Duration
18h Th
Number of credits
| Master in business engineering (120 ECTS) | 3 crédits |
Lecturer
Language(s) of instruction
English language
Organisation and examination
Teaching in the first semester, review in January
Schedule
Units courses prerequisite and corequisite
Prerequisite or corequisite units are presented within each program
Learning unit contents
This course aims to bring a practical understanding of project management through the presentation of theoretical concepts followed by their application. The content will be supported by numerous real life examples and varied teaching methods (video-interviews, debates, role plays, readings, in-class exercises, homework, presentations, deep dives, ...).
With the objective to make the course practical and concrete, a series of video-interviews (each 1-3 minutes long) are foreseen. Each of these short videos will tackle a specific question, preceded or followed by a debate with the students. For each of these questions, one or more interviewees will bring an answer to their personal context. This will allow students to have a diverse view on project management (for profit and non-profit organisations, academia, people with different backgrounds and levels of experience, etc.). Here is a list of questions which will be covered :
- Is project management important ? Why ?
- Is it only for large organisations ?
- Is it limited to consulting /specific industries ?
- What are the common pitfalls of project management ?
- What is the difference between running and changing an organization ?
- What are the qualities of a great project manager ?
- What is expectations management ?
- How did you learn project management ?
- What is the most important part of project management according to you ?
- Are great leaders also great project managers ?
- What are the most common project management certifications ?
- What are the typical project management job interview questions ?
- Importantly, the course will not be focused on one specific project management methodology (such as PMI, SAFe, PRINCE2, ...) but will take a pragmatic approach by focusing on concrete and useful notions gained from field experience.
Learning outcomes of the learning unit
By the end of this course, students will master and will have applied base concepts of waterfall and agile project management such as :
- Explaining what project management is, its related base notions and give some concrete examples :
- Project vs. process
- Project vs. program vs. portfolio management
- Waterfall vs. agile
- Status meeting and steering committee
- Starting and closing a project
- Lifecycle and events of a project
- Producing a risk and issue log
- Building a project plan (waterfall or agile) which takes into account deadlines, events, objectives, and available resources
- Recognizing good product requirements
- Estimating work and playing planning poker
- Identifying the differences between agile and waterfall project management with the strengths and weaknesses of each
- Stakeholder management and the relational nature of project management in the context of a given organization
- This course will also particularly focus on the following transversal skills :
- Synthetizing (meeting minutes, reading summaries)
- Listening and speaking up (giving one's opinion, listening that of others, debating, discussing and working as a group).
Prerequisite knowledge and skills
There are no prerequisite knowledge or skills for the course.
Planned learning activities and teaching methods
The learning outcomes will be reached by using a variety of methods catered around learning by doing :
- Presentation of basic theoretical concept by the teacher
- Immediately putting them into practice. For example : holding a status meeting, writing up meeting minutes and action points, making a plan, logging and managing risks logs and issues logs
- Short video-interviews covering different project management-related topics from a vast array of people, each with different backgrounds and experiences
- Readings and individual works to prepare ahead of each class
- Deep dives : at the end of each class, students get to choose a topic which will be covered more in detail during the next class. Students will have to do their own research on the topic and be prepared to present it.
Mode of delivery (face to face, distance learning, hybrid learning)
Face-to-Face : Students must participate in all the sessions (4 x 4,5 hours). It is recommended that they bring their laptop to complete some of the in-class activities.
Recommended or required readings
All the necessary documents will be found on the vitual campus Lol@.
- In-class presence and participation
- Homeworks, readings and exercises outside of the classroom
- Presentations and in-class roleplays
- Final work after the last class.
Work placement(s)
Organisational remarks and main changes to the course
The course is given during the first semester.
The course is given in English.
Contacts
Tolga Bayrak : tolga.bayrak@uliege.be