Project
ManagementCornell

Certificate Program

On the surface, project management seems straightforward. However, at best, only 80% of projects end up being economically successful. The remaining 20% of projects usually cost more than estimated, run late, or fail to satisfy goals or meet objectives.

In this course, Linda Nozick, Professor and Director of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell, shares clear, understandable, and practical methods for achieving better results. You will practice breaking down a project into pieces that can be scheduled, tracked, and controlled.

While this is not a prep course for a project management certification, it will be quite valuable for anyone who is interested in pursuing one. This program will equip you with the concepts, tools, and language of project management that can be applied to any size and type of project.

The course is not specific to any formal project management software (e.g. Microsoft Project), but will require that learners have Microsoft Excel with its free Solver add-on installed.

Research shows that a high percentage of projects take significantly longer than expected and cost more than anticipated. Moreover, if you ask people for an estimate of how long a task will take them to complete, their estimate will usually be overly optimistic.

Sometimes, if you bring in extra people to help with a task, that actually slows down progress instead of accelerating it. Why is this so? And what can you do about it? In this course, from Linda K. Nozick, Director and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell, you will examine these questions. Students will identify strategies to integrate resource availability constraints into project planning, scheduling, and control.

This course is designed for project managers who seek better practical results for aligning available resources with tasks and bringing activities to completion on time. Students will examine compression strategies for bringing a project that's running late back on track and will explore how to handle common types of project creep, such as handling customer requests that require extra time, and working with team members who decide independently to invest extra effort in a task.

This course combines a focus on formal project management mechanisms with an emphasis on the human element: what can project managers do to resolve issues brought about in the normal course of working with customers, team members, and stakeholders?

You are required to have completed the following course or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

• Organizing the Project and Its Components

Risk management is a key function in project management. Project managers should be able to apply a variety of risk-management tools in their work, including performing risk identification, quantification, response, monitoring, and control.

In this course from Professor and Director of Civil and Environmental Engineering Linda K. Nozick, you will examine the nature and types of project risk and learn to apply specific mitigation strategies.

You'll have an opportunity to analyze a past project you've worked on and assess what the risks might have been and why. Then you'll analyze the outcomes: Did the known risks come to fruition? What were the leading indicators? What could they have done for contingency planning at the beginning? By asking these questions, you'll then be able to perform several calculations to compute the probability that a project will finish on time.

You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

• Organizing the Project and Its Components
• Planning and Managing Resources

Project managers need to keep things on track by keeping a close eye on the scope of and resources invested in a project. Forecasting, adjusting, and applying corrective measures during the project lifecycle are also key functions of a project manager. This set of processes and protocols that help ensure project success is called earned value management (EVM). Every project manager should have at least a working knowledge of EVM and its theoretical underpinnings.

This course is designed for project managers who seek an introduction to EVM to achieve better practical results for implementing project controls, including financial controls and schedule controls. The calculations presented here are meant for any experienced project manager, including those who are not engineers, to apply to any size project. Students in this course will be most successful if they have a foundational understanding of standard project management tools and processes including project networks, project budgets and schedules, and work breakdown structures.

You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

• Organizing the Project and Its Components
• Planning and Managing Resources
• Assessing, Managing, and Mitigating Project Risk

In traditional project management, we tend to make assumptions: the customer knows precisely what they want, or the team's workflow and tasks will go according to plan and in sequence.

Practically speaking, this is rarely the case. Sometimes the customer doesn't know what they need until they see an early iteration of your team's work and can provide feedback. Because of this, work is usually done incrementally. We must build flexibility, even agility, into the model in order to succeed.

This course is designed for project managers who want to get better practical results with adaptive approaches to projects. Students in this course will be most successful if they have a foundational understanding of traditional project management tools and processes including project networks, budgets and schedules.

You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

• Organizing the Project and Its Components
• Planning and Managing Resources
• Assessing, Managing, and Mitigating Project Risk
• Using Earned Value Management for Project Managers

Symposium sessions feature three days of live, highly interactive virtual Zoom sessions that will explore today’s most pressing topics. The Project Management Symposium offers you a unique opportunity to engage in real-time conversations with peers and experts from the Cornell community and beyond. Using the context of your own experiences, you will take part in reflections and small-group discussions to build on the skills and knowledge you have gained from your courses.

Join us for the next Symposium, in which we’ll share experiences from across industries, inspiring dialogue around best practices, innovation, and the future of project management. You will support your coursework through discussion and application of your knowledge, exploring pressing challenges and trends. By participating in relevant and engaging with eCornell classmates, you will discover a variety of perspectives and build connections.

Upcoming Symposium: January 28, 29, and 30, 2025 11AM – 1PM ET

• Tuesday, January 28, 2025 11:00 AM ET to 1:00 PM ET
  • Virtual Team Strategies for Project Success
• Wednesday, January 29, 2025 11:00 AM ET to 1:00 PM ET
  • Leveraging the Agile Methodology
• Thursday, January 30, 2025 11:00 AM ET to 1:00 PM ET
  • Effective Project Resourcing

All sessions are held on Zoom.

Future dates are subject to change. You may participate in as many sessions as you wish. Attending Symposium sessions is not required to successfully complete any certificate program. Once enrolled in your courses, you will receive information about upcoming events. Accessibility accommodations will be available upon request.