Management Science (MGSC) 419

Overview

This course aims to achieve the following objectives.

• Provide an overview of project management concepts, characteristics, and environments.
• Discuss the importance of project definition and help students learn about important project definition tools such as the project overview statement (POS), requirements definition, and use cases.
• Teach fundamental planning and scheduling techniques useful for project managers such as work breakdown structures (WBS), critical path method (CPM), and Gantt charts.
• Introduce the importance of risk assessment within project management.
• Examine important monitoring and control tools and techniques such as earned value analysis and milestone trend charts.
• Discuss the importance of change control in traditional project management.
• Examine different project management approaches applied in different contexts.
• Discuss the importance of post-implementation audits.

Outline

MGSC 419 consists of 10 lessons, as outlined below:

• Lesson 1: Studying Project Management
• Lesson 2: Defining Projects and Project Management
• Lesson 3: Project Management and the System Development Life Cycles
• Lesson 4: The Scoping Process Group
• Lesson 5: The Planning Process Group
• Lesson 6: The Launching Process Group
• Lesson 7: The Monitoring & Controlling, and Closing Process Groups
• Lesson 8: Putting it All Together: Traditional Project Management
• Lesson 9: Putting it All Together: Agile Project Management
• Lesson 10: Putting it All Together: Extreme Project Management

Evaluation

To receive credit in MGSC 419, you must receive a course composite grade of at least “D” (50 percent) and a grade of at least 50 percent on the Final Examination. The weighting of each component is as follows:

To learn more about assignments and examinations, please refer to Athabasca University's online Calendar.

Course Materials

Textbook

Registration in this course includes an electronic textbook. For more information on electronic textbooks, please refer to our eText Initiative site.

You can acquire a print version of the textbook on your own if you wish.

Other Resources

All other learning resources will be available online.

Challenge for Credit Course Overview

The Challenge for Credit process allows students to demonstrate that they have acquired a command of the general subject matter, knowledge, intellectual and/or other skills that would normally be found in a university level course.

Full information for the Challenge for Credit can be found in the Undergraduate Calendar.

• Undergraduate Challenge for Credit Policy
• Undergraduate Challenge for Credit Procedures

Challenge Evaluation

To receive credit for the MGSC 419 challenge registration, you must achieve a grade of at least “D” (50 percent) on the examination.

Online Exam

Undergraduate Challenge for Credit Course Registration Form

• Challenge for Credit Form

Current Grouped Study Locations