M1 · Embarking on the field
What a project and project management actually are, the value a project manager adds, project vs program vs portfolio management, and the career paths and transferable skills that open the field to anyone.
Google Project Management
Google Project Management Certificate (Coursera) - study notes for revision.
These are working notes from the Google Project Management Certificate, organised chapter by chapter so I can revise quickly before quizzes. Each page condenses a module’s videos and readings into definitions, comparison tables, process steps, and diagrams - the parts worth remembering, not a transcript.
Course 1 - Foundations of Project Management
Section titled “Course 1 - Foundations of Project Management”M2 · Becoming an effective PM
The core responsibilities and skills - planning and organizing, managing tasks and budget, controlling scope, enabling decisions, communicating and escalating, and leading cross-functional teams through influence rather than authority.
M3 · Life cycle & methodologies
The four phases of the project life cycle, and the main approaches - Waterfall, Agile/Scrum, and Lean/Six Sigma - with guidance on choosing and blending them.
M4 · Structure & culture
How organizational structure (classic vs matrix), the project management office, change management, and company culture shape a project manager’s authority and approach.
Course 2 - Project Initiation: Starting a Successful Project
Section titled “Course 2 - Project Initiation: Starting a Successful Project”1 · Key components of initiation
Why initiation decides whether a project succeeds, the components to define up front (goals, scope, deliverables, success criteria, stakeholders, resources, budget), and weighing a project’s benefits against its costs.
2 · Goals, scope & success
SMART goals and OKRs, defining and protecting scope (and avoiding scope creep), specifying deliverables, and setting measurable success criteria so everyone agrees on what “done” means.
3 · Stakeholders & RACI
Identifying stakeholders, prioritizing them with a power/interest grid, managing expectations and buy-in, and clarifying who does what with a RACI chart.
4 · Resources, charter & tools
The resources a project runs on (budget, people, materials), why documentation matters, project proposal vs project charter and how to build one (including with a gen-AI tool), and choosing and introducing project management tools.
Course 3 - Project Planning: Putting It All Together
Section titled “Course 3 - Project Planning: Putting It All Together”1 · Beginning the planning phase
What the planning phase produces, the kickoff meeting and its agenda, milestones against tasks, and the work breakdown structure that turns deliverables into work you can assign.
2 · Building the project plan
Estimating time honestly, task dependencies, the critical path, buffers, and putting it all on a Gantt chart.
3 · Budget & procurement
Building and maintaining a project budget, cost estimation and reserves, and the procurement process from documents to ethics.
4 · Managing risks
Risk against issue, the risk management process, cause-and-effect diagrams, the probability and impact matrix, mitigation strategies and the risk register.
5 · Communication & documentation
Building a communication plan that says who hears what and how often, and organising documentation so people can actually find it.
Course 4 - Project Execution: Running the Project
Section titled “Course 4 - Project Execution: Running the Project”1 · Tracking, status & change
What changes once work starts: tracking methods, dependencies and blockers, ROAM analysis, handling change requests, and writing a status report people read.
2 · Quality management
Quality standards, planning, assurance and control, user acceptance testing, measuring customer satisfaction, and running a blameless retrospective.
3 · Data-informed decisions
The metrics a project manager actually tracks, analysing and visualising them, dashboards, and presenting data so stakeholders act on it.
4 · Leadership & influencing skills
Leading a team you do not manage: where a project manager’s influence actually comes from, team dynamics, motivation, coaching and handling conflict.
5 · Effective project communication
Communication once the work is running: meetings worth holding, agendas and follow-ups, emails that get read, and adjusting the message to the audience.
6 · Closing a project
Landing the project properly: knowing when it is done, the closeout report, the impact on the organisation, recognising the team, and capturing lessons for next time.
Course 5 - Agile Project Management
Section titled “Course 5 - Agile Project Management”1 · The fundamentals of Agile
Where Agile came from and what it was reacting to: VUCA, the Agile Manifesto with its four values and twelve principles, iterative delivery, and when Waterfall is still the better choice.
2 · Scrum 101
The most used Agile framework in detail: the three pillars and five values, the Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development Team, and the Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog and Increment as a first introduction.
3 · Implementing Scrum
The day-to-day mechanics: the Product Backlog and its refinement, user stories, epics and INVEST, relative estimation with T-shirt sizes, story points and Planning Poker, the five Scrum events, releasable Increment against MVP, velocity, burndown charts and the tools that hold it together.
4 · Applying Agile
Agile beyond a single team: value-driven delivery and the value roadmap, changing a release plan, the influencer change framework, coaching against managing, common team challenges, scaling with SAFe, LeSS, Scrum of Scrums, DAD and Spotify, and Agile in job interviews.
Course 6 - Applying Project Management in the Real World
Section titled “Course 6 - Applying Project Management in the Real World”1 · Initiating the project
The Sauce and Spoon scenario, mining the supporting documents for project details, and the project charter from first draft through SMART goals to a final version, plus stakeholder analysis, the power-interest grid and negotiating scope.
2 · Planning the work
Turning the charter into work: finding tasks in a previous project plan, setting milestones, effort against total duration, three-point estimating with the triangular and PERT formulas, and confidence ratings.
3 · Quality and evaluation
Turning a vague wish into measurable quality standards, writing evaluation questions and indicators, survey design, reading what the pilot actually showed, presenting findings, and running a retrospective when people go quiet.
4 · Closing the project
Communicating a problem and tying it to OKRs, the closeout report against the impact report, archiving the documentation, celebrating the team, and the personal closing report.
5 · AI for project management
The certificate AI module: what generative AI is at this course depth, the TCREI prompting framework, and where it genuinely helps with meetings, risk, retrospectives, charters and stakeholder communication.