FOUNDATION OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT

1. Embarking on a career in project management

1.1. Getting started with the program
1.1.1. Welcome to the Google Project Management Certificate
 Keyword for project management is: organized, action-oriented, diligent, and
strategic.
 Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to
meet the project requirement and achieve desired outcome.
 Project management methodology: Agile, scrum, and waterfall.
 Software for project management: Kanban and asana
1.1.2. Program and course overview
 According to the Project Management Institute, the project management labour
force in seven project-oriented sectors is expected to grow by 33 percent, or nearly
22 million new jobs, by 2027.
1.1.3. Introduction to Course 1
 Course objective:
 Understand which type of jobs are suitable for you
 Define key project management terms
 Define roles and responsibilities
 Discuss the type of jobs you can pursue
 Define project and project manager
 Define project life cycle
1.2. Understanding the basic of project management
1.2.1. What is project management?
 Project is
 A unique endeavour, and usually includes a set of unique deliverables
 A temporary pursuit; it has a defined beginning and end
 It has a clear outcome, start and end date
 Project management is valuable to businesses because it helps ensure that a
project delivers the expected outcomes.
 How the project is managed? Organize, budget, and maintain strong
communication.
 Poor project management can lead to 48% of projects missing delivery dates,
43% missing budget targets, and 31% failing to meet an organization's goals.
 Program manager manage multiple projects for specific products, teams, or
programs.
1.2.2. What does a project manager do?
 Project managers usually follow a process that involves planning and
organizing, managing tasks, budgeting, controlling costs and other factors.
 No matter what the task is, a successful project will always add value. And it's
the project manager's job to make sure that project is both valuable
and successful.
 A project manager's daily responsibilities always include some version of the
following, planning and organizing, managing tasks, managing the budget and
controlling costs.
1.2.3. Transferable project management skills
 NONE
1.2.4. X: Path to becoming a project manager
  Program management to me was a natural calling. Not because I like to run
around and tell everybody what to do, but because I have a real personal
passion for bringing people together and getting everybody on the same page
to move towards the same goal.
1.3. Learning about carers in project management
1.3.1. From certificate to career success
 The beauty of project management is that you don't need to be an expert on a
focused technical topic
1.3.2. Finding the perfect role
 The job description may include a list of required skills like organizational
management, strong planning and communication skills, budget preparation
and monitoring.
 Like creating monthly status reports, helping to implement new and necessary
technologies, tracking work plans and performance metrics, assisting other
members of the operations team on given projects, and ensuring timely
responses to requests for information.
 Networking is when you meet other people in a professional setting with the
goal of learning, sharing knowledge, and creating new business
connections. This plays a big role in job hunting, so it is a great tool to start
learning and perfecting.
1.3.3. Using buzzwords in your job search
 Coordination
 Organization
 Leadership
2. Become an effective project manager
2.1. Introduction: Becoming an effective project manager
 NONE
2.2. The value of a project manager
 Project managers shepherd project from start to finish and serve guides for their
team, using their impeccable organizational and interpersonal skills every step of
the way.
 Project managers add value to their teams and organizations in key ways that
include
 Prioritization
 They're experts at helping team members identify and break down
large tasks into smaller steps.
 When project manager can’t make decision to prioritize, they'll
connect with their teams and with stakeholders to gather
information and make a plan.
 Stakeholders are people who are interested in and affected by the
project's completion and success, like the leader of an organization.
 Delegation
 Matching tasks to individuals who can best complete the work
 Delegate task to the person with the right skills to complete the
work and ordering the task appropriately, you're applying
knowledge of your team's strengths to the planning of your project.
 Effective communication.
 Checking in regularly to the teams and stakeholder
2.3. How project managers impact organizations
 Focusing on the customer
 “customer” refers to a person or an organization that defines the
requirements of the project and sets important guidelines, such as budget
and deadlines.
 Successful deliver a project = meet customer’s standards = understand
expectation
 Understanding expectation can be done by asking the customer question
such as:
 What is the problem you would like us to help solve?
 How is the problem impacting your organization?
 What prompted you to ask for help now?
 What is your hope for the outcome of this project?
 Building a great team
 A successful project manager knows that and takes the time to understand
each person’s motivations, strengths, and weaknesses.
 As project manager, you should bring on people with the right skills and
ensure the team knows that each individual is valued, trusted, and
appreciated.
 Fostering relationship and communication
 Project managers who add the most value are the ones who take the time
to build relationships, communicate, and treat others with consideration
and respect.
 Project managers can set the tone for a project and build relationships
within their teams and with stakeholders
 Managing the project
 A successful project manager sees the impacts of each process within the
project and communicates those impacts to the team. This ensures that
everyone working on the project understands their task goal as well as the
big picture goal for the finished product.
 Breaking down barriers
 A good project manager allows their team to innovate new ways to do
things, and empower them to share ideas
2.4. Key project manager roles and responsibilities
 Planning and organizing
 Making use of productivity tools and creating processes
 Create plans, timelines, schedules, and other forms of documentation to
track project completion
 Budgeting and controlling costs and other factors
 Monitor and manage the budget
 Track issue and risks
 Manage quality
 Remove unforeseen barrier
 Managing task
 By actively managing tasks throughout the project lifecycle, I was able to
keep tabs on everyone's work and efficiently inform stakeholders, which
allowed us to achieve our project goal with minimal issues.
2.5. Responsibilities that utilize interpersonal skills
  Interpersonal skills are the behaviours you use to interact with others, such as
communication, active listening, and leadership.
 There are a few responsibilities:
 Teaching and mentoring
 When you take the time to fully explain the expectations, you
eliminate rework, confusion, and frustration
 Building relationships
 When you foster these relationships, you are all more invested in
the success of your project.
 Controlling change
 As a project manager, you need to remain flexible and adjust to the
stakeholders’ needs. However, it is also important to protect your
team from constant change and rework.
 A good way to do this is by documenting the initial expectations of
the project and clearly identifying the changes being requested
 Empowering your team
 One of the best things about empowering your team is getting fresh
ideas and passionate employees willing to help find solutions to
problems.
 Another way you can empower your team is by delegating
responsibilities to them, allowing them to make some decisions for
the project, and using their input in the planning and execution of
the project.
 Communicating status and concerns
2.6. A project manager’s role within a team
 Each person will be an expert on their portion of the project, but no one will be an
expert on every aspect of the project, and honestly, neither will you.
 As the project manager, you won't be an expert in every project role
 You're responsible for guiding your team and making sure that they have the
support that they need in order to complete the project.
 Project manager responsibilities in teams
 Hold all team members accountable for their assigned tasks.
 Ensure that issues and risks are tracked and visible, and be able to establish
escalation paths.
 Help teammates adopt the right workflows and project management styles.
 Collaborate with other teams at the organization to meet the requirements
based on project, scope, schedule, and budget.
2.7. Working with cross-functional teams
 Clarify goals
 When communicating task or project goals, make sure you define key items,
such as budget, deadlines, quality requirements, or important resources.
 Get team members with the right skills
 Measure progress
 Showing your team how much, they have accomplished helps keep them
motivated.
 Keep track of the team’s progress throughout the project by documenting
when tasks and goals are completed, and let your team members know if
the project is on track or not.
  Recognize efforts
2.8. Elita: A day in the life of a project manager
 The more organized you are in your actions, the more organized your team is in
their thinking and their actions. What I do to stay organized is lists, all day long
2.9. The core skills of a project manager
 Enabling decision making
 Communicating and escalating
 Flexibility
 Strong organizational skill
2.10. Leadership and team dynamics
 Using your interpersonal skills is key to building relationships with the people
involved in your project.
 This is called influencing without authority, which refers to a project manager's
ability to guide teammates to complete their assigned work without acting as their
direct managers
 Communication
 Negotiation
 Conflict mediation
 Understanding motivation: learning how your teammates prefer to receive
feedback, and how they like to receive recognition for doing a great job.
2.11. Traits of a successful project manager
 I think a successful project manager is somebody who really knows how to pull
together a group of people
3. The project management life cycle and methodologies
3.1. Exploring the phases of the project life cycle
 Initiate the project
 you'll define project goals and deliverables, identify the budget and
resources you'll need, the people involved in your project, and any other
details that can impact the successful completion of your project.
 Documentation
 Make a plan
 Execute and complete task
 Your primary tasks as the project manager are to monitor progress and keep
your team motivated.
 Remove any obstacles that might come up so that the tasks are executed
well and on time.
 Close the project.
 One big reason is so your team has a moment to celebrate all of their hard
work. Closing the project is also a chance to evaluate how the project went.
3.2. Phases in action: Initiating and planning
 Initiate the project: Define project goals, determine resources, people, and other
project details, get approvals
 Make a plan: create a budget, set the project schedule, establish the project team,
determine each person's roles and responsibilities, plan for risk and changes,
establish communication
3.3. Phases in action: Executing and closing
 Execute: manage, communicate, make adjustments,
  Close the project: ensure all tasks have been completed, confirm acceptance of the
project outcome, reflect on lesson learned (retrospective=chance to note best
practices and learn how to manage your project more effectively next time, even if
everything went great), celebrate
3.4. Introduction to project management methodologies
 A project management methodology is a set of guiding principles and processes for
owning a project through its life cycle.
 We will talk through two different types, linear and iterative.
 Linear means the previous phase or task has to be completed before the next can
start.
 Iterative = more flexible approach where some of the phases in tasks will overlap or
happen at the same time that other tasks are being worked on.
3.5. Overview of Waterfall and Agile
 Waterfall refers to the sequential ordering of phases. You complete one at a time
down the line like a waterfall starting at the top of a mountain and traveling to the
bottom.
 Agile = able to move quickly and easily, willing to change and adapt, done in pieces.
Agile project phases overlap and tasks are completed in iterations, which in scrum
are called sprints.
3.6. Comparing Waterfall and Agile approaches

Agile
Waterfall
Agile project manager (or Scrum
Project Project manager serves as an active Master) acts primarily as a facilitator,
manager's leader by prioritizing and assigning removing any barriers the team faces.
role tasks to team members. Team shares more responsibility in
managing their own work.
Project deliverables and plans are well- Planning happens in shorter iterations
established and documented in the and focuses on delivering value
Scope early stages of initiating and planning. quickly. Subsequent iterations are
Changes go through a formal change adjusted in response to feedback or
request process. unforeseen issues.
Time is organized into phases called
Follows a mostly linear path through the
Sprints. Each Sprint has a defined
Schedule initiating, planning, executing, and
duration, with a set list of deliverables
closing phases of the project.
planned at the start of the Sprint.
Costs are kept under control by careful
Costs and schedule could change with
Cost estimation up front and close monitoring
each iteration.
throughout the life cycle of the project.
Team solicits ongoing stakeholder
Project manager makes plans and
input and user feedback by testing
Quality clearly defines criteria to measure
products in the field and regularly
quality at the beginning of the project.
implementing improvements.
Project manager continually
communicates progress toward
Team is customer-focused, with
Communicati milestones and other key indicators to
consistent communication between
on stakeholders, ensuring that the project
users and the project team.
is on track to meet the customer’s
expectations.
Stakeholders Project manager continually manages Team frequently provides deliverables
and monitors stakeholder engagement to stakeholders throughout the project.
to ensure the project is on track. Progress toward milestones is
 Agile
Waterfall
dependent upon stakeholder
feedback.

3.7. Introduction to Lean and Six Sigma

 The uses for Lean Six Sigma are common in projects that have goals to save money,
improve quality, move through processes quickly, team collaboration, positive work
environment.
 There are five phases in the Lean Six Sigma approach. They are define, measure,
analyze, improve, and control, commonly known as DMAIC. DMAIC is a strategy for
process improvement, meaning you're trying to figure out where the problems are
in the current process and fix them so that everything runs more smoothly.
 DMAIC
o Define the project goal and talk to stakeholders about expectations for the
project.
o Measure how the current process is performing.
o In order to improve processes, DMAIC focuses on data. Set a plan for how
you'll get that data and how often to measure it.
o Analyze. Here, you'll begin to identify gaps and issues
o Improve
o Control
3.8. Lean
 The main principle in Lean methodology is the removal of waste within an
operation in manufacturing industry
 The 5S method includes these five steps:

 Sort: Remove all items not needed for current production operations and
leave only the bare essentials.
 Set in order: Arrange needed items so that they are easy to use. Label items
so that anyone can find them or put them away.
 Shine: Keep everything in the correct place. Clean your workspace every
day.
 Standardize: Perform the process in the same way every time.
 Sustain: Make a habit of maintaining correct procedures and instill this
discipline in your team.
 The final concept of Lean uses a Kanban scheduling system to manage production.
The Kanban scheduling system, or Kanban board, is a visualization tool that enables
you to optimize the flow of your team’s work.
3.9. Six Sigma
 Six Sigma is a methodology used to reduce variations by ensuring that quality
processes are followed every time
 The seven key principles of Six Sigma are:
 Always focus on the customer.
 Identify and understand how the work gets done. Understand how work
really happens.
 Make your processes flow smoothly.
 Reduce waste and concentrate on value.
 Stop defects by removing variation.
 Involve and collaborate with your team.
 Approach improvement activity in a systematic way.

3.10. Popular project management approaches

 Waterfall is a traditional methodology in which tasks and phases are completed in a
linear, sequential manner, and each stage of the project must be completed before
the next begins. The project manager is responsible for prioritizing and assigning
tasks to team members. In Waterfall, the criteria used to measure quality is clearly
defined at the beginning of the project.
 Agile involves short phases of collaborative, iterative work with frequent testing and
regularly-implemented improvements. Some phases and tasks happen at the same
time as others. In Agile projects, teams share responsibility for managing their own
work. Scrum and Kanban are examples of Agile frameworks, which are specific
development approaches based on the Agile philosophy.
 Scrum is an Agile framework that focuses on developing, delivering, and sustaining
complex projects and products through collaboration, accountability, and an
iterative process. Work is completed by small, cross-functional teams led by a Scrum
Master and is divided into short Sprints with a set list of deliverables.
  Kanban is a tool used in both Agile and Lean approaches that provides visual
feedback about the status of the work in progress through the use of Kanban boards
or charts. With Kanban, project managers use sticky notes or note cards on a
physical or digital Kanban board to represent the team’s tasks with categories like
“To do,” “In progress,” and “Done.”
 Lean uses the 5S quality tool to eliminate eight areas of waste, save money, improve
quality, and streamline processes. Lean’s principles state that you can do more with
less by addressing dysfunctions that create waste. Lean implements a Kanban
scheduling system to manage production.
 Six Sigma involves reducing variations by ensuring that quality processes are
followed every time. The Six Sigma method follows a process-improvement
approach called DMAIC, which stands for define, measure, analyse, improve, and
control.
 Lean Six Sigma is a combination of Lean and Six Sigma approaches. It is often used
in projects that aim to save money, improve quality, and move through processes
quickly. Lean Six Sigma is also ideal for solving complex or high-risk problems. The
5S organization framework, the DMAIC process, and the use of Kanban boards are
all components of this approach.
4. Organizational structure and culture
4.1. Overview of Classic and Matrix structures
 The Classic grouping follows a typical chain of command where the Chief Executive
Officer, also known as CEO, and other executives are at the top, followed by
directors or managers, then their direct reports and so on.
 Matrix structure as a grid where you still have people above you, but you also have
people in adjacent departments who expect to hear updates on your work progress.
4.2. How organizational structure impacts project management
 Knowing the organizational structure also tells you how and where to get the
resources you'll need so you can get the project done efficiently.
 One way organizational structure can impact the way you manage a project is by the
amount of authority given to the project manager. Authority has to do with your
ability to make decisions for the project that impact the organization.
 Another way organizational structures can impact project management is through
resource availability. Managing a project is a lot easier when you know how to access
the people, equipment, and budget that you need.
 You may need to share resources and negotiate priorities. The key is to make sure you
know who your stakeholders are and who controls what since the chain of command
isn't always as clearly defined as in the Classic structure.
4.3. Project Management Office
 A Project Management Office, or PMO, is a group within an organization that
defines, sets, and helps maintain project management standards and processes
throughout that organization.
 What are the functions of a PMO?
 Strategic planning and governance
 Best practices
 Common project culture
 Resource management
 Creation of project documentation, archives, and tools
4.4. Working in Project Management Office
  One of the most critical things that project managers get to do is they get to have a
bird's eye view of everything that's happening in a project. That's a lot of my role
and what I'm working on with my team is ensuring that all of the pieces that need
to connect together actually do connect together.
4.5. Introduction to organizational culture
 Organizational culture is in part the values employees share, as well as the
organization's values, mission, history, and so on. Organizational culture can be
thought of as the company's personality.
 Familiar with organizational culture = minimize conflict and complete the project
with as much support and harmony as possible.
 As a project manager, when you understand the different types of values, and what
to prioritize, you'll have an idea of how you can better prepare for conversations
within the organization
 Navigating company culture: Ask Questions and make observations.
4.6. Learning about an organization’s culture
 The importance of organizational culture
 Identity: identity essentially describes the way the company conducts
business, both internally and externally
 People: organization’s culture can help keep talented employees at a
company, and it can attract great people too
 Processes: Organizational culture can have direct impacts on a company's
processes, and ultimately, its productivity
 Understanding an organization’s culture
 Ask questions: Atmosphere, Policies, Processes, Values
 Listen to people’s stories
 Take note of company rituals
 Understand your impact
As a project manager, you become a change agent. Remember: a change
agent is a person from inside an organization who helps the organization
transform by focusing on improving organizational effectiveness and
development.
 Sharpen your communication skills
4.7. Introduction to change management
 Change management is the process of delivering your completed project and
getting people to adopt it.
 help the success of the project by understanding your role in the process and how
your organization may react to that change.
 Implementing a new project can mean changes to processes, budgets, schedules,
and employee roles and responsibilities.
 Change management in project management is centered around three core
concepts and best practices.
 Creating a sense of ownership and urgency around the project.
 Figure out the right combination of skills and personalities when selecting
the people who will work on your team
 Effective communication
4.8. A project manager’s role in change management
 When you are thinking about change management as it relates to your project,
begin by asking yourself the following questions:
  How will the organization react to change?
 Which influencers can affect change?
 What are the best means of communication?
 What change management practices will lead to the successful
implementation of my project?
 Best practices for approaching change management on projects:
 Be proactive
 Communicate about upcoming changes.
 Follow a consistent process
 Practice empathy.
 Use tools
4.9. Participating in change management
 Participating in change management involves being empathetic to the challenges of
the change management process and supporting necessary changes
4.10. Corporate and project governance
 Governance in business is the management framework within which decisions are
made and accountability and responsibility are determined.
 Corporate governance is the framework by which an organization achieves its goals
and objectives.
 Project governance is the framework for how project decisions are made. Project
governance helps keep projects running smoothly, on time, and within budget.
4.11. Introduction to OKRs (Objective and Key Result)
 OKR’s combine a goal and a metric to determine a measurable outcome
 Objective
 Defines what need to be achieved
 Describes a desired outcome
 Key Results
 The measurable outcomes that define when the objective has been met
 Example
 Objective: Improve customer retention
 Key result: achieve a 90% customer satisfaction rating by the end of the
first quarter
 OKRs can help you expand upon project goals and further clarify the deliverables
you’ll need from the project to accomplish those goals
4.12. Creating OKRs for your project
 Strong objectives meet the following criteria: aspirational, aligned with
organizational goals, action-oriented, concrete, significant.
 To create objective, ask yourself and your team:
 Does the objective help in achieving the project’s overall goals?
 Does the objective align with company and departmental OKRs?
 Is the objective inspiring and motivational?
 Will achieving the objective make a significant impact?
 Strong key results meet the following criteria: Results-oriented—not a task,
Measurable and verifiable, Specific and time-bound, and Aggressive yet realistic

4.13.