Diploma in Project Management

Course details

Project Management is of growing importance to organisations because it deals effectively with the management of change. Organisations are beginning to realise that the traditional form of management cannot deal with the dynamics and resulting chaos of the modern economic, social and business environment. Project management is a method for organisations to achieve profitability targets, but just as significantly; it is a ‘culture’ that will assist most people to improve their personal performance.

Programme Aims and Objectives

Students who complete this course should be able to:

• Explain the characteristics of organisational approaches to project management
• Understand the core competencies required to make an effective project manager including communication, leadership, motivation, negotiation and team building skills
• Understand the concepts of stakeholders, success criteria and critical success factors in the context of projects
• Evaluate the importance of effective management of the project life cycle
• Be able to apply methods, tools and techniques for planning, monitoring and controlling projects and for managing risk
• Create a project plan
• Understand the various roles and the importance of the project office.

Assessment

To be awarded the Diploma in Project Management, a student will be required to complete an Individual project (20%), group project (20%) and end of course examination (60%).

Programme Content

As projects become more obscure, greater competencies are required to manage their complexity. This syllabus is designed to examine project management roles and environments, the project life cycle, and various tools and techniques of project initiation, planning, execution, control, and close-out to successfully achieve project objectives.

Initiation

This is the process of defining that something needs to be done and committing the organisation and its resources to do it. It includes defining the project, in strategic terms especially in terms of its business value and seeking authorisation to proceed.

Planning

This stage involves the devising of a project plan capable of achieving the project objectives, continuously refining requirements, creating a WBS (Work Breakdown Structure), establishing project controls and seeking approval for the plan.

Execution

The execution stage includes progressive elaboration of the project’s plan whilst co-ordinating people, materials and processes to accomplish the planned objectives.

Controlling

This is the process of ensuring that project objectives are met by monitoring and measuring progress regularly, using earned value to identify variances from plan, responding to risk triggers and taking corrective action as necessary.

Close-out

The final stage includes the formalised acceptance of the project or phase, the documenting of lessons learned, record archiving as well as contract review and audit.