Planning and Managing Resources
COURSE ID: CEPM502
Course Overview
Research shows that a high percentage of projects take significantly longer than expected and cost more than anticipated. Moreover, if you ask people for an estimate of how long a task will take them to complete, their estimate will usually be overly optimistic.
Sometimes, if you bring in extra people to help with a task, that actually slows down progress instead of accelerating it. Why is this so? And what can you do about it? In this course, from Linda K. Nozick, Director and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell, you will examine these questions. Students will identify strategies to integrate resource availability constraints into project planning, scheduling, and control.
This course is designed for project managers who seek better practical results for aligning available resources with tasks and bringing activities to completion on time. Students will examine compression strategies for bringing a project that's running late back on track and will explore how to handle common types of project creep, such as handling customer requests that require extra time, and working with team members who decide independently to invest extra effort in a task.
This course combines a focus on formal project management mechanisms with an emphasis on the human element: what can project managers do to resolve issues brought about in the normal course of working with customers, team members, and stakeholders?
Who should enroll in this course?
Students may be team leaders, managers, and individual contributors from any functional area who are responsible for the success of projects or initiatives of any size and do not have formal project management training. Students will come from every continent and from a diverse range of organizations, including for profits large and small, NGOs, and governmental agencies. Students will be most successful if they have had exposure to formal project management efforts within their organizations. Some familiarity with standard project-management tools will be helpful.