tips on recovering from overruns and dealing with scope changes.
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Recall best practices for project budgeting and estimation.
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Distinguish common estimation approaches used to build project budgets, and understand when to use them.
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Identify best practices for budget expectation management, while utilizing sound budget refinement techniques.
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Describe and explore agile project budgeting techniques.
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Review various approaches for correcting project budget overruns.
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Review sound budget reporting approaches, including how they can be used to report project status.
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Recognize the issues and changes that can put a project budget in jeopardy.
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Sixth Course Project Management Foundations: Teams
Explore leading techniques for understanding the personality traits of team members, and for managing the development of teams. Instructor Daniel Stanton discusses the value of learning about team members and explains a number of assessments that can assist with identifying personality types, emotional intelligence, strengths, and work styles. He also shares ways project managers can use these tools to relate to colleagues and create an environment in which everyone is able to succeed.
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Examine the Myers-Briggs type indicator.
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Explore use of the Tates work styles assessment.
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Identify the elements of emotional intelligence.
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Explore applications of the situational leadership model to address employee needs.
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Examine how the Lencioni model applies to dysfunctional teams.
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Seventh Course Project Management Foundations: Communication
As a project manager, you'll spend most of your time communicating. To keep a fast-moving project on track, you need to know how to juggle the emails, phone calls, voice mail, and documentation. In this course, instructor Doug Rose shares the secrets of managing project communication, detailing how to craft a solid communication strategy that helps your team maximize buy-in and prioritize stakeholder input. Discover how to use a communication plan to develop two-way communication goals, run efficient meetings, and create concise reports.
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Define “noise” in a message.
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Identify the best method of communication for an emotionally charged and complex topic.
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Recall the purpose of a stakeholder register.
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Name the four quadrants in a power and interest grid.
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Recognize the most common impediment to communication in cross-functional teams.
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Review the SHARKS approach and explain how it helps with meeting organization.
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Eighth Course Project Management Foundations: Risk
If not managed properly, risk reduces your ability to achieve your project's goals. It may even derail your project altogether. In this course, author and PMP Bob McGannon shows you how to anticipate, assess, and manage risk—one of the 10 foundational knowledge areas of the Project Management Body of Knowledge. Discover how to create a risk management plan, identify and categorize risks, perform qualitative and quantitative risk analysis, build a response plan, and monitor and control risks as they occur, all while keeping your project on budget and on track.
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Explore why dealing with risks needs to be part of the everyday process used to manage a project.
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Learn to outline the most common, pragmatic approaches to identifying risks specific to a project.
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Recall methods for qualifying and quantifying your risks to determine specific risks and manage their costs.
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Examine the primary considerations for a project risk plan and what components should be included in every plan.
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Assess techniques that help you identify the overall risk a project presents to your business.
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Examine several risk analysis and filtering examples that help ensure you've addressed individual risks properly on your project.
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Ninth Course Managing Project Stakeholders
Your stakeholders—individuals with a vested interest in your project's results—might not be present in your day-to-day work. But since they ultimately impact your project's outcomes, knowing how to define who your stakeholders are and what they need is integral to your success as a project manager. In this course, learn how to identify stakeholder needs and expectations, both explicit and implicit, and build and sustain stakeholder engagement. Natasha Kasimtseva begins by detailing the measurable benefits related to successful stakeholder management. She then explains how to iteratively identify your own stakeholders; analyze and evaluate stakeholders using both emotional intelligence and data representation tools; and engage in service-based thinking as a leader.
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Explain the importance of stakeholders.
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Identify stakeholder roles.
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Break down the primary drivers of stakeholder engagement.
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Determine the elements of the stakeholder engagement process.
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Distinguish among the tools to use for managing stakeholder engagement.
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Tenth Course Microsoft Project Quick Tips
Take a quick minute or two and learn valuable, time-saving Microsoft Project tips from a project management pro, Bonnie Biafore, PMP and MCTS. She offers a series of bite-size insider solutions for many of the most common issues that frustrate Project users, covering data entry, scheduling, formatting, staying organized, and more.
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Working faster in Microsoft Project
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Entering data
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Using keyboard shortcuts
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Formatting tables
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Modifying views
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Sorting and Filtering
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Scheduling
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Working with Files
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Backing up
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Security
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Sharing customization with a colleague
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