Get the Skills to Become a Project Management Professional

This module will provide students with an overview of computer applications, the Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office Suite including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Students will develop the professional skills needed in modern business world through a series of projects and simulations in an interactive digital environment.

Students learn to research and identify business needs and deficiencies, and then learn how to determine solutions to these business problems. Solutions often include a systems development component and/or process improvement, organizational change or strategic planning and policy development. There are several systems that are used to analyze business and in this module students will concentrate on three: Porters, Boston Box, and SWOT.

Students learn the basic concepts of MS Project necessary to create a project plan. Microsoft Project is a project management software program designed to assist a project manager in developing a plan, assigning resources to tasks, tracking progress, managing the budget, and analyzing workloads. Students will use MS Project to project tasks, organize these tasks in to breakdown various steps / stages of a project’s structure, identify task relationships, create and assign resources, finalize the project to implement the project plan and keep the project on time and within budget.

Students will learn how the elements of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) are applied during each phase of a project’s life cycle and the implications of project management on leadership within an organization. Project management is the process and activity of planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling resources, procedures and protocols to achieve specific goals in scientific or daily problems.

This module will deal with ITIL strategies as they relate and are applied to business generically, not only IT companies. The module will look at business processes, procedures, tasks and checklists that are not organization-specific, to assist with the creation/augmentation of an organization’s strategy.

Students learn about quality control techniques and specifically Six Sigma which is a set of techniques and tools for process improvement. Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects (errors) and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business processes.

Lean Enterprise is organized so students can approach and understand the lean transformation process systematically. Using scenarios from a fictitious company, students will be tasked with finding lean solutions to numerous challenges.

Students will use a statistical software package and/or Excel to collect and analyze business data to determine parameters necessary to apply statistical methodologies. The analysis will help students predict outcomes and form hypotheses for corrective action. Through case studies and hands-on computer work, students learn the fundamentals of exploratory data analysis.

Content covers the basics of leadership and interpersonal skills including the role of the team, the roles of team members, interacting with clients and co-workers, managing conflict, and demonstrating accountability. The course provides a review in English grammar, sentence structure, and punctuation as they apply to business communication. Formats for a variety of written business communications will be taught and students will complete various exercises with the emphasis on improving written communications as they apply to the writing of letters, memoranda, and reports.