Online Course Schedule for Spring 2021

Agile Frameworks for Lean Ent

Agile organizations quickly sense and adapt to external and internal changes to deliver relevant results in a productive and cost-effective manner. This course explores merging life cycle approaches, which lead to greater organizational agility, and provides an in-depth examination and evaluation of Lean-Agile principles and values and the drivers behind becoming a more agile organization. Students learn how organizations can achieve agility at scale by funding ecosystems of teams that deliver large initiatives, allowing decentralized financial decision making within the portfolio, and continuously prioritizing their backlog of activities within each agile project. Learning objectives for this course include the ability to achieve true end-to-end business agility by utilizing industry standard agile frameworks (such as Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe); establishing the strategic themes that guide an organization's strategy and investments; determining and funding the relevant value streams; defining and prioritizing cross-cutting portfolio backlog epics; and monitoring the performance of the portfolios using applicable Lean portfolio, program, and team metrics. Students learn how to link an organizational strategy into relatively small investment increments called epics, study the breakup of epics into features that can be delivered by program teams, and explore the decomposition of features into user stories delivered by single teams in individual sprints. This course also explores organizational factors that impact the use of agile approaches, such as culture, readiness, business practices, and the role of the PMO.

Agile PM Fundamentals

The course provides students with a comprehensive understanding of Agile Project Management Fundamentals. The course not only teaches students how to manage projects with an adaptive approach, but also allows students to understand the differences and similarities between agile and traditional project management. Throughout the course, students acquire the essential knowledge on agile values, principles, practices, tools, and benefits of applying a lean-agile approach to Project Management. The course also provides students with the tools necessary to select an adequate approach to project management while considering degree of uncertainty and complexity. Through simulations and demonstrations of agile concepts, students gain experiential learning and acquire essential Agile PM skills to operate in an agile setting. By the end of the course, students can apply insights on how to blend linear, incremental, and iterative approaches in a traditional, agile, or hybrid environment.

Capstone

The Capstone course is to be completed in the final term of the program and provides an opportunity for students to apply what they have learned in the program by producing a substantial piece of work under the tutelage of an industry advisor and program faculty. Projects are aligned with students’ chosen areas of interest. Students have the opportunity to present their work to industry professionals for review and feedback. Each student receives assistance in devising a strategy to support the topic of interest, consistent with the course goals, by semester’s end. Classroom assignments and lectures also focus on preparing students for successful project management careers after they graduate from the program.

Note: Registration in the class requires department approval. Core course for the MPPM major.

Comm & Collab for Managers

This course teaches students the essential communication skills utilized by successful managers, including negotiation, persuasion and influencing, and presentation skills. Learning objectives for this course include demonstrating leadership skills and applying proven techniques in leading teams; applying communication best practices in projects; and evaluating communication needs for different motivational approaches by leveraging the Strength Development Inventory for both the “normal behavior” and “conflict mode” of individuals. By the end of the course, students are able to identify and resolve conflicts by practicing different conflict resolution approaches. This course also includes an examination of the individual motivators that aid students in effectively negotiating and influencing discussions with others.

DevOps Essentials

DevOps, as a movement and methodology since the mid-2000s, is still transforming the way value is delivered by information technology (IT) organizations. Deriving from practices supporting modern technology management methodologies such as Agile, enterprise DevOps adoption has been demonstrated to create value by reducing the amount of unnecessary rework, improve the quality, speed and tempo of production deployments, create feature reinvestment opportunities, and reduce operational downtime significantly. This course in DevOps is an exploration in the practice of operations and development engineers participating together in the entire service lifecycle, from design through the development process to production support.

Ethical Leadership

This course examines key ethical methodologies, principles, values, and frameworks with the ultimate goal of helping you to continue to be ethical leaders. It explores the literature in moral psychology and behavioral economics to help you understand under what circumstances you are likely to behave without integrity, and how to take steps now to prevent this. Students are provided with tools and frameworks in order to understand how to construct ethical infrastructure, as well as meaningful values documents. This course also provides an examination of essential skills needed for all strategic leaders including communication, negotiation, persuasion, and influence.

Ethics

The Ethics course is the flagship course in all Georgetown-SCS MPS programs, taken at the beginning of the program. In the first part of this course, students are introduced to ethical methodologies, principles, values, and frameworks. In the second part of the course, students study discipline- and field-specific codes of ethics within the profession. The course explores the ethical responsibilities of all project management professionals to themselves, corporations, the government, and the public. Students contrast the roles and responsibilities of ethics versus compliance and their interdependencies. In the third part of the course, students are introduced to an ethical decision-making framework and applied ethical issues.

Note: This course meets online. Core course requirement of MPS in Project Management students.

Execution & Delivery

This course explores the last three phases of the project lifecycle—execution, monitor and control, and closing. Students gain a deeper understanding of project execution, including the monitor and control component. Students also learn how to utilize real-world scenarios and/or project management simulation software to build the project deliverables; control the project delivery, scope, costs, quality, and risks; and manage issues. The course also teaches students about successful project closure, including winding down the project by releasing staff, handing over deliverables to the customer, and completing a post-implementation review.

Note: Prerequisite: MPPM 620 or MPPM 570

Lean & Agile w/Scrum & Kanban

This course provides students with a solid foundation and a good understanding of practicing Agile with Scrum and Kanban. Scrum is a framework for designing, developing, and delivering products, services, and/or solutions of the highest value incrementally. Scrum is also known as a popular agile method in the computer software industry for addressing unknown and complex requirements iteratively and incrementally.. Scrum implementations require the use of self-organized teams who are flexible individuals willing to adapt quickly to change. Students will learn about the rules of the game specific to Scrum events (the sprint, sprint planning, daily Scrum, sprint review, and sprint retrospective), Scrum artifacts (e.g. product backlog, sprint backlog, and increment), and the importance of the definition of done. Kanban is another lean framework for developing and delivering products and services by balancing demands with available capacity, and by improving the handling of system-level bottlenecks. Students will also learn essential lean principles and discover how to use a Kanban board to help them visualize workflow and prioritize work items more effectively.

Managing Complexity

This course investigates and discusses navigation complexity in large projects for successful outcomes. By the end of this course, students are able to understand and apply a best-practice framework for managing project complexity, including the development of management approaches for large and high-risk projects. This course also discusses industry standard guidelines established to help navigate intricate organizational challenges associated with project complexity, and explores case studies and real-world scenarios, which illustrate such challenges, and means to overcome them. The coursework aligns with the Project Management Institute’s Navigating Complexity: A Practice Guide.

Note: Prerequisite MPPM 520

Project Initiation & Dev

This course provides an in-depth examination of project initiation. Students are introduced to the requirements involved in completing a feasibility study, starting up the project, documenting a business case, and ultimately gaining project approval and funding. Students also learn how to effectively provide terms of reference, appoint the project team, and set up project procedures. The course also examines the importance of clearly defining the high-level project description or product requirements in order to ensure that the strategic and/or operational business needs are met during project execution. This includes what is necessary to meet the specific customer and other stakeholder project needs or expectations and what benefits need to be realized for the project to be deemed successful. Topic discussions include organizational, environmental, and external assumptions, risks, and constraints. Upon completion of the course, students are able to determine what is needed within a business case to justify a project, including a return on investment (ROI), a preliminary budget, and a schedule summary. The coursework aligns with the Project Management Institute’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK).

Project Initiation & Planning

The course provides an in-depth examination of the project initiation and planning phases of the project management lifecycle. Students are introduced to the requirements involved in completing a feasibility study, starting up the project, documenting a business case, and ultimately gaining project approval and funding. Students also learn how to effectively provide terms of reference, appoint the project team, set up project procedures, and construct a detailed project management plan. In applications, plans and priorities always change with the evolving business environment, so students also learn the importance of adaptability in project planning. Upon completion of the course, students will be able to determine what is needed within a business case to justify and plan a project, including a return on investment (ROI), a preliminary budget, and a schedule. The coursework aligns with the Project Management Institute’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK).

Project Initiation & Planning

The course provides an in-depth examination of the project initiation and planning phases of the project management lifecycle. Students are introduced to the requirements involved in completing a feasibility study, starting up the project, documenting a business case, and ultimately gaining project approval and funding. Students also learn how to effectively provide terms of reference, appoint the project team, set up project procedures, and construct a detailed project management plan. In applications, plans and priorities always change with the evolving business environment, so students also learn the importance of adaptability in project planning. Upon completion of the course, students will be able to determine what is needed within a business case to justify and plan a project, including a return on investment (ROI), a preliminary budget, and a schedule. The coursework aligns with the Project Management Institute’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK).

Project Mgmt Fundamental

This course provides an overview of the project management lifecycle and associated processes. Students gain a solid grounding in fundamental project management concepts and learn how to develop a project charter, components of a project management plan, a work breakdown structure (WBS), and a risk management plan. Assignments include the creation of a communications management plan, a realistic schedule, a change management plan, and an on-the-job action plan. Participants learn what is required to monitor and report project statuses, as well as how to successfully close out a project and capture the value of lessons learned. Note: Students who have a Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) or Project Management Professional (PMP) certification in good standing have the option to waive the Project Management Fundamental course. Approved students will instead complete a three-credit elective course.

Note: Foundation course

Project Planning

This course provides an in-depth look at project planning by defining what effective project planning consists of, including setting out the project roadmap and creating the following plans: project plan, resource plan, financial plan, quality plan, acceptance plan, risk management plan, and communications plan. Students learn how to construct a detailed project plan while examining case studies that teach them the essentials of project planning—including that successful project planning must be detailed and organized, and requires full team participation. In applications, plans and priorities always change with the evolving business environment, so students also learn the importance of adaptability in project planning.

Note: Prerequisite: MPPM 520.

Project Risk Management

Risk management is the structured, disciplined approach to dealing with unknown events and how they can affect project performance. This course includes a review of the basic components of risk: the probability of an event and the consequences of the event. The core elements of probability theory are reviewed, as are the basic components of estimation theory. Risk management is assessed from its basic steps: risk identification, risk impact analysis, risk response planning, risk monitoring and control, and recovery. Risk modeling, using Monte Carlo simulation, is fully discussed. Throughout the course, students study case studies that illustrate how risk management is successfully used in a variety of fields. Project management applications are reviewed to show how risk management improves project performance, as measured by reduced cost overruns and schedule delays, as well as how quality and safety issues can be improved by applying risk management techniques. Coursework aligns with the Project Management Institute’s Practice Standard for Project Risk Management.

Note: Prerequisite: MPPM 520