Professional Certificate in Project Management

What you will be able to do

• Turn a vague request into a charter with real authority
• Plan scope, schedule and cost you can actually defend
• Run a living risk register instead of a filed document
• Report status honestly and control change
• Close a project properly and measure the benefits

What is inside

6 modules, 30 lessons. Each module ends in a graded quiz and most carry an assignment.

1. 01

   What Project Management Actually Is

   The practical foundation of running a project rather than passing an exam. Covers why projects fail and why the technology is almost never the real cause, the precise difference between a project, operations, a program, and a portfolio, the three delivery approaches of predictive, agile, and hybrid and how to choose between them honestly, the project life cycle and what each phase owes the next, the project manager's real authority and how to get things done without formal power, what a sponsor is actually for and how an absent sponsor sinks a project, and a concrete week in the working life of a project manager. Taught through Northwind Health Group, a fictional healthcare group rolling a new patient scheduling system out to eleven clinics.

   5 lessons · 15 quiz questions

2. 02

   Initiation: Charter, Scope and Stakeholders

   How a vague request becomes a defined project with a signed charter, measurable success criteria, a scope statement that says what is out as clearly as what is in, honest assumptions and constraints, and a stakeholder engagement plan that survives contact with people who do not want the project. Taught end to end through Northwind Health Group, a fictional healthcare group rolling a new patient scheduling system out to eleven clinics, and focused on producing the actual initiation artifacts rather than on exam vocabulary.

   5 lessons · 15 quiz questions

3. 03

   Planning: Schedule, Cost and Resources

   How to turn an approved scope into a plan you can actually run. Covers decomposing work into deliverables and work packages, sequencing the work and naming its dependencies, estimating effort and duration and writing down the basis, reading the critical path and float without mystique, building a budget from the work rather than from a guess, sizing contingency against real risks, planning people who are shared with three other projects, and what to do when the honest plan does not fit the date the business has already announced. Taught through Northwind Health Group, a fictional healthcare group rolling a new patient scheduling system out to eleven clinics.

   5 lessons · 15 quiz questions

4. 04

   Risk, Issues and Quality

   How a working project manager handles the things that have not gone wrong yet, the things that already have, and the standard the deliverable has to meet before anyone will sign for it. Covers the practical difference between a risk, an issue, an assumption, a constraint and a dependency, how to run a risk identification session that produces entries the team will actually act on, how to build likelihood and impact scales that mean something before anyone scores anything, the four responses of avoid, mitigate, transfer and accept with worked examples, how to set triggers, name owners and hold a review cadence that keeps a register alive, how to run an issue log and escalate without drama, and how to plan quality so the delivered system is fit for purpose rather than merely finished. Taught end to end through Northwind Health Group, a fictional healthcare group rolling a new patient scheduling system out to eleven clinics.

   5 lessons · 15 quiz questions

5. 05

   Execution, Communication and Change

   The delivery half of the job: leading a team that does not report to you, running meetings people are glad they attended, writing status reports that surface problems while they are still cheap to fix, applying red, amber and green ratings against criteria agreed in advance, controlling change so that scope and budget stay connected to reality, managing a software vendor through a contract you have actually read, and handling conflict and difficult conversations without damaging the relationships you depend on. Taught through Northwind Health Group, a fictional healthcare group rolling a new patient scheduling system out to eleven clinics.

   5 lessons · 15 quiz questions

6. 06

   Closing, Benefits and Your Project Management Career

   How a project actually ends and what happens to the value afterwards. Covers formal acceptance against the charter's success criteria, handover to operations and support including hypercare and runbooks, benefits realization and the reasons most organizations quietly skip it, lessons learned that change the next project rather than filling a folder, and then the career layer: turning your project artifacts into portfolio evidence, reading predictive, agile and hybrid roles in the job market, choosing credentials that help, and interviewing well. Taught through Northwind Health Group, a fictional healthcare group finishing the rollout of a new patient scheduling system across eleven clinics. Carries the course capstone.

   5 lessons · 15 quiz questions · assignment