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The Project Management Course
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What does the course cover?
The project management course is the perfect one-stop shop for those of you who would like to pursue a
career in project management
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In the last part of the course we will enter the world of
agile project management
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software development project performed with one of the most commonly used agile
methods scrum
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The course is designed to teach software developers how to use scrum in a scrum environment
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What is a Project?

Project management institute defines it as a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product
service or result
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Project scope and cost are dependent on each other after determining them at the start
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Going to a new restaurant for dinner is
also a temporary activity with a specific goal and limited budget but it’s not a project it also needs to
benefit the business through working in conjunction with a business strategy which is what we will be
discussing next
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Why do companies execute projects?

Projects are a specific type of investment and as any investment in order to achieve the desired benefits
your output certain resources are used as input in projects
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Companies must be very careful when deciding which projects to undertake
and which ones to postpone or fully abandon
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Project Portfolio Management

A project must relate to a business strategy but how are the two connected and what creates the demand
for a project in the first place good questions so let 's look into them there are a few key triggers that will
jump start a business into executing a project
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There are many things that can create a demand for a project and all have to do with the
companies or organizations wider strategy
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urgency is a key factor when selecting projects,
say a new regulation is imposed which requires your company to comply with the latest standards or lose
their license to work in the country
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Accountability

A project is a temporary initiative that is agreed, planned and executed to achieve a specific goal
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A
project manager implicitly agrees to work within these constraints and still meet the goal
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Project managers are accountable not only for their
own tasks but also all the tasks that other parties must work on and complete
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The manager needs to have
full control and visibility on all project related work and take actions immediately when identifying
something is not progressing on track
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Business Specific Knowledge or Industrial Experience

The project manager is the face of the project and the point of contact for any questions or concerns about
their project including all tasks performed by other people
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With that comes the power bestowed upon them to make
decisions and take action but what makes them worthy of this power is their skills, knowledge, attitude
and practical experience
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The majority comes from the regular and the ad hoc project meetings, the written
communication via emails and chats and finally the daily conversations with team members around the
coffee machine
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Being a great expert in the field does not guarantee the successful completion of a
project while it may help there is one thing you need to be an expert in to achieve success for your
projects project management
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15th century project manager
Christopher Columbus had tough times finding the budget for his initiative to find a path through the west
to Asia; his budget was three ships and a timeline of one year with a request of 10 percent of future
revenues from any discoveries
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IPMA and a few years later
the project management institution PMI their goal was and still is to develop project management
discipline and to establish standards, best practices tools and guidelines
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The types of PMO will vary in size and structure from
company to company; some do not even have a PMO
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All individuals or
organizations who participate in a project can influence or are influenced by the project work and results
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Program management is the coordinated management of
multiple projects which have similarities similar goals similar to the goal similar resources etc
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How does a project start and how does it evolve? What are the
main stages?
Each project is unique: the goal of the team with their own personalities and the time frame and the
circumstances all make a project its own entity
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The project management institute has determined five phases which characterize the
development of a project
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Speed and quality in line with the time frame are the expenses within the budget
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Like an exciting potential project to me so let 's put together a business case to get it approved
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What is involved in a business case?
The business case must adhere to established standards
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This is where the business case comes in; its job is to convince the
board of directors to invest company resources in this project, not somebody else's
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What does scope cover?
Project managers are great at seeing the scope of things and they will go into great detail during the
planning stage
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It’s not always clear where questions
may come up and disrupt progress, a so-called gray area where the team may be unsure whether
something is part of the project
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Who performs the feasibility study and what does it involve?
A feasibility study is an analysis of the goals scope and resources to determine whether the success of the
project is feasible
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A more detailed analysis and preparation of resources is performed during the
planning phase
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What goes into risk assessment? What are expectations?
The first thing to do when entering a dark room is to find the light switch in project management terms
this means reveal the risks
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The charter is the foundation for the entire project; it sets the overall vision and direction
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What is Planning? Why is it important? What happens if it is not
done correctly?
Simple planning is a detailed procedure and is the key ingredient in the recipe for success
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How important is planning in
our work and in our spare time? That's an excellent question
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On the other hand, excel at planning and you or your company will reap the rewards
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It's their time to shine
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Good
planning is a wondrous opportunity to optimize the work, ensure that everyone 's expectations are the
same and avoid costly errors
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The additional budget time resources and coordination
efforts that are required to adjust for the change are the cost
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If a change occurs later in the
project, you can safely bet your holiday savings fund that the impact will be much worse than if it
happened at an earlier stage
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What to do before you start?

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A good project manager is not someone who knows everything but somebody who can see their
shortcomings and find the right people to compensate for them
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New information can always change the plans you 've already made
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I
recommend you get formal validation from Sandra but Sandra is on holiday for the next two days
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They review it and give you an estimate of
seven weeks
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The more thorough the plan the less likely the project manager will end up needing to spend resources
fixing something later in the project breadth and depth remember so where do we start that's right scope?
you will need to think of the product scope that is the tasks that need to be done in order to produce the
product in the showroom
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Then they gathered detailed information on
the requirements and expectations in the project
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Finally, they document
everything if something arises there needs to be an easy reference point for the project manager or other
stakeholders to check
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The next step is for the project manager to gather detailed requirements and expectations
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The scope statement is to
formalize the scope; its format is not user friendly when it comes to practical planning
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The work
breakdown structure is a handy segregation of the different types of work or work streams
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How to estimate when planning?
The next few lessons will be focusing on timelines and schedules
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The data showed that on average Jimmy takes 34 minutes to reach the office,
over 10 percent his estimate you had better start setting your alarm a little earlier from now on
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People underestimate the actual time needed to complete a future task; they believe
things will work out well due to the optimism bias
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The project manager must be aware of these human biases
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A project manager should rely on their skills and experience first but if they need to they can
think of each task as having three time estimates
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How much to buffer?
A successful project manager will add an additional time buffer that will hopefully cover unexpected
events that may cause a delay
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The higher the level of uncertainty surrounding a task the longer the buffer they need
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Two important questions you as a
project manager will need to ask yourself during planning
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The other question is
how to present the buffers
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Soft dependencies are applied by the project manager themselves and
could include things like a task not going forward unless a project manager has checked the previous task
before it goes forward
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The project manager must take all
these factors into consideration because any missed dependencies are sure to cause delays and increase
costs
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This way there will be no interruption in the surveillance for any thieves to sneak in as always
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Identifying the critical path
The critical path method is one of the project manager’s best tools when scheduling a project timeline
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A
critical path is the path you will need to be the most vigilant with as any delay will postpone the whole
project
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carefully as the work progresses what
you 've done here is a major step to creating the project schedule
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It lists all the activities from our
activity list on the y-axis of a table
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The durations of the activities are drawn right below the calendar day
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Activities fit together in a
calendar and will help you form a strategy if there are any changes to the critical path
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It's what all these methods have been building up
to so hold on to your hats and see you next lesson
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Building the Project Schedule + MS Project Tutorial
MS project is a super useful tool for scheduling big projects with many activities
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It works similarly to excel just that it is customized for scheduling work
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MS project is easy to use and
quite useful when planning projects, it is also useful to planning projects
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The plan is based on the activities of your father and sister painting the room
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A project
manager creates a milestone table for stakeholders to keep track of how a project is going well
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Similar to excel so in case you do not
have an MS project you can also try there
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How to build a milestone table and its uses?
A project manager starts by creating a work breakdown structure separating the project into work streams
deliverables and work packages
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The critical path chart and the milestone table are so anyone can follow the progress of the
project
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The Process of Budgeting
Building a detailed project budget follows a similar process to building a project schedule
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The project manager must
account for every part of the project that could potentially cost money and estimate how much money as
accurately as humanly possible
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The Process of Budgeting (cont
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I'm sure you do not need to be
told at this point that if anything is missed then it will immediately affect the project budget
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Once all your cost generating
activities have their costs estimated it's time to work out when the money needs to be spent and
concurrently acquired use your Gantt chart to plan this
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Now it is up to the project manager to
find the best contract because it’s their main tool for keeping track of vendor work and behavior
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Project manager must have a good understanding of all risks
and benefits that each agreement can have then define the most convenient approach for the project the
stakeholders and of course for the vendor themselves to agree awesome so that’s how the project manager
can deal with the financial side of things but what about the non-financial resources well join us next
lesson where we'll talk about human resources
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Procuring non-financial resources
Human resources are non-financial resources that will be needed for a project
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The next two parts we will cover in the next lessons as they get a little more complex after all we
are dealing with people who have varying schedules and workloads
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RACI matrix assigning roles
The last step is to define the roles and responsibilities of all project team members
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I will now show you two fantastic tools used for documenting roles
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Quality Requirements
Quality is the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind the degree of
excellence of something that’s how the Cambridge dictionary defines quality but what do we mean when
we talk about quality in the context of project management we can think of quality as the qualitative
characteristics of a product
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The project
manager and the stakeholders need to agree on how quality audits will be performed once the project
moves into execution
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A
project involves a lot of people and if expectations are not the same across the board some of the people
involved will be disappointed that the project didn't meet their expectations
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The project manager must be able to clearly communicate their expectations and
hold sessions in a way that encourages stakeholders to share their expectations in order to identify any
gaps
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The planning
process aims to clarify all areas of the project
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The more passed data a project manager has the safer their assumptions will be
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Planning Risk Management
When Darth Vader was a project manager for the death star he did a pretty good job the time scope and
cost for a project such as this must have been astronomical the vessel was a pinnacle of engineering and
Mr
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This goes to show that proper risk management
can not only make a project more efficient by eliminating delays it can even save a project from total
failure
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Building a Risk log
When faced with a risk change something in advance to eliminate or lessen the risk say doing
construction in the summer months rather than the winter months for example or create a plan b in case
the risk becomes reality the former is called mitigation and the latter contingency the options you have
when it comes to mitigation are firstly to eliminate the risk
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A good project manager is
also not stubborn and will adapt to change
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It must be agreed how to make changes
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The scope statement is a project manager 's shield if a stakeholder challenges the
project manager by saying a certain aspect was not what they expected then the project can take out their
detailed scope statement and counter the challenge
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Introduction to Execution and KO Meetings
The more detailed the plan the easier the execution note
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The project needs the project manager to manage the
work, the people and all communications throughout the whole phase
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This is when they are
validated the members of the meeting must also set the rules of the project like how will the deliverables
be approved and by whom
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This part is harder to prepare for but there are still methods you can equip yourself with to
make the delivery of the meeting super smooth
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Cross check everything with experts rather than a project manager
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I do not know and i hope as we said approach the situation with a cando attitude
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After the kickoff meeting
do not forget to send the minutes
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If
you are confident in their success they will be too now after the kickoff
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What is action owner due date?
The Project Diary is a formal document which states the who and the when it is super useful so let 's have
a look at what a project diary would look like using the Lamborghini project in the next lesson
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This needs to be recorded formally and we 're going
to use our Lamborghini project to show you how all right
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For this tool is a project action log
so in your next project use this as a fancy cover for your diary
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For
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They do this by managing the
project
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supervising the critical path is absolutely key and the project manager
must ensure high productivity on these activities
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Join us in the next video where we will discuss
how a project manager prepares to work with various people in numerous situations to get the best results
from a project
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Communication and coordination are the project managers' dual wielded weapons
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The Project manager must have honest communication
with their team, explaining why their work is important and thank them often for good work and efforts
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After the execution
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It is the project manager 's job to encourage their team, help them develop
their skills and tell them what they did well and what they could improve
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Also here communication is key project updates which we 'll discuss in detail later
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What is monitoring and control?
We have been a little vague when it comes to measuring output using phrases like a good rate, high
quality and fast enough
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Then there is step four
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If something is not working fast enough or well enough
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The project manager is the one accountable in the end right
variances can occur in any part of the project
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How to check if a project is on schedule?
Project managers should constantly observe the progress against the plan
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If a stakeholder asks if
this task is on track well, we do not really know yet, but once we learn about what PML refers to as the
schedule variance that will change, then we will be able to confidently answer any questions
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instead of reaching the deadline and
seeing only 90% of the work completed and then relying on the buffer to do the rest you have given
yourself and the project team plenty of time to react
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If the number is above one, then we will
be under budget
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The number is below one
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we need to make sure that the output we 're
generating is to the standard
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If what we produce is of
the lowest quality
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We need to ensure that the quality of our products is the best we can produce
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How to perform quality control?

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Quality standards vary more from project to project than time and cost, but we will highlight common
things that need to be done in the control of quality activities
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We start with input
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If your resources are not good enough to reach the desired scope
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The
project is at a huge risk promising a car in three months for one hundred thousand dollars that accelerates
from zero to one hundred in three seconds
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when it comes to controlling risks
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the severity and probability of a risk can
change as the project develops and this must be regularly updated
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Dealing with change proposals
Change request process is a change request process
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not all changes are bad and some are
just necessary it’s up to you to differentiate between them
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the marketing expert suggests you will need to investigate to see if the training is in fact
relevant for the staff and if so establish whether triggering a change will cost the project or fall within the
buffers you gave the task
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the project status can be indicated with
a red amber green scale
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amber means that there are issues that put the completion at
risk, but the team can or already has acted to get things back on track
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Once a high-level status has been determined the meeting can head into individual work
streams for detailed updates
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Just like you have been doing
throughout the project so far, approach the situation in an organized manner by following these steps:
react, read, respond and resolve or repeat
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Great
things have been resolved and you continue to prepare the rest of the meal and create a wonderful
spaghetti Bolognese great stuff so let 's have a look at a case study regarding car production to see how
this relates to our project
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The sponsor still needs to give the final approval for the project
to be approved by the sponsor
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the project manager for life
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After the end of the bike project,
Stephen from HR says to you that it’s getting late and he should order you a taxi
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We will learn how to create the five most important project
management documents in excel work trackers logs from project diary to raid risk log project scheduling
Gantt chart and budget
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The tracker will give you the information of how well the overall activity is progressing
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We will see how to build a tracker for a few different cases
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The next lessons will
show you how to use the tracker to help you build your own tracker
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Tracker 1 High level
High-level tracker is a high level tracker which can be used when you need to follow the progress of an
activity which is performed for a few categories, different regions, different countries, different business
lines, etc
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In this way
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For
example, it shows a positive color like blue or green
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We leave room for any ad hoc explanations that are important for the
work
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Then I can decrease the text size of the status options by selecting the cells
below the title and decrease the font size
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We will be tracking
the progress using the conceptual range 0 to 100
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For example, after day three,
the progress is above sixty percent
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However, if after day two the progress was ten percent, let 's say this will make the project manager ask
questions right away
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Imagine that as part of your project, a new department or new team
will be established
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The whole activity is lengthy as it can take two to
three months
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Trackers often remain hidden behind an
activity from the project plan and if that activity is on the critical path, you already know the impact on
the project schedule will be even worse, but thanks to the trackers, a project manager can observe the
progress
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Project Management Logs
In the next few lessons, we will learn how to use Microsoft Excel to create another powerful project
management tool
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the number format is not
so easily readable
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Here
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The mandatory action owner due date information
is logged from here onward
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The main difference is that
it is not an action but an issue
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The input for a deliverable in your
project is dependent on the outcome of another project
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The
project manager is doing a good job so far with the documentation of project events
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Now we can also log this event into our document and update the title of this new column
action issues
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The next video will show what else may happen in the next video
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RAIDD Log
A project manager suddenly notices that only the French branch has informed about vendor employees
supporting the financial accounting processes
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A few days later, the project manager receives an
invitation for an online meeting with Akira and the CFO
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the CFO asks if vendor
employees do not get user accesses for the system can somebody from our own organization perform the
related tasks
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project
manager I am sure of your next project
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In the next
lesson
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The chances to
miss something important without such a tool are huge
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Besides
that, the document must exist in each project in some shape, so we will provide you with our practical

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recommendations coming from our own project management experience
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the dependencies you need to document would mainly be external coming
from other projects, other businesses or regulatory matters
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the risks
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This is also in line with the established project management
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The
risk log document or documentation is created by using Excel
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Oh, you want to find out
what happened in the next video
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Project Management Logs Outro
The case was about the Singapore branch where the local team could not provide the exact employee
names due to the other project running in parallel
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We have completed about 80 and plan to be fully ready by the end of next week
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In our example, we
will use a high-level schedule for a theoretical project about software development and its
implementation
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However, we will not add the numbering itself right
away this time, but we 'll wait to structure the next column
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the next lesson
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We now have the basic project schedule created in Microsoft Excel in the next
lesson
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The columns are organized as a timeline
with calendar days, weeks or months
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We then fill the main space
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Definition will take
place in March and April
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Gantt Chart weeks
We will now create the Gantt chart using weeks as the calendar frequency first of all here
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The
exact week when an activity is supposed to start and end is now visible as we did in the previous lesson
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It illustrates the activities against the calendar

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period
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Hence it is useful not only during the planning phase, but also for monitoring and control purposes
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Budget Simple Table
The ultimate goal of the project manager and their organization is to have two things, a realistic budget
with all related estimates and a process to track the actual spending against this budget
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Costs can be different depending on the case on the
contracts and agreements
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Here you will be adding all expenses that are made for your project
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In this balanced cell, you need to add one more
column where you can highlight whether the actual amount is lower or high
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In excel note, we will not be looking at
any heavy formatting as this is really expected from the project manager
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Here are the
color of the cell and the text color
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Choose the alignment for the various contents for columns where the
data is short and standardized in terms of characters, such as status date completion percentage we would
want to go for center alignment
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On the other hand, we suggest using the alignment to the left
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They are the bridge
between project management theory and real-life activities
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Microsoft Excel has certain limitations and may not always be sufficient
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You rarely go back to it
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The nature of the work will be very different from the physical construction of the
building
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The estimates and assumptions, the

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risks, the client expectations and so on planning the whole project in detail would be much more difficult
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The project
team includes one engineer who will be doing the magic after some time
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The total project is to be completed in four months
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The project is designed to make a smart home, more convenient
and smart
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After the project has been completed
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detailed planning is not beneficial in advance
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The uncertainties are too big or too many to predict all
scenarios
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The
nature of these initiatives is often in conflict with principles of the waterfall project management
methodology
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The next lesson will show how agile comes with a solution to the problem of the project
bureaucracy
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Introducing Agile
Agile is not a specific strict rule methodology or a proof of high quality
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Agile
introduces values as the ones in the manifesto, which can guide teams when performing a given work be
it process or project
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You
plan as much as it makes sense to at the start and then further develop or adapt your initial plan as needed
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There are three essential elements that I think has to be their
first product goal
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A product can be a solution service or a
product such as software hardware or a firmware product like payment wallet, a vacuum cleaner
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What should be the ideal duration for a
sprint: one week, two weeks or four weeks
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If there is higher ambiguity and
complicity to minimize the risk
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Introduction to Scrum
Introduction to Scrum, a seven-minute training video with details on what you need to start using Scrum
today
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It will examine the three roles, three artifacts and three ceremonies that make up Scrum
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Since the previous meeting
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There are three artifacts or
documents that are used in Scrum first
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standup meeting where the team discusses what they have
completed and what they are working on as well as
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The outcome of the sprint is a
potentially shippable product
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a sprint review and retrospective meeting occurs
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The project team usually performs workshops to understand the scope,
define a high-level timeline and budget and build the project team
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The product should satisfy what future users should be able to do
with it and what technologies will be used
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The closing phase should always be present at the end where the
customer will have to accept the product as a whole, confirming that it will satisfy the need
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It can
be broken down into smaller pieces of work
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User stories are grouped and assigned under the respective epic or in the other way
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The project team defines and describes the entire product scope and requirements and what functionalities
and features it should have
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Product Backlog, Releases, MVP
The product is developed step by step generating completed parts of the product throughout the project
and not as a whole only at the very end
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The most important functionalities are programmed first so people can start using and testing
them in a real life environment
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Further
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This
refers to this early version of the product, which includes the most important functionalities and
capabilities to make the product viable or usable
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The MVP possesses the minimum number
of features that will enable the organization to start using it even if there is more work to be done
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Product Owner
The product owner represents the organization for which the product of the project is created
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Hence, the person needs to be knowledgeable and
experienced enough in the field
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then as the sprints start they are the ones reviewing all output during the
demo sessions
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the next key role in
scrum
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After the user stories
are generated by the various stakeholders and the product owner has defined the priorities
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they must determine
how much effort each user story requires in order to be built
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The velocity is three times one times two which equals six story
points per sprint
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in real-life projects
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This includes supporting the product owner and
development team in performing their duties successfully validating that their work is in line with the
scrum goals and coordinating the activities between them
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a project can still have a Scrum master and a project manager working together
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The project manager also holds the overall accountability leading the project from initiation all
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The question should be what kind of projects

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would be better managed in a waterfall structure
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Waterfall and agile are different approaches aimed at delivering the same thing
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Agile vs Waterfall Analysis
There will always be a certain degree of uncertainty as we know projects deal with future events
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In others, we can
build an effective plan and waterfall would be a more efficient solution
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a recap
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While agile will help you satisfy a more specific and complex customer problem
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A good example are projects involving complex work such as product
development
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Agile vs Waterfall Conclusion
Methodologies based on agile are customized for specific project cases where uncertainty is high due to
technology, innovation or other factors
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agile instead aims at performing projects in a lighter structure with less documentation
possible, but are they the total opposites? The black and white of project management

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