Learn the fundamentals and best practices of project management through hands-on, real-world exercises.

Discover ways to apply effective leadership strategies, improve your interpersonal communication, become more influential, help guide your staff through change, and more. Gain the management tools that help to ensure projects are delivered on time and within budget.

The 2023 cohort has started. Stay tuned to this web page for the 2024 dates or email us at cstudies@unbc.ca to be added to our interest list.  

The StrongerBC future skills grant (FSG) is here to help you pursue the future you want. The grant will cover up to $3,500 of eligible costs for your short-term skills training at public universities and colleges in BC.

This course is eligible for FSG funding in semesters when the FSG is available. To confirm if funding is available at this time, and for information on how to apply for funding please access the StrongerBC future skills grant web page. 

This Certificate consists of three courses, taken together:

1. Project Management Fundamentals

12:00pm - 6:00pm (PST)
Instructor: Brian Egan

In this course, you will learn the fundamentals and best practices of project management through hands-on, real-world exercises. Ensure that you are delivering business value by assessing a project’s business case, identifying stakeholders and their relationship to your project, capturing product requirements, and establishing quality metrics to guide the development of your product and reassess the business case.

Define product scope to provide clarity for project delivery and create a work breakdown structure to define project scope for the team. Manage your project within the planned budget and schedule by managing change and identifying and managing risks, assumptions, and constraints. Track the delivery of business value and close projects out cleanly.

By the end of this course, you should have gained a good understanding and experience of the core competencies that make a successful project manager.

This course qualifies you for the following PMI® Professional Development Units (PDUs):

• Leadership = 4
• Strategic and Business Management = 3
• Technical Project Management = 14
• Total = 21

Learning outcomes

• Articulate the relevance of core project management competencies.
• Identify key project goals and assumptions and set the stage for value delivery.
• Understand how to identify stakeholders and assess how to engage with them during the project.
• Meet stakeholder informational needs by creating an actionable communication plan.
• Articulate product scope as part of the charter.
• Become familiar with the process of eliciting and capturing requirements.
• Create the WBS and dictionary that would deliver the scope in the project charter.
• Perform a more detailed and systematic assessment of risk.
• Articulate guiding quality characteristics for the project.
• Sequence activities, create schedule, and estimate the cost of the project.
• Manage change in projects.
• Track value delivery in projects.
• Understand the basics of a project retrospective.

2. Project Management, Leadership and Communications

12:00pm - 6:00pm (PST)
Instructor: Steve Lemmex

Managing a successful project involves more than schedules, templates, and paperwork. It requires the application of strong interpersonal management skills to work effectively with people in a variety of roles.

The skills you'll learn in this course will enable you to apply effective leadership strategies, improve your interpersonal communication, become more influential, help guide your staff through change, deal with conflict and practice ethical principles during the entire project management process.

With the aid of the hands-on case study exercises, you'll learn to create a motivating team atmosphere and ultimately manage your project successfully.

This course qualifies you for the following PMI® Professional Development Units (PDUs):

• Leadership = 7
• Technical Project Management = 14
• Total = 21

Learning outcomes

• Manage stakeholders and teams
• Assess and apply leadership styles
• Improve communication
• Enhance influence and power bases
• Motivate team members
• Lead effective project teams
• Coach team members
• Practice change management
• Manage individual and team conflict
• Practice ethical project management
• Create a Leadership Development Plan

3. Schedule and Cost Control 

12:00pm - 6:00pm (PST)
Instructor: Alan Goodbrand

In this course, you will learn the skills you need to effectively establish and manage a realistic schedule and detailed budget. Through hands-on exercises, you'll learn to develop an integrated budget and schedule while monitoring project performance during execution. 

You will be introduced to analytical techniques, including creation of a work breakdown structure, network diagramming, dependency analysis, critical path determination, three-point estimating, and assessment of resource needs and availability.

You will learn the management tools that help to ensure projects are delivered on time and within budget, as well as the importance of creating baselines for the project schedules and budgets.

To communicate your project's progress to stakeholders, you'll learn to use earned value analysis and other reporting techniques. Hands-on exercises will demonstrate the mechanisms and importance of formal change control procedures.

This course qualifies you for the following PMI® Professional Development Units (PDUs):

• Strategic and Business Management = 6
• Technical Project Management = 15
• Total = 21

Learning outcomes

• How to develop a balanced plan
• Network diagramming methodologies
• Approaches to identifying a project's critical path
• Time and cost estimating techniques
• Scheduling techniques
• How to include various types of cost and expenditures into budgets
• Practical approaches to budget development
• Efficient ways to gauge and report progress using earned value analysis

Training follows the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), by the Project Management Institute, and is taught by experienced PMP®-certified instructors.

Offered in partnership with Global Knowledge.