For the Word Format Click Here

Project Management
Management 422-800
Spring 2006

As part of the purchase of the text, you will receive a 120-day CD containing Microsoft Project Professional. You must have Microsoft Project in order to complete the assignments in the course.

Required:
Project Management - The Managerial Process, 3rd Edition -- Clifford Gray and Erik Larson
McGraw-Hill Irwin, Copyright 2006

• Inform and educate the student as to the strategic role of projects in contemporary organizations, how projects are prioritized and the tools and techniques used to plan projects.
• Develop an awareness of organization and management styles that improve chances of project success and the orchestration of complex relationships.
• Application of Information Technology to organize and maintain structure throughout the project life cycle.

Understand and appreciate how many business activities can be couched as a "project." Learn how to organize a project in a structured, methodical way with Microsoft Project©. Let’s determine if "ahead of schedule and under budget" is possible!!!

The Mission Statement of the College of Business states, "The academic programs of the college develop student competencies in: (1) critical thinking, (2) quantitative reasoning, (3) effective utilization of information and technology for business decisions." In this class, these competencies will be given the following emphasis on a scale of 10 (low emphasis) to 50 (high emphasis). At the end of the semester, the students’ perceptions of the emphasis placed on learning these competencies will be assessed.

• Critical Thinking (40): Students are required to "wear multiple hats" in deciding which projects to pursue, how to define the project, planning the project, managing risk associated with project activities, what (quantity, when, etc.) resources to allocate, etc. How do you propose to completely satisfy the requirements of your customer while meeting the minimum profit guidelines of your employer?
• Quantitative Reasoning (20): As the Project Manager, you will be faced falling behind schedule and the shifting sands of changing customer requirements. You have to determine the cost of crashing certain activities and show your customer the ramifications in dollars and time for altering the original scope of work.
• Effective Utilization of Information and Technology for Business Decisions (40): In the new millennium we will use software to design and manage how our project is performing.  Each student will define, design and input his/her own project into Microsoft Project in this course. Once the student has a firm grasp of the major attributes of project management software, he or she should have some comfort level working with various packages regardless of the manufacturer. 

A large part of my teaching philosophy is 'learning by doing.' To that end, YOU will be developing a project that YOU define. Through a series of incremental steps, you will put your project in Microsoft Project. After the "Final Deliverable," you will have a project that is ready for implementation if you desire.

You have to load the 120-day version of Microsoft Project (that came with your text, so be careful if you purchase your text from somewhere/someone else) on THE computer where you will working for the duration of the course. If you are on campus, MS Project is available in the computer labs. The CD is 'self initiating,' meaning that after you insert it into your CD/DVD drive, instructions to complete the loading process will appear on the screen.

Warning! This is a 400 level management class. You cannot omit this portion of the course and expect to pass the class. "My CD will not load," "I do not know how to send an attachment," " I don't like using computers," etc., will get you nowhere.

I would suggest that somewhere around the second week of the course that you begin to think of a project that you would like to do and/or would help you in your profession. I could dictate that everyone "build an outside waterfall" for their garden, but how much fun would that be? In the past 2 years that I've offered this course in class, I've had a wide variety of projects emerge. Taking an international trip, organizing a wedding, restoring a Corvette Roadster, building an outdoor arena, starting a small business, etc. I really do not care....I want something that has "buy-in" from you. Allow me to give you some loose parameters: Moving a bookcase from the basement to the first floor IS NOT A PROJECT!; Building an 800-room cruise ship is a project, but its beyond the scope of this course. A rough rule-of-thumb is that it should contain between 20 to 50 tasks. You will know what tasks/sub deliverables are soon enough.

Your project has a series of deliverables that begin in Unit 4. Pay attention; you have a series of deliverables sprinkled throughout the course. Click on the "YOUR PROJECT" deliverables in a specific Unit to understand what is due when. I have tried my best to coordinate that material in the text with the information that is required in MS Project. That's why you have more project work toward the end of the course.

Notice that in the Units where you have a project deliverable, you have no 'case study.' It's important that you dedicate your time to the assignments and your project.

Finally.......WHY? There are many good reasons why I'm forcing you to go through this exercise. 1) The software makes you think about structure and systems; 2) No project of any significance can be effectively managed without software; 3) You need to be proficient with this tool. You are not going to exit this course as a MS Project expert.....that's not my goal. My goal is to place you in some comfort zone for project management software whereby the commands, screens, structure, etc. will not be totally foreign to you when your employer states, "Do This."

This page last updated on: 9/05/2006
©2005-2006 Brian Gurney