Planning Project Activities

Course Description

This course explains how to identify the steps for:

• Defining project activities.
• Creating a project network diagram.
• Creating a Gantt chart.

The course presents its material as a text-based slide show. It offers quiz questions, a self-check, a dialogue, and links to related articles and Web sites. In addition, the course offers access to a mentor, a discussion group, a chat room, and periodic eLearning events.

This course explains the concrete, easy steps to follow to create three excellent planning documents. These tools will help new project managers avoid making costly mistakes. For example, creating a project network diagram helps a manager logically sequence project activities so that steps don't have to be redone later. It also prevents a project grinding to halt while everyone waits for a single activity to get done.

The course's topics are clearly defined and effectively illustrated. Each unit uses an ongoing scenario that helps maintain interest. The scenarios also offer visual representations of the step-by-step development of each document. For example, the course shows pictures of an evolving Gantt chart for a workplace relocation project.

The course provides very basic worksheets that outline the steps for creating each document. These worksheets could be useful as abbreviated how-to manuals. Our staff would have also liked to see printable copies of the completed documents. Because all of these documents have unique visual representations, models of them would complement the lists of steps nicely.

PrimeLearning.com® offers links to half of a dozen project management Web sites that offer publications, discussion groups, and more. Other resources are links to 10 articles and a list of a dozen recent books. The topics range from focusing on individual skills, like leading meetings, to guides covering the whole project management process.

This course uses a moderate level of interactivity. It offers basic features like frequent mouse-overs, drag-and-drop exercises, and an audio dialogue. These liven up the slide show delivery. Quiz questions provide some chances to apply the material. Adding some scenario-based questions would provide even more opportunities to put the concepts into practice.

PrimeLearning.com® offers a pre-assessment for their entire "PrimeProject Management Fundamentals" curriculum that determines which courses you need to take--there isn't an individual pre-assessment for just this course. This course does, however, offer a brief self-check quiz that can be taken as a post-test or at any time.

PrimeLearning's courses offer a broad range of interactions with instructors and other students. For example, the course encourages you to contact a mentor about how to plan your work in the curriculum or for any specific questions. In addition, the course offers access to a discussion group, a chat room, and periodic eLearning events. eLearning events are a series of synchronous e-conferences with featured speakers on related topics. The community members for these interactive resources are all users of the "PrimeProject Management Fundamentals" curriculum.

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