Project Management

How to Manage Projects

Project Management is an invaluable tool used in all industries, and in all sorts of situations. It is relevant to a diverse range of projects, including technical, human resources, marketing, and more.
This is a compressed version of a much longer course, so it is highly informative, and great value for money.
It was developed by highly qualified professionals, with years of experience in their respective fields.

This course develops your ability to manage a wide variety of different types of projects, with relevance to any industry.

Almost everything we do in society can be described as a project, from organising a party or constructing a building, to developing a new business or introducing a new social welfare project. Project management as a skill and field of study is essential for successful organisational management. As a formal management function, project management is found in government, industry, and almost all other organisations. Project Management may be called any of a number of other names such as: Program Management, Product Management, Construction Management, and so on.

Project management as a field of action can often be seen in self help schemes or outreach programs. Whatever the objectives, project management involves a number of phases and skills which are essential to a projects completion. To get a better understanding of this process, the term "project management" can be further broken into "project" and "management".

Lesson Structure

There are 9 lessons in this course:

1. Introduction
   • Understanding what project management is, and what its applications might be.
2. Project Identification
   • Identification and defining projects which need management.
3. Project Planning
   • Developing a strategy and framework for the plan.
4. Project Implementation
   • Managers duties during implementation
   • Developing a Preparation Control Chart
   • Regulating implementation.
5. Project Completion & Evaluation
   • Dangers in this stage
   • Steps in Project completion
   • Declaring a project sustainable
   • Developing an evaluation method.
6. Technical Project Management Skills
   • Preparing a proposal
   • Budget control/management
   • Steps in drawing up a post project appraisal.
7. Leadership Skills
   • Styles of leadership
   • Leadership principles and methods.
8. Improving Key Personnel Skills
   • Listening skills
   • Negotiation skills
   • Conflict management.
9. Major Assignment
   • Developing full documentation for a project.

Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.

Aims

• Explain what project management is, and what its applications might be.
• Identify and define projects which need management.
• Plan a project.
• Implement a project.
• Evaluate a project following completion.
• Describe technical skills required to manage projects.
• Demonstrate project leadership skills.
• Identify and solve common project problems.
• Consolidate all of the skills and information from throughout the past 8 lessons, and manage a project effectively.

How the Course has Developed over Several Decades

This 100 hour course is based on, and incorporates, the entire contents of a Diploma in Project Management, conducted by the Home Study College in South Africa. The current course is more than the original though, having been updated, upgraded and developed, by tutors of ACS, to streamline and generally improve tutor interaction.

ACS was authorised to use this material under an agreement between the two schools; beyond which the use of these course notes is restricted in accordance with international copyright laws.

The course has been developed beyond this point by a series of experienced project managers, at least once every two years. It has become an excellent and unique study program that reflects the experience of more than a dozen different project managers from three different countries.