Imagine you work as a mechanical engineer for a $2 billion company. You are called into the CTO’s office and told that they want you to oversee the implementation of the newly designed bionic prosthetics into two manufacturing facilities located in the southern part of Shanghai, China. What will you do? How will you coordinate the work of the people both here in the US and China?
Imagine that you work for a civil and environmental engineering company. You get a call from a good friend who works for the State of Utah. She informs you your company has won the contract to install the deep foundation high-capacity piers and piles to bring the Utah State Capitol Building up to earthquake codes, as part of the Utah State Capitol Renovation project. What will you do? How will you ensure that you will be successful?
What if you knew that there was a powerful set of tools that would improve your abilities to plan, implement, and manage activities in such a way as to increase the accomplishment of specific organizational objectives? Well, there is. That set of tools is called project management! So, this is a great time to be taking a course on project management.
Project management is more than just a set of tools; it is way of thinking about work and creating value, and a results-oriented management style. One of the principal means by which we successfully change our world involves defining desirable goals, planning carefully, pulling together the right people, in the right places, at the right times, and proceeding systematically toward achieving those goals until we succeed in reaching them.
I have decades of experience as a project manager in technical organizations. With my background in mechanical engineering, I’ve lead projects as small as planting my garden at home, to million-dollar space projects and everything in between. I’ve used project management in my humanitarian effort supporting learning in remote villages of Ghana. Learning fundamental project management skills has helped me, my group, and my organization be more successful. And, as can be seen from my life’s experiences, it doesn’t just have to be at work or in engineering!
The overall objective in SWE’s Project Management eLearning Series is to help you understand fundamental project management good practices that have been identified from many decades of practice and research, and to help you gain some knowledge and skill in the use of those practices to make your projects as successful as they can be. In the project management course, you will learn skills you can immediately use in the specific areas of initiating a project using a project charter, developing budget and tracking that budget using earned value management and performing and tracking risks through risk management. Each course, while they can sit by themselves, as a whole, supports the critical tools you will need to be successful in an easily digestible format and immediately use. Ultimately, I want you to reach your full potential, whether as an engineer, manager, or individual. These skills will help you do just that!
About SWE’s Project Management eLearning Series:
Designed to be both highly interactive and self-directed, SWE’s new 4-part eLearning Project Management series designed by an engineer, for engineers to help build foundational and tangible project management skills—at your own pace. It’ll also earn you credit: each course is worth 0.1 CEUs, for a series total of 0.4 CEUs.
- Part 1: Project Management Overview
- Part 2: Project Charters
- Part 3: Risk Management
- Part 4: Earned Value Management Systems
What will you be able to do after completing this series?
While part one gives you a general overview of project management, the remainder of this interactive eLearning series gives you tangible skills and a thorough understanding of project management tools, resulting in a strong project management foundation and confidence in your project management capabilities.
This course is based upon work partially supported by the generosity of Cummins.
Related Content:
- SWE Members Balance Work and eLearning
- Learn More About SWENext — SWE’s K-12 Outreach Program!
- The Mentoring Journey of a SWE Global Affiliate Member
Author(s) Information
-
Dr. Angela Trego, PE, PMP, FHEA
