Project Management
Welcome all of you to my project management class!
You have picked one of the hottest topics. According to a 2001 publication, the annual
spending on project was $2.3 Trillion in the U.S. and $10 Trillion worldwide. That’s
Trillion with a “T”. Projects accounted for 25% of the U.S. and the world’s gross
domestic product. Given that amount of money invested, how the projects performed? In
the IT field alone, only 16.2% IT projects were successful; 31% projects were cancelled
even before completion. The world of project was in CHAOS! What went wrong? What
was the silver bullet?
Fifty percent of the Fortune 500 companies have embraced the project management
process through formal project offices to improve the enterprise bottom line. The number
of certified project managers has increased from 1000 in year 1993 to over 340 thousands
in year 2009. A good project manager shepherds project team and tasks around obstacles
while constantly aiming at the finishing line. There is a constant quest for highly skilled
project managers!
Project Management Professional is the #5 out of 15 Top-Paying Certifications for 2016
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5. Project Management Professional (PMP®)
$116,094
The fifth highest-paying and the first that is business-related instead of technical-related, the PMP certification
was created and is administered by the Project Management Institute (PMI®) and is the most recognized project
management certification available. There are more than 658,000 PMPs worldwide.
The PMP certification exam tests five areas relating to the life cycle of a project: initiating, planning, executing,
monitoring and controlling, and closing. PMP certification validates expertise running any kind of project and is
not specialized into sub types, such as manufacturing, construction or IT.
To become certified, individuals must have 35 hours of PMP-related training. In addition, those who have less than
a bachelor's degree must have 7,500 hours of project management experience, while those who have a bachelor's
degree or higher need 4,500 hours. To maintain PMP certification, continuing education credits are required each
year. PMP certification is another that requires years of planning and effort.
How can this course help you to be successful in the world managed by projects? The
course is designed to lead you into the project management system. The course will
provide a basic project management map and show you how to interpret it. The course
will show the knowledge areas, process groups, tools and interconnects among them. The
course will give you opportunities to apply the project management knowledge in a class
project. At the completion of the class, you will be enabled to explore and conquer more
sophisticated project management challenges. My sincere hope is that some day, you will
become one of the highly skilled project managers to help the project success rate.
“Plan-Do-Check-Followup-Close”… If you haven’t heard about it, you will hear it in
the class, again and again. It is what project managers do. Our plan is the syllabus. We
will do it in 10 weeks. We will have weekly check points. We will follow up our actions
Project Management
Dr. Lin Zhou
on weekly basis. We will close the course through forum topics, assignments, quizzes,
project presentations, and a final exam. Yes there will be quizzes and exams. Our
learning tool is the Marist College ILEARN website: http://ilearn.marist.edu. The
software, textbook and media requirements are provided in the next page.
I am an executive project manager at IBM and a certified PMP by Project Management
Institution (PMI). You can reach me at lin.zhou@marist.edu.
Looking forward to working with you!
Sincerely
Dr. Lin Zhou
Project Management
Dr. Lin Zhou
Instructor Bio
Dr. Lin Zhou has over 10 years of experience of managing large complex global
initiatives. He earned the PhD from the University of Glasgow UK and the Master
Certificate from the Business School of the George Washington University US. Dr. Zhou
has increased responsibilities in the top U.S. hi-tech companies. He is currently the
Program Director of Cognitive Education Solutions at IBM T J Watson Research Center,
leveraging deep analytics, cognitive and Watson capabilities to create innovative Smarter
Education solutions. Dr. Zhou's successes are recognized by many awards.
Project Management
Dr. Lin Zhou