Undergraduate - UnitFIT2002 - Project management

At the completion of this unit students will be able to:

• describe the characteristics and phases of a project and its life cycle and explain the role played by the project manager;
• explain the need for and develop specific goals, detailed plans and control strategies in large scale projects and relate this to the major reasons for the failure of projects;
• develop relevant, achievable and measurable project goals;
• explain and use standard project management techniques including Project Networks, Critical Path Analysis and Management, Gantt Charts and Time-Phased Budgets for high and low level project planning;
• explore various alternatives in implementing projects by taking into account of enterprise architecture;
• discuss the communication, people handling and team management skills required of a project manager and explain some of the techniques that may be employed;
• identify and critically discuss the impact on a project of external influences, including organisational structure, and stakeholders;
• explain the processes involved in selecting and initiating a project and prepare various critical documents required for these processes, including financial justification;
• explain the importance of resource availability on project plans, perform project crashing calculations in order to develop and manage resource constrained project plans;
• describe the need for Quality Management in projects and explain, compare and use various techniques currently employed by professional project managers;
• describe the impact of risk on a project managers decision process, explain how that risk may be managed and/or mitigated and develop an appropriate risk management plan;
• describe the need for developing ethical practices in managing project teams;
• explain security concerns in project management;
• decide on the type of contracts that need to be prepared in support of acquiring products/services used within projects;
• monitor the progress of a project, determine performance against the plan, develop strategies to manage any variation and discuss formal change control processes;
• produce useful, informative progress reports for various project stakeholders and conduct stage and post project reviews.