Diploma in Modern Project Management Theory and Practice

The free online course Diploma in Modern Project Management Theory and Practice is designed for anyone who wants to learn about contemporary project management. With organisations looking to deliver projects faster and cheaper project management has evolved continuously since the 1980’s to help address these needs. Using the Project Management Institute's Book of Knowledge, along with other core theory, this course describes in detail the modern theory and best practices of project management.

The course begins by introducing you to essential topics such as profiling projects, the phases and organizational structures within a project, and the tasks performed in a project. You will then learn how the role of project managers needs to shift emphasis; project managers need to move from managing the tasks to taking a leadership role. As projects become more complex project managers need to get a good understanding of what the clients' expectations are. They also need to know how decisions are reached, how information is communicated, and how and why changes are made to the project plans. The essential element of project management is about getting projects completed on time and within budget. In this course you will learn how a project, with its associated goals and processes, must be definitively established by a project manager.

You will also learn how a project schedule covering both the team members and equipment needs to be drawn up, reviewed and approved. The course then describes why rigorous implementation of quality control is a very important aspect of project management, and why the project manager and the project team must be risk aware during each phase of the project. You will also learn about how the project manager has to oversee the procurement process by ensuring that the relevant contracts with suppliers are in place and that each supplier meets all the necessary requirements. The final part of the course explains how a project manager oversees the successful closure of a project, from gathering all the key statistics and summarising them, to closing out the supplier contracts, and archiving all the key documents.

This free Diploma course will be of great interest to all professionals working in the area of project management or those who have become involved in a work project or learners who just want to be able to manage personal projects more effectively.