Crash Course: Project Management Fundamentals [Earn 6 PDUs]

Trace the history of project management from ancient projects to modern techniques, and explore its development since the 1950s and its rapid growth as a career choice.

Project management began with coordinating large groups to reach predetermined goals, from ancient megalithic temples and pyramids to modern schedules, costs, and scope control.

Trace the evolution of project management from the triangle of constraints to integration, quality, risk, and procurement, and highlight milestones like critical path, critical chain, PMBOK, PMI, and ISO 21500.

Trace the evolution of project management from ancient resource and schedule basics to the 1950s scope, cost, and time constraints, noting PMI milestones and PMBOK standard adoption.

Explore project management concepts, including project, program, and portfolio definitions, PMO roles, and project success. Examine five processes, ten knowledge areas, stakeholder influence, and essential skills of great project managers.

Identify how a project is unique, temporary, and planned to deliver stakeholder outcomes. Explore the project triangle of scope, time, and cost, and consider programs, portfolios, and PMOs.

Define the project manager as the sponsor-authorized, time-bound leader who guides stakeholder-driven projects to successful delivery through technical, strategic, and leadership skills.

Explore the foundations of project management, including PMO roles, five process groups, ten knowledge areas, stakeholder influence, and the core leadership skills of successful project managers.

Explore the benefits of planning a project in phases and define what constitutes a phase. See how phases differ from the five project management processes to reduce project uncertainties.

Plan projects in phases to reduce risk and uncertainty, advancing from inception to closeout with phase gates, while using progressive elaboration and rolling wave planning for detailed next phases.

Break work into deliverable chunks with phase gates to review outcomes, reducing project uncertainty. Embrace sequential and overlapping life cycles—predictive, iterative, incremental, adaptive—and reap revenue earlier.

Explore how organizational process assets and enterprise environmental factors shape project manager authority, resource access, and budgets across functional, matrix, and project structures.

Apply organizational processes and the corporate knowledge base while considering enterprise environmental factors, and adapt to six structures to guide project authority across the five process areas and life cycle.

Breaks down the project initiation process group into four parts: an overview, inputs via business documents, outcomes and outputs, plus practical advice from a project manager.

The initiating process defines a new project or phase, secures approvals, identifies stakeholders, and captures scope, high-level estimates, and budget in the project charter and stakeholder register.

Identify the key inputs to project initiation—project statement of work, business case, and benefits management plan—and explain how internal versus external SOWs and procurement docs shape the charter.

Explore how the initiation process yields the project charter and stakeholder register, detailing sponsor authority, project scope, high-level costs, milestones and a stakeholder analysis with a power–interest grid.

Craft a smart, single-sentence project objective agreed by all stakeholders, align sponsors before planning, and appoint the project manager clearly in the charter to ensure accountability, authority, and resources.

Define a new project via upper-management approvals and inputs like the project statement of works, business case, and benefits management plan, producing the project charter and stakeholder register.

Explore the project planning process group, its key outcomes, and its role in project management success. Gain practical guidance on approaching planning and the recommended process flow.

Review the planning process group, outlining rolling wave planning, progressive elaboration, stakeholder involvement, and the development of a comprehensive project management plan and baseline.

Outlines how the project management plan consolidates ten subsidiary plans—scope, requirements, schedule, cost, quality, resources, communications, risk, procurement, and stakeholder engagement—into a cohesive execution roadmap.

Apply a simplified project planning approach: gather stakeholder requirements, build a work breakdown structure and schedule, estimate budget and risks, create a risk register, and optimize resources to avoid over-allocation.

Explore how the project planning process group defines scope and objectives, forms the action plan, and creates a comprehensive management plan that governs scope, time, cost baselines, and subsidiary plans.

Explore the section on project execution, break down the overall process of executing project work, and summarize key outcomes and practical advice from seasoned project managers.

Execute the project work per the project management plan to deliver and hand over the deliverable, while managing resources, knowledge, quality, and stakeholders.

Explore the execution process group outcomes, including deliverables, lessons learned, quality reports, and resource and team assignments, plus team performance assessments and project communications.

Learn practical tips for project execution, including kickoff meetings, requirements clarification, design before build, baseline design, effective team management, delegation, and granting autonomous decision authority to boost efficiency.

Execute project work per the approved plan with a strong team, while the manager monitors and controls to deliver the project deliverables and update plans, documents, and communications.

Explore the monitoring and controlling process group, its overview, main outcomes, and practical, experience-based advice for effective project execution.

Master the monitoring and controlling process group to track project performance against baselines, manage changes through formal change control, and implement corrective or preventative actions to curb scope creep.

Master project monitoring and control to optimize process outcomes in project management fundamentals. Learn practical techniques for tracking performance and managing deviations to meet project objectives.

Master project monitoring and control through practical advice that helps you track progress, manage risks, and keep projects on schedule and within scope.

Monitor project health and performance and implement change control to address issues, tracking work performance reports, change requests, approved changes, deliverables, forecasts, quality control measurements, and closed procurements.

Explore the importance of project closure and its role within the project management process groups. Learn the main outcomes, outputs, and practical steps to properly close a project.

Conclude the module with a concise process overview grounded in project management fundamentals, delivering practical insights for earning PDUs.

Close the project by evaluating the process outcome to reinforce project management fundamentals and earn 6 PDUs.

Close out the project management fundamentals course with practical, actionable advice that helps you apply key concepts and maximize your PDUs.

Conclude all project activities across process groups to formally close the project with no unfinished business, capture lessons learned documentation, and finalize the deliverable transition and final report.