Designing Project Information Hubs for Program and Project Performance

This course is a part of Program Management and the Art of Communication, a 5-course Professional Certificate series from edX.

Communication complexity rapidly increases even with a few program or project team members and stakeholders. Project managers are the “hub” of their project communication. Program managers are the “hub” of their organization communication to meet strategic goals. Managing these networks is essential whether you manage traditional programs or projects. Or agile programs and projects.

Program managers have two additional challenges. First, they must empower their project managers with skills, processes, and assets for information management. Second they must sense and integrate the key performance data to ensure strategic objectives are met, and project processes are improved across the program.

As you learned from the Project Management Institute, Inc.'s (PMI)"A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge" (PMBOK) when preparing for the PMP exam, the number of communication channels grows geometrically with team size. If there are “n” communicators, then the number of communication channels is n*(n-1)/2. That means five team members have 10 channels, but 10 team members have 45 channels to manage. That’s over four times as many channels for doubling the size of a small team!

If you imagine each communication channel as a radio station, you can see how quickly the program or project manager can be overwhelmed with all the information coming in. As you gain more program or project management experience, what you learned for the PMP certification or similar professional certification is not sufficient. This course will help you go beyond the knowledge you needed to become a certified project manager.

This applies to all project leaders. Whether you are a just getting started as a Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM), or a seasoned Project Management Professional (PMP), you need to manage a lot of information transfer and exchange. And this challenge is even greater for agilists, like certified scrum masters (CSMs) and PMI-ACP holders. No matter the scaling methods, having timely information is critical for agile teams at scale, who need to move fast without driving up overhead in team-to-team communication as technical scope changes.

In this program and project management training course, you will learn effective and efficient project management tools to receive and transmit program and project-level information. Program managers and project managers need to ensure that information flows freely and where the information can do the most benefit. This online course will teach you how to build communication networks for your program or project’s success. Gain 10 professional development units (PDUs) while sharpening your program or project management skills.

What you'll learn

• Explain how to build a communication network for a program or project.
• Describe different methods to manage the information flow in communication networks.
• Create and test feedback methods to ensure that information is being transmitted accurately.
• Analyze the information needs of the members in a program or project’s communication network.