NGEK10027U Project Management and Planning

Rapid change in our professional environments has seriously challenged traditional ways of organizing work in particular when it comes to managing change and innovation processes. Instead of traditional organisations the efforts to create change and facilitate innovation processes is increasingly organized in “hybrid” organisations. These hybrid social systems has over the past decades come to be known as “projects” – temporary set-ups that allow interventions, changes and innovations to be organized in a temporal, results/task/goal budget oriented way that allow project makers and other change agents in a variety of organisations to plan and reach their goals. Projects Management and Planning or in brief PMP  aims at giving the students’ knowledge, skills and competencies needed to create initiate and create innovation and change in their professional environments. The course aims to give the candidates the ability to develop and participate in different types of innovation and research projects, to initiate fund raising, to understand and analyse stakeholders, to understand and plan for handling risks and contingencies. The course look at project management and planning both from a project managers view as well as from a project participant point of view. The course addresses both internal organization project as well as projects involving third parties. The course gives an introduction to how ICT based tools can be used in management and communication in project environments.

The course covers different types of planning tools. The PMP course builds primarily on the strand of management and organizational sociology that has is known as Project Management studies. PMP deals with the knowledge, skills and competencies that is needed to organize and carry out project that can develop desired futures. The course then follows the “project odyssey” – the different timeline steps that project life is organized in. From the idea generation, over the sketching of the budget, finding the funds, writing the project proposal, getting the green light, kicking off the project, analyzing stakeholder relations, anticipating risk and contingencies until finally evaluating and completing the project within the time and budget.  The course introduces the basics of project work and what distinguishes it from other modes of work organization. The course introduces an approach that is systems as well as holisticly oriented. PMP covers important aspects of project management including a stakeholder theory, theories of contingencies and risks as well as network, communication and motivation theory in order to provide the conceptual and theoretical foundation for the project PMP tools.  Lectures (LEC) and exercises (EXC) are the cornerstones in every session. Student engagement in the session is an important part of the course. This is achieved in particular through the exercises and through the oral assignment at the status seminar (PAE). The course provides 2 cases that will be used in the exercises that all sessions will contain. PMP deals with the knowledge, skills and competencies that is needed to organize and carry out project that can develop desired futures.