Life cycle and project planning (POK)

Offered by Politecnico di Milano,
Life cycle and project planning (POK)

Learn how to plan projects, assessing their evolution over time. Project Management is a fundamental theme to understand and work in any business environments. One of the main skills that Project Managers need to have deals with the ability to manage the project during its entire life-cycle and to plan the work needed to achieve the final result.

During the course, the various phases of a typical project are presented. Then, various practical tools are presented aiming to help professionals in actually manage their projects through useful instruments. Among the others, the Scope Statement helps managers in identifying and clearly define what is and what is not part of the project, the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) helps in identifying the activities, the Organizational Breakdown Structure (OBS) in managing the team, the Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) to match activities and people, while the Gantt Chart provides a time-based view on the project.

The course is structured in 2 weeks:
Week 1 – The project lifecycle and the scope management.
This week focuses on the main tools and capabilities needed when starting a project, going through the introduction of the main phases of projects (Initiating, Planning, Executing, Controlling and Closing).
Week 2 – Project planning.
This week introduces the main project planning tools(Scope Statement, Work Breakdown Structure, Organizational Breakdown Structure, Responsibility Assignment Matrix and Gantt Chart).
By actively participating in this MOOC, you will achieve different intended learning outcomes (ILOs).

  1. Identify the main phases of a project in a business context.
  2. Pick the right tools to plan a project when working on it.
  3. Make a plan of a project when working on it.
  4. Analyze the results of a planning process when working on a project.
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