Description

The Fundamental Project Management Simulation is similar to SimProject, but more complex and longer. Using this simulation students learn the fundamental tools and techniques of planning and managing a project from beginning to end. Good project managers understand how to use a Project Charter, Work Breakdown Structure, Network Diagram and Gantt (Bar) Chart in both planning and managing a project. With the Fundamental Simulation students learn what managing a project is like as they make real decisions and get real feedback as they manage a simulated real-life project using real-life people within a real-life company. The simulation powered learning is practical, engaging, intense and challenging. It’s designed to give students the practice and confidence they need to apply their new skills on the job. This simulated project consists of 20 tasks spread over 20 weeks (iterations) with 20 potential team members to staff the project.

The Fundamental Project Management simulation is a dynamic decision-driven simulation designed to replicate the ongoing decisions a project manager makes on a typical project from the project planning phase through the execution, monitoring, controlling and closing phases. The simulation was designed by a distinguished team of project managers, program managers, and technical and business leaders with over a century of combined experience.

Students learn through a computer simulation of real life people, a real life company, and a real life project. The learning comes from doing; making mistakes, experiencing successes, and repetition. Each project unfolds differently depending on student decisions and on random unplanned events. Our simulations do not have students input decisions and then tell them that it was a right or wrong decision with an explanation like many simulations. Students see the results of their decisions similar to what they would see on a real project by giving them time based feedback and using dynamically updated project control reports. The feedback might be a negative impact on quality, or a positive impact on task progress, or it could be feedback received simulated days or weeks later from a team member or stakeholder.

Our simulations are very realistic, including the number of simulation weeks executed. Some simulations only have a few executions which doesn’t give the students enough practice to really learn project management. Our simulations require student teams plan, execute, monitor, control, and close the project. The project objectives are the same as real-life as the student has a budget, schedule and scope they must meet to be successful. Our simulations also have a quality objective to meet, which most project management simulations don’t offer. As a result, our simulation forces students to consider the real life trade-offs between scope, cost, schedule and quality with every decision they make. Balancing these four objectives with the fifth driver, the productivity of the project team members, turns the “iron” triangle into the project pentagon made up of what we call the five key project objectives (scope, cost, schedule, quality and team productivity). What drives the results of the simulation and determines the student success in meeting the scope, cost, schedule and quality objectives are the decisions they make as they execute the project each week.

The Fundamental Project Management simulation is also available as part of our Project Management Fundamentals SPL 3 days class.