Modern Project Management - Managing the Project Start-up, Scheduling and Budgeting

Modern Project Management - Managing the Project Start-up, Scheduling and Budgeting is the third in a series of free online courses designed for anyone who wants to learn about contemporary project management. This course is broken down into three key areas: how to manage the start-up phase where a project is selected and started, how to create and manage project schedules, and finally how to estimate and manage the project costs. At its core project management is about getting projects completed on time and within budget. In this course the learner will discover how the project manager must definitively establish the project, along with its goals and processes. When a project has been established the course describes how a detailed project schedule, covering both the team members and equipment needs to be drawn up, reviewed and approved. After the project start-up phase the course describes how the schedule must be tracked and evaluated to ensure that milestones will be met, the end deliverables are as scoped, and all stakeholders are kept informed as per the communications plan. Along with the time schedule the course further describes how the project must also be costed in detail, and how the costings are measured against budgets through the use of standard formulas to ensure that the project remains financially on track. The course also contains a sample project which is used to demonstrate to learners the key tasks in creating and monitoring the schedules and budgets. This free course will be of great interest to all professionals working in the area of project management who would like to learn more about project scheduling and budgeting or learners who just want to be able to manage personal projects more effectively.

To qualify for your official ALISON Diploma, Certificate or PDF you must study and complete all modules and score 80% or more in each of the course assessments. A link to your Diploma certificate will then appear under the My Certificates heading of your My Account page.

Having completed this course the learner will be able to: - Describe how companies select projects in line with their mission statement and goals; - Define scope and describe how the scope document is created; - Describe the importance of the kick-off and the purpose associated processes; - Define the types of project schedules and how the work breakdown structure is compiled and represented in graphical format; - Describe methods of tracking and reporting progress, resource leveling and schedule acceleration; - Describe methods of estimating costs and impact of project complexity on the chosen method; - Calculate and interpret budget and schedule variances and performance indexes.