This is the third course in the Google Project Management Certificate program. This course will explore how to map out a project in the second phase of the project life cycle: the project planning phase. You will examine the key components of a project plan, how to make accurate time estimates, and how to set milestones. Next, you will learn how to build and manage a budget and how the procurement processes work. Then, you will discover tools that can help you identify and manage different types of risk and how to use a risk management plan to communicate and resolve risks. Finally, you will explore how to draft and manage a communication plan and how to organize project documentation. Current Google project managers will continue to instruct and provide you with hands-on approaches for accomplishing these tasks while showing you the best project management tools and resources for the job at hand. Learners who complete this program should be equipped to apply for introductory-level jobs as project managers. No previous experience is necessary. By the end of this course, you will be able to: - Describe the components of the project planning phase and their significance. - Explain why milestones are important and how to set them. - Make accurate time estimates and describe techniques for acquiring them from team members. - Identify tools and best practices to build a project plan and risk management plan. - Describe how to estimate, track, and maintain a budget. - Explain the procurement process and identify key procurement documentation. - Draft a communication plan and explain how to manage it. - Explain why milestones are important and how to set them. - Explain why a project plan is necessary and what components it contains. - Make accurate time estimates and describe techniques for acquiring them from team members.

Project Execution has many challenges and a good project must learn how to execute projects and adjust to changes that may derail your project plans in the traditional and agile project management environments. In this course, the student will define direct and manage project work and knowledge. By the end of this course, you will be able to: - Direct and manage project work by preparing proactively for changes that lead to adjusting and re-planning your projects to success. - Conduct project execution according to project plans in both the traditional and Agile project management environments and effectively manage resources throughout project execution.

Scope, time, and cost management are at the heart of successful project management. This course will give you the tools to develop a project scope, schedule and budget and then status them to predict project performance. Throughout the course, you will learn about change management and techniques to implement it. By the end of this course you will be able to: • Create a requirements document • Create a Project Scope Statement • Identify ways to control the scope of the project • Decompose the work and develop work packages • Create a Work Breakdown Structure • Develop a Critical Path Schedule • Review types of cost estimates and identify whether they are “top down or bottom up” • Review budgets, contingencies and reserves • Calculate planned and earned values to compare with actual cost • Perform a cost and schedule analysis Each week you will prepare a key deliverable for the project plan based on a provided Case Study. These deliverables include: • Project Scope Statement • Project Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and WBS dictionary • Critical Path schedule sequence diagram • Bar Chart Schedule (Gantt Chart) • Project Cost Estimate • Project Status using an Earned Value Calculation All of this will position you to set up a plan to control your next assignment or your next project whether this is as the project manager or as an area leader. Rice Center for Engineering Leadership is a Registered Education Provider through the Project Management Institute (PMI)®. Learners who complete this course on the Certificate track will be awarded 14 hours of Profession Development Units. These are recognized by PMI for continuing education or can be applied toward the 35 hours of education required for the Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification. PMI and PMP are registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

Businesses run on data, and data offers little value without analytics. The ability to process data to make predictions about the behavior of individuals or markets, to diagnose systems or situations, or to prescribe actions for people or processes drives business today. Increasingly many businesses are striving to become “data-driven”, proactively relying more on cold hard information and sophisticated algorithms than upon the gut instinct or slow reactions of humans. This course will focus on understanding key analytics concepts and the breadth of analytic possibilities. Together, the class will explore dozens of real-world analytics problems and solutions across most major industries and business functions. The course will also touch on analytic technologies, architectures, and roles from business intelligence to data science, and from data warehouses to data lakes. And the course will wrap up with a discussion of analytics trends and futures.

This course will help you to navigate ambiguity in definitions of "Smart City". You can review successful cases and practices of different approaches to transformation management, determine the potential of your city in the digital transformation, as well as find useful practical advices on search for funding of various digital projects in your city. In addition, lecturers introduce you with formation of Smart City structure and infrastructure from the officials’ point of view. If you are already an expert in the field of Smart Cities, the course will give you the opportunity to assess your strengths and to improve knowledge in this field. You will gain additional skills in managing digital transformation programs with real examples, as well as you will be acquainted with communication methods and marketing of government projects.

We will analyze the pros and cons of creating a single or multiple Esport organization and recommend an effective branding strategy for a hypothetical Esport organization based on current Esport branding considerations. You will develop a plan for recruiting funding resources for a hypothetical Esports organization and choose an Esport organization role of interest, other than Owner, and describe your reasoning.

This course focuses on understanding subsistence marketplaces and designing business solutions for the billions of people living in poverty in the global marketplace. To develop understanding of subsistence marketplaces, we use exercises to enable participants to view the world from the eyes of subsistence consumers and entrepreneurs, facilitate bottom‐up understanding generated by participants, and provide insights from extensive research. More broadly, the course uses the context of extreme resource constrained contexts to learn about the bottom-up approach pioneered through the Subsistence Marketplaces Initiative, and apply it in any context. The course will involve virtual immersion in subsistence contexts, emersion of unique insights, bottom-up design, innovation and enterprise. A parallel project will focus on understanding a specific need in a subsistence marketplace, and designing a solution and an enterprise plan. Upon successful completion of this course you will be able to: • Develop an understanding of subsistence marketplaces • Design solutions for subsistence marketplaces • Develop enterprise plans to implement solutions for subsistence marketplaces • Apply the bottom-up approach for subsistence marketplaces as well as other contexts This course is part of the iMBA offered by the University of Illinois, a flexible, fully-accredited online MBA at an incredibly competitive price. For more information, please see the Resource page in this course and onlinemba.illinois.edu.

The purpose of this course is to help individuals and organizations survive when confronted with disruptive technologies that threaten their current way of life. We will look at a general model of survival and use it to analyze companies and industries that have failed or are close to failing. Examples of companies that have not survived include Kodak, a firm over 100 years old, Blockbuster and Borders. It is likely that each of us has done business with all of these firms, and today Kodak and Blockbuster are in bankruptcy and Borders has been liquidated. Disruptions are impacting industries like education; Coursera and others offering these massive open online courses are a challenge for Universities. In addition to firms that have failed, we will look at some that have survived and are doing well. What are their strategies for survival? By highlighting the reasons for the decline of firms and industries, participants can begin to understand how to keep the same thing from happening to them. Through the study of successful organizations, we will try to tease out approaches to disruptions that actually work. Our ultimate objective is to develop a strategy for survival in a world confronting one disruptive technology after another.

Welcome! This course provides participants with the opportunity to explore the multifaceted concept of international development in order to be able to interpret and lead its challenges, opportunities and constant evolutions. Starting from an in-depth analysis of the current international development architecture, its key actors and trends, the course then illustrates the main international organizations' governance systems; identifies their funding and financing tools necessary to implement development programs and achieve sustainable development goals; and explains how to effectively leverage on human capital to drive organizational success and be ‘fit for purpose’ in an ever changing international development scenario. The course is delivered by both Bocconi University and SDA Bocconi School of Management faculty involved in programs as the EMMIO - Executive Master in Management of International Organizations. The course also provides participants with the opportunity to learn from the experience of senior professionals serving International Organizations at all levels.

Have you ever gotten really excited about reading or writing a business plan? You might have started out excited, but I’m going to bet you didn’t stay that way. Let’s be honest- business plans are boring and mostly ignored. The beauty of the one-page Business Model Canvas is that it drives meaningful focus. It helps us organize our ideas and have better discussions by forcing specificity and bringing linkages between key business drivers to the foreground. Innovation requires one hand being very focused on a fundamental need or problem while the other hand quickly tests different solutions. For this, the Business Model Canvas is very innovation friendly: It's a lot easier to tweak the model and try things with something that's sitting on a single page In this course, developed at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia and taught by top-ranked faculty, you’ll learn key tools from the worlds of design thinking and Lean Startup to approach the Canvas with thoughtfulness, focus, and above all a test-driven approach to business model innovation.