Developing a Project Management Curriculum

The role of project manager varies from organization to organization and within organizations themselves. From adding project management responsibilities to existing supervisory, management, or technical roles to dedicated project management responsibility for multi-million dollar projects, the burden on project managers is significant. There are ways to successfully develop a project management curriculum to meet your company's unique requirements and boost project manager contribution.

The first step is to identify the people who have project management responsibility now. Define their roles and identify the hats they wear. Consider the complexity, magnitude, cross-functional orientation, and importance of projects they manage. Understand their level of competence and skill at performing project management (PM) tasks. Reflect on their success in previous PM roles. Assessment tools are available to help with this process.

Once you have good insight into your existing project managers it's time to consider the topics available in a project management curriculum:

• Introduction to project management
• Project life cycle
• Initiating the project
• Requirements
• Project planning
• Risk management
• Estimating
  
• Scheduling and cost control
  
• Execution and control
  
• Quality
  
• Project management tools
  
• Closing
  
• Collaboration
  
• Understanding stakeholder needs
  
• Sales skills for project managers
  
• Problem solving and conflict management
  
• Communication
  
• Managing change
  
• Business finance and strategy

The next step is to understand the detail that each of these project management topics represents and then rank them in order of importance and required proficiency for project managers in your organization. Then based on student population, time, and budget constraints, a learning program can be designed. Typical programs consist of core curriculums, electives, and performance support tools.