Project Planning, Communication, and Leadership

This unit develops foundational project-planning skills, stakeholder analysis, and practical communication and leadership techniques needed to launch and organize a small-to-moderate project. Students learn to build work breakdown structures, identify constraints and risks, create audience-driven communication plans, and apply personal productivity and negotiation strategies in a project context to prepare for project execution and monitoring in subsequent units.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze project scope by identifying drivers, supporters, observers, constraints, and risks, and produce a documented work breakdown structure (WBS) and basic risk register
• Apply audience and communication planning skills to develop an audience list, select appropriate media, craft messages that engage stakeholders, and prepare a written project-progress report
• Demonstrate personal productivity and project-organization techniques by calculating hourly income, prioritizing daily tasks, separating work and personal boundaries, and setting short- and long-range project goals
• Evaluate and apply leadership, delegation, negotiation, and mindful-technology strategies to improve team collaboration, audience engagement, and ethical decision-making during project initiation