Academic Staff
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course is the basic introductory course in project management concepts.
The purpose of this course is enable students to gain fundamental knowledge about modern techniques and methods of successful project management (project organization, project management). By using real cases (case studies), the course presents the basic project management processes with the objective of improving student’s skills in the systematic treatment of the problems encountered during project initiation and design, the staffing of the project, project organization, time scheduling and cost management, and the evaluation of the results of a project (project evaluation).
The course presents the methods and techniques used for the management and evaluation of projects and programs. The course examines the life cycle of a project and the main planning and management processes. We consider the alternative forms of organization for the project management, conflicts and contradictions created during a project implementation and ways to resolve them. It presents the project design and construction process as a network of activities, which constitute the main mechanism for modeling the activities of a project. The temporal resolution of a network of activities is considered in the estimation of the critical path, with the CPM and the PERT methods. The use of mathematical programming techniques is introduced for the estimation of a project’s resource needs and cost.
Finally, modern methodological approaches for planning and management of IT projects are presented.
Upon successful completion of this course students will be able to:
- Have an understanding of the critical features of ICT projects and their connection to broader economic and operational objectives and principles of the life cycle of projects.
- Have knowledge of the tools and techniques of project management and how these are used to ensure the successful completion of projects on time and within budget.
- Distinguish the main roles in a real project, or a case study and assess the role of stakeholders in the project.
- Use project management methodologies to identify key elements of a project, such as critical path dependencies and a realistic timetable.
- Analyze and calculate the basics of project costs and their connection with the project schedule.
- Co-operate with their fellow students to create and present a project, in the form of a case study, involving the organization of work, the distribution of essential functions and key elements of the project.
Detailed Course Syllabus
Background - introduction to graph theory and network analysis.
- Basic Project Management Concepts. Distinction between projects and operations; Environment of a Project; Stakeholders and stakeholder analysis.
- The phases and the key elements of the management of a project.
- Organization for the Management of a project: Groups, Roles and responsibilities.
- Project Scope - Structure Task Analysis - Change Management.
- Technical Project Schedule.
- Activities, Milestones and the relationships between them
- Charts Project (Gantt, Network). The methods CMP and PERT.
- The critical path and its importance.
- Costing and Budgeting Project.
- Categories of a project’s resources.
- Award and smoothing Resources (Leveling)
- Types and project cost estimation techniques
- Cost Baseline.
- Project Quality Management
- Quality Approaches: TQM, ISO, Six Sigma
- Definition Quality.
- Quality Plan IT Projects
- Quality Tools: Pareto, Fishbone, Data and flow Charts, etc.
- Project Risk Management
- Identification and management of the risks of an IT project.
- Qualitative and quantitative analysis.Tools.
- Monitoring and addressing opportunities and threats of IT projects
- Completion and project delivery
- Documentation preparation and delivery (hand-over).
- Acceptance Tests (Acceptance Tests: System, Integration, User, etc.)
- Historical database and lessons (Lessons learned).
- Modern methodologies for flexible management of IT projects (Agile methodologies, SCRUM, etc.)
- Project Success Criteria.