Tribhuvan University
Faculty of Management
Office of the Dean
Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA)
Course Objective
:The main objective of this course is to equip students with the essential skills and knowledge required to manage projects efficiently and effectively. It aims to develop an understanding of project management processes, tools, and methodologies, while enabling students to apply best practices in planning, organizing, and executing projects from start to finish. The course also encourages analytical thinking and teamwork in the context of managing resources, time, and budgets.
Course Description
:This course provides students with foundational knowledge and practical skills in project management. It covers the principles, tools, and techniques used to effectively initiate, plan, execute, monitor, control, and close projects. Students will explore key project management knowledge areas including scope, time, cost, quality, risk, and stakeholder management. Emphasis is placed on aligning project outcomes with organizational goals and delivering value through structured project practices.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Understand the fundamental concepts and phases of project management.
- Make project selection decisions and manage portfolios considering various factors, including organizational strategy, structure, culture, and financial analysis.
- Develop a detailed project plan.
- Analyze project risks and apply appropriate mitigation strategies.
- Demonstrate the ability to manage project teams for high-performance.
- Monitor and control project progress using performance indicators.
- Evaluate project outcomes and apply lessons learned to future projects.
Course Contents:
Lecture hours show the approximate classroom time allocated to each unit.
Unit 1.Introduction to Project Management
- Concept and characteristics of project
- Importance of project
- Program versus project
- Project life cycle
- Determinants of project success
- Project governance
- Project management today: A sociotechnical approach.
Unit 2.TheOrganizational Context: Strategy, Structure and Culture
- Implementing strategy through projects
- Projects and organizational strategy
- Stakeholder management
- Project management structures
- Key considerations for the right project management structure
- Concept of organizational culture
- Implications of organizational culture for organizing projects.
Unit 3.Project Selection and Portfolio Management
- Project Selection – Introduction to project selection
- Approaches to project screening and selection: Checklist model, simplified scoring models, the analytical hierarchy process, and profile models
- Financial models: payback period, net present value, discounted payback, and internal rate of return
- Choosing a project selection approach
- Project Portfolio Management – Concept of project portfolio management
- Objectives and initiatives
- The portfolio selection process
- Developing a proactive portfolio
- Keys to successful project portfolio management
- Problems in implementing portfolio management.
Unit 4.Risk Management
- Concept of project risk
- Risk management process: Risk identification, analysis of probability and consequences, risk mitigation strategies, and control & documentation
- Project risk management:
Unit 5.Cost Estimation and Budgeting
- Cost management: Direct versus indirect costs, recurring versus nonrecurring costs, fixed versus variable costs, normal versus expedited costs
- Cost estimation: Cost estimation methods
- learning curves in cost estimation
- Problems with cost estimation
- Creating a project budget: top-down budgeting, bottom-up budgeting, and activity-based costing
- Developing budget contingencies.
Unit 6.Developing a Project Plan
- Developing the project network
- From work package to network
- Constructing a project network
- Activity-on-node (AON) fundamentals
- Using the forward and backward pass information
- Practical considerations
- Extended network techniques to come closer to reality.
Unit 7.Managing Project Teams
- The five-stage team development model
- Situational factors affecting team development
- Building high-performance project teams
- Managing virtual project teams
- Project team pitfalls.
Unit 8.Project Evaluation and Control
- Concept of project evaluation and control
- General model of control cycle
- Monitoring project performance
- Earned value management
- Using earned value to manage a portfolio of projects
- Issues in the effective use of earned value management
- Human factors in project evaluation and control.
Unit 9.Project Closeout and Termination
- Introduction
- Types of project termination
- Natural termination – the closeout process
- Early termination for projects
- Preparing final project report.
Suggested Readings:
Larson, E. W., & Gray, C. F. (2018). Project management: the managerial process (7th ed.). New York, USA: McGraw Hill. Pinto, J. K. (2020). Project management: Achieving competitive advantage (5th ed.). London, UK: Pearson.