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google-project-management-course

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Google Project Management Course — Personal Notes

Author(s): User’s consolidated notes from the Google Project Management Professional Certificate (Coursera) Date: Course notes, no explicit publish date One-line summary: Complete personal notes spanning the 6-course Google PM Certificate — traditional/waterfall PM end-to-end, full Scrum/Agile track, and a real-world capstone.

Key Takeaways

  1. Six-course curriculum — Foundations → Initiation → Planning → Execution → Agile → Applying PM in the Real World. Each has its own course overview hub page in concepts/.
  2. Traditional PM lifecycle is taught as five phases: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring & controlling, closing. The course folds monitoring into execution.
  3. Agile is treated as a mindset grounded in the 4 values / 12 principles of the Agile Manifesto, materialized primarily through Scrum. Kanban, XP, Lean, and scaled frameworks (SAFe, LeSS, DAD, Spotify, Scrum of Scrums) are introduced but secondary.
  4. Heavy emphasis on the “soft” side of PM — stakeholder management, influencing, inclusive/ethical leadership, communication plans, team dynamics (Tuckman), coaching vs managing.
  5. ~30 named frameworks/tools are introduced and each has been filed as its own concept page so projects elsewhere in this wiki can link directly (SMART, OKR, RACI, Triple Constraint, WBS, Critical Path, Gantt, 3-point/PERT estimation, risk register, probability-impact matrix, ROAM, DMAIC, PDCA, UAT, Tuckman stages, Conger’s 4 influencing steps, Bacon’s power sources, Agile Manifesto, VUCA, Scrum, INVEST user stories, value roadmap, Influencer change framework, TCREI for AI prompting, etc.).

Detailed Notes

Course map

  • Course 1 — Foundations of PM. Traditional/program/portfolio/operational/Agile roles. See course-1-foundations-of-pm.
  • Course 2 — Initiate a Project. Goals, scope, deliverables, success criteria, stakeholder analysis, project charter. See course-2-project-initiation.
  • Course 3 — Project Planning. Kick-off, tasks & milestones, WBS, Gantt, budget, procurement (NDA/RFP/SoW), risk management, communication planning, documentation. See course-3-project-planning.
  • Course 4 — Project Execution. Tracking, status reports, change & issue management, quality management (QA vs QC), continuous improvement (DMAIC/PDCA), data-informed decision-making, leadership & influencing, team dynamics (Tuckman), ethical/inclusive leadership, effective meetings, closing & retrospectives. See course-4-project-execution.
  • Course 5 — Agile PM. Manifesto, VUCA, Scrum (roles/events/artifacts), user stories, effort estimation, value roadmap, change management, scaled Agile, coaching. See course-5-agile-project-management.
  • Course 6 — Applying PM in the Real World. Capstone — stakeholder mgmt, 3-point estimation, evaluation presentations, AI for PM (TCREI). See course-6-applying-pm-in-real-world.

Structure of the source document

The document is tagged with #phase-N and course-slug hashtags throughout (#project-initiation, #project-planning, #project-execution, #agile-project-management, #applying-project-management-in-the-real-world). The wiki’s concept pages mirror these phase boundaries.

Gaps in the source (filled from canonical knowledge)

  • 3-point estimation formulas. The source references the Triangular and Beta (PERT) Distribution images but the images are empty placeholders. Filled on three-point-estimation with the standard formulas: Triangular E = (O + M + P) / 3, Beta/PERT E = (O + 4M + P) / 6.
  • Power/interest grid. Source references images for the Mendelow Power Grid. Filled on stakeholder-analysis with the standard 2×2 (High Power/High Interest = Manage Closely; High Power/Low Interest = Keep Satisfied; Low Power/High Interest = Keep Informed; Low Power/Low Interest = Monitor).
  • RACI matrix image referenced but empty. The prose definition on raci-chart is complete; image omitted.
  • Stakeholder buy-in section is thin in the source. Noted as an open question on stakeholder-analysis.
  • Course 1 “Foundations” content is minimal in the source (role listings only). The course-1-foundations-of-pm page reflects only what was present, flagged as partial.

Contradictions / Tensions

None detected — this is a self-consistent curriculum source and the first ingest.

Wiki Pages Updated

All pages in this list are created by this ingest (first ingest for this vault).

Source & course hubs:

Initiation concepts:

Planning concepts:

Execution concepts:

Agile concepts:

Meta: index, log, overview

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