Master of ScienceProject Management

This course provides training in business writing, interpersonal communication and oral communication to prepare the student to be a more effective professional communicator. The student works on projects in the classroom that offer practical applications of concepts covered in the textbook, including case study examples of poorly executed business communication that the student revises and improves. The student also writes a proposal and a report and prepares a plan to manage a project team kickoff meeting.

Successful project managers are adept at leading. Leadership, however, is a complex undertaking that requires knowledge and understanding of a number of competencies. This course builds these competencies. Focusing on organizational leadership, the course explores and develops skills and knowledge needed to lead organizational transformation and change, negotiate conflict resolution, build relationships and human capital, and instill business ethics and professional codes of conduct.

This course introduces the student to project management knowledge areas and processes used by project managers to successfully deliver their project on time, within budget and to the expectations of project stakeholders. The student works on real-world examples, problems and case studies as individuals and in groups. An emphasis is placed on hard and soft skills, and the tools and techniques used by project managers to initiate, plan, execute, monitor/control, and successfully close projects in typical project environments associated with waterfall and agile methodologies.

This course is designed to help the student prepare for a career in management, building on their technical and professional background and education. The field of business analysis is a fast-growing profession that offers a global certification. Business analysis is a key function on a project team that promotes understanding of what the customers want the project team to build for them; it is essential to project success. Through the use of real life project examples, the student gains expertise in planning, eliciting, writing, and managing customer requirements for IT and other types of projects.

Using real-life project examples and scenarios, the student will learn how to reduce negative risks exposure and understand opportunities uncertainty can provide in projects by using effective risk management practices such as risk planning, identification and control. The student will design a risk management plan and learn how to prepare a Risk Register. The student will also learn how to plan a procurement, understand different procurement methods and types of contracts, find a vendor, write a Request for Proposal and apply these concepts, tools and techniques to actual projects.

This course will focus on the production of core project management deliverables necessary to successfully navigate today’s complex projects with an introduction to current project management best practices. In this learning forum, the student will develop a project from the ground up. This is a comprehensive, semester-long project scoping, budgeting, scheduling and control course where practiced theory is the platform for learning. The course objective is to provide a practical hands-on learning experience that builds on the fundamentals established in PMGT 510-Principles of Project Management. The focus of this course is to demonstrate the applied project management artifacts to meet stakeholder expectations within the triple constraints of scope, schedule and cost while also exploring impacts to other key factors such as quality and risk.

The student will be introduced to how quality improvement techniques and quality management can be used to support organizational initiatives such as projects and operations. This includes quality planning, quality assurance and quality control. Statistical topics will also be discussed and linked to the Lean Six Sigma methodology to improve quality, productivity, and the competitive position. This course will also cover the relationship and overlap of project management and quality management using standards from the Project Management Institute and the International Standards Organization.

This course will provide the student with a solid understanding of emotional intelligence and its principles and how it can be developed in each project leader. The student will also learn and apply a variety of strategies to develop their own emotional intelligence and to enhance their own self-awareness and self-management, along with developing relationship management skills to create successful project outcomes. Throughout the course, the student will also gain an understanding of how to use emotional intelligence to create a positive team environment and learn techniques to develop an emotionally intelligent organization. Through this course, the student will learn best practices in developing their self-motivation and gain an understanding of how change can be created using emotional intelligence. The EQ I 2.0 Emotional Intelligence Assessment is offered as a component of this course providing the student with a unique insight into their current level of emotional intelligence skills.

This course provides to the student the features, benefits, and practices of using Agile Project Management with Scrum Methodology and that this approach differs from traditional project management at the project level and enterprise level.

This course provides the student with hands on experiential learning using Agile Scrum as a member of a team. The team develops a vision statement and user stories for a real application. The team then implements the product that is specified using Agile Scrum Framework and all the standard Agile Scrum ceremonies such as Product Backlog, Sprints, Sprint Planning, Release Planning, Daily Standups, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospectives. Team members play the actual roles of Product Owner, ScrumMaster, Developers, Testers, etc. The course produces an actual working viable product that can be demonstrated to stakeholders. The team consists of a mix of graduate students from Project Management, ISEM, Computer Science, Analytics, and Learning Technologies.

This course provides the student with a solid foundation of agile frameworks that have been scaled to the enterprise synchronizing alignment, collaboration, and delivery for large numbers of teams. One of the more popular enterprise agile frameworks called the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) will be studied and analyzed. This framework has been a proven framework for enterprises applying integrated principles and practices for Lean, Agile, Systems Thinking, and DevOps. In addition to SAFe, the course provides the student with an overview of other popular frameworks for scaling the enterprise, such as: The Disciplined Agile (DA), the Large-Scaled Scrum (LeSS), Nexus, Scrum@Scale, and Scrum of Scrum (SoS).

This level course provides the student with key strategies in agile lean product development that will help the student streamline new product development processes that will decrease time-to-market, reduce waste, enhance product quality, and fully integrate new product designs into a lean production environment. This course uses principles rooted in the iconic Toyota Production system.

This course provides the student with innovative practices that need to be followed in order to transform a company or organization from a traditional waterfall mindset to more of an Agile Lean mindset and culture. Agile Lean Change management (not the typical change management talked about in project management relative to scope, budget, etc.) is one method that is being used successfully in the industry to move organizations from a more traditional mindset to Agile Lean. A transformation to Agile Lean relies significantly on the leaders in the organizations to facilitate the change. In conjunction with this course, the student learns the responsibilities and techniques of the Agile Coach role, which has become a key role in the industry to facilitate change. The student will study the importance of leader standard work, visual management techniques, and methods for leading change. This course will also offer the student an opportunity to learn about and use various Lean tools and how to lead using these tools. The student will also gain insights into strategy deployment, leading Lean teams and sustaining a Lean transformation.

This course provides the student an overview of the types of Project Management Office (PMO) structures, the key elements of each, and the key aspects of how to initiate and sustain a business-centered and value-driven PMO.

This course allows the student to pursue an area of interest that is within the broad scope of project management. A faculty member supervises this study.