Project Management Tutorials for Beginners
Posted by Superadmin on October 11 2019 07:42:35

Project Management Tutorials for Beginners

 

Tutorial Summary

Project management is a series of different processes designed to assist managers to accomplish definite goal by carefully organizing, controlling and executing the project. This course teaches you basic to advance level concepts of Project Management to make you a great manager.

What should I know?

This free online guide is designed for beginner project managers with little or no management experience.

Syllabus

 Tutorial What is Project Management? Objectives, Methodologies
 Tutorial What is PMP? Certification Cost, Benefits
 Tutorial Project Management Life Cycle: Complete Guide
 Tutorial Learn Financial Planning for Project Management
 Tutorial How to do risk analysis in project management
 Tutorial Types of Project Methodology
 Tutorial Six Sigma Certification Guide: Green, Yellow, Black belt details
 Tutorial 40+ Best Project Management Tools and Software

What is Project Management? Objectives, Methodologies

Before we learn Project Management, let's understand:

What is Project?

A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result. A project is defined as temporary because it has a defined beginning and end time, and it is unique because it has a particular set of operations designed to accomplish a goal

The primary characteristics of a project are

What is Project Management?

The project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, motivating and controlling resources to achieve specific goals. The main challenge of project management is to achieve project goals and objectives while keeping in mind the project scope, time, quality and cost.

Project management actually began in the early 1950s. The need for project management arised observing the benefit of organizing work within the project and critical need to co-ordinate across different departments and professionals.

Project management mainly deals with these ten areas

Project Management Objectives

While preparing project, look project into these three perspectives, it helps to give much better understanding of the whole process

Project Management Methodologies

There are various methodologies that are available for project management.

  1. Prince2
  2. Agile
  3. Six Sigma
  4. Scrum
  5. Kanban
  6. Lean
  7. Waterfall

We will look each of this into in a later part of the tutorial. Various tools are available to track project tasks and measure accomplishments during the project. These includes Gantt charts, PERT charts and Work down structures.

Summary

Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, motivating and controlling resources to achieve specific goals.

What is PMP? Certification Cost, Benefits

What is PMP Certification?

Project Management Professional (PMP) is a certification administered by Project Management Institute, U.S.A. It is a project management course recognized all over the world. PMBOK-fifth edition is the latest version for this exam. The certification is valid for 3 years.

Pre-requisite

Pre-requisite for PMI-PMP examination includes

  1. Four-year bachelor degree
  2. A minimum of 4500 hours of project management experience

OR

  1. A secondary degree (high school diploma, associate degree, etc.)
  2. A minimum of 7500 hours of project management in last five years

AND

  1. 35 hours of project management education from a registered education provider (REP)

Fee Structures

Exam Structure

It will assess the candidate management knowledge in the following five domains. The weightage of questions for each domain include

Project Management Area Percentage of Questions
Initiating the project 13
Planning the project 24
Executing the project 30
Monitoring and Controlling the project 25
Closing the project 8

There are other various courses available related to project management on PMI like PgMP, PfMP, CAPM, etc. For more information, you can visit the website the PMBOK website.

The code of conducts and ethic defines:

Code of Ethics and professional conduct includes

PMP Professional Responsibility

Other professional responsibility

Code of conducts and ethic sample questions for PMP professionals;

  1. After a person is hired, he presents ideas which were developed by a competitor company already. Are you going to use the same ideas?
  2. As a manager what would you do resolve the conflict between team members?
  3. You are a project manager, and a large and unexpected problem occurs that will cause a delay in the schedule. What should you do?

Phases of Project Management Life Cycle

What is Project Life Cycle?

The Project Life Cycle is a series of activities which are essential for accomplishing project objectives or targets. Projects may have different dimensions and difficulty level, but, whatever the size: large or small, may be all projects could be mapped to the given lifecycle structure. This life cycle for the project includes four phases-

Project Management Life Cycle: Complete GuideProject Life Cycle Diagram

We will first look into Initiation Phase

Project Initiation Stage

Initiation phase defines those processes that are required to start a new project. The purpose of the project initiation phase is to determine what the project should accomplish.

This phase mainly composed of two main activities

All the information related to the project are entered in the Project Charter and Stakeholder Register. When the project charter is approved, the project becomes officially authorized.

Project Charter

The Project Charter defines the project's main elements

This document allows a project manager to utilize organizational resources for the sake of the project. To create a project charter, the inputs required will be enterprise environment factor, business case, agreements, a project statement of work and organizational process assets.

Identifying Stakeholders

A stakeholder can influence the success and failure of the project. To note down the information about the stakeholder, a Stakeholder Register is used.

The stakeholder register will have information like

The other activities involved in initiating process group are:

The stakeholder register and project charter are used as inputs to the other development groups such as planning process group.

Project Planning Stage

Project Planning phase covers about 50% of the whole process. Planning phase determines the scope of the project as well as the objective of the project. It begins with the outputs of initiation phase (charter, preliminary scope statement, and project manager). The output of the planning phase serves as the input for the execution phase.

The important aspects of planning process are

Create Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

For any successful project WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) is important. Following are steps to create WBS.

Planning Schedule Management

Plan Scheduling is the process of establishing the procedure, policies and documentation for planning, managing, executing and controlling the project schedule. The inputs in these activities include

The output of the Planning Schedule Management includes

Defining Activities

Defining Activities is the procedure for documenting and identifying specific actions to be performed to produce the project deliverables.

Project Management Life Cycle: Complete Guide

In define activities, each work packages is broken down into individual work schedule activities. The inputs of the defining activities include

While the outputs of these activities are

Sequence Activities

Sequence activities is nothing but logically organizing the output of "define activities". It determines the order in which the activities needs to be performed.

Project Management Life Cycle: Complete Guide

The main output from the sequence activity process is "Network Diagram".

Network diagram is nothing but posting the task on a board in a logical order.

For example, you want to start a business in foreign country what will be your list of activities and what will be the order it should be done?

You will perform activities in these order

  1. Choose a country
  2. Get business permit
  3. Hiring a manager
  4. Buying a property
  5. Buying the furniture etc.
  6. Opening the business

Estimating Activity Resources

This stage explains the process of estimating the work effort and resources required to complete the task. The other factor that has to be considered at this stage is the availability of the resources.

While estimating resources, the focus should be on the longest path of the plan (Critical Path), which going to consume more time and money.

You have to estimate resources for two tasks

Make sure that your critical tasks are accurately estimated (completion time).

There are five inputs used to estimate activity resources

The output of this stage is

NOTE: All the activity that is done so far (define activities + sequence activities + Estimate activity resources) is going to help in "Develop Schedule."

Estimating Activity Durations

Estimating Activity Duration is the process of estimating the number of work periods (weeks/months) required to complete the individual task with estimated resources. This step defines how much time an individual task will take to complete.

You cannot calculate activity duration without calculating the work effort and resources required to complete the task. Estimating process should be done in this order

To estimate activity durations, you need inputs

While there are two main outputs

This technique is also referred as PERT (Project Evaluation and Review Techniques) estimates.

Develop Schedule

Develop Schedule is the process of analyzing activity sequences, resource requirements, durations and schedule constraints to create the project schedule model. For scheduling each task, three main factors are taken into consideration

Using these factors project calculates the start date and finish date for each task.

A scheduling software can be used to create a schedule. It generates a schedule model with planned dates for completing project activities.

The input of this tool includes

The output from this would be

Control Schedule

The last stage of the planning phase is Control Schedule. It is the process of monitoring the status of project activities to update project process and manage changes to the schedule baseline.

If changes are required to the schedule, they must go through the change control process. The schedule should be managed or controlled by manager proactively.

There are four main outputs of control schedule process

There are five outputs of control schedule

Project Execution Stage

The executing phase consists of those activities that are defined in project management plan. This process involves managing stakeholder expectations, coordinating with people and resources, as well as performing other activities related to project deliverables.

Project Management Life Cycle: Complete Guide

During the execution phase, the result may require re-baselining and updates to existing project requirements. Action taken in execution phase may affect the project management plan or documents.

Direct and Manage Project Execution

This stage consumes most of the project cost, time, and resources as this is the process that produce project deliverables.

There are four inputs to Direct and Manage Project Execution

While there are five outputs

During this stage, expert's judgments, meetings, and reporting KPI (Key Performance Indicators) are of prime importance.

Performing Quality Assurance

Performing Quality Assurance is the process of auditing the quality requirements and the results from quality control measurements. It is the process of recording and monitoring results of the quality activities to assess performance. Various tools like control charts, cost-benefit analysis, flowcharting, run charts, scatter diagrams, inspection & reviews, etc., can be used for this process.

The main input to this is

While, the output of this is

Acquiring Project Team

During the execution phase, project team acquiring takes place, this is because it is more likely that individuals with different skill set will be required during the process.

There are three main inputs to acquire project team

While there are three outputs

Develop Project Team

The majority of human resource processes involves in executing process, developing project team is also a part of it. The main purpose of developing project team is to improve the overall performance of team members. This stage must start early on in the project.

The inputs in project development team include

Output of this process include

Manage project team

Managing project team is one of the important parts of project management. It is the most complex area of project management because many times managers would not be in direct contact with team members, in such situation to analyze their performance and deciding their remuneration becomes difficult.

There are five inputs to manage project team process

There are four main outputs

Manage Communications

Out of three communication attributes, one falls in the execution process. In communication management program, there are three main communication aspects that need to monitor.

  1. Project team members to the project manager
  2. Project managers to the program manager
  3. Program manager to stakeholders or other sponsors

The input of managing communications include

The output of this stage would be

Conduct Procurements

In this stage, there are two main roles involved the buyer and the seller. During the procurement process the activities involved are

  1. Issue the bid package to potential sellers
  2. Hold bidder conferences
  3. Evaluate potential seller proposals
  4. Select the winning seller proposals

The output of the procurement process include

While, you will have six outputs

Manage Stakeholder Engagement

This stage includes actively managing stakeholders throughout the project. To avoid unexpected project delay or abandoning the project in between, stakeholder expectation is identified and quickly resolved.

There are five inputs to manage stakeholder process

The output of this process include

Project Phase Review

At the end of execution phase, project phase review is done. It helps you to document in following activities

Project Monitoring and Controlling & Closing Stage

After execution phase, to check the project is on right track, monitoring and controlling phase becomes active. During this phase various changes and reviews to enhance the project performance is done.

Monitor and Control Project Work

This stage involves tracking, reviewing and regulating the progress in order to meet the objective of the project. It also ensures that the deliverables are according to the project management plan. The main focus of this step is to identify any changes made from the point of project management plan to determine appropriate preventive action.

The inputs for this stage include

While the output includes

Perform Integrated Change Control

It is one of the most important process of project management. It is in this stage where the impact of any change is assessed against the project. If a change in this stage occurs at any one part of a project, the whole project will be assessed. It is better to implement changes at an early stage of the project, because as the project progresses, the cost of implementing changes also increases.

The input of this stage includes

While the outputs are

Validate Scope

Validating scope involves verifying whether the deliverables meet the customer acceptance criteria. The external checking with the customer or stakeholders are part of Validating Scope Management.

The inputs for validating scope includes

While the output of the scope validation includes

Control Scope

Control scope ensures that it is the only work identified as being in scope that is delivered. The actual result is compared against the scope baseline and ensures that all of the approved scope is in fact being delivered.

The inputs to control scope process includes

While the output includes

Control Schedule

Control Schedule process helps you in many ways. It helps you to capture current schedule status, determine the variance from the schedule baseline, understand the nature of the variance and respond by taking appropriate action.

If changes are needed to the schedule then they must go through the change control process, the change should be re-evaluated and only then it should be used to update the schedule baseline.

There are four main inputs to the control schedule

The output includes

Control Cost

Control cost is comparing baseline cost for each deliverable against the actual cost. The cost baseline should change only in response to a change request that has gone through the Perform Integrated Change Control process. Control cost ensures that your project stay within funding limitations.

The inputs for the Control Cost include

The output for this include

Control Quality

The control quality ensures that the project and product are delivered with the quality management plan. It ensures that whether the work is performed correctly. The major output of the control quality is Quality management plan. While the other information that will be helpful are

There are four main outputs from the perform quality control process:

Control Communications

Control communication ensures that the right information reaches to the stakeholder. Control communication information includes inputs, tools and techniques and output that belong to this process.

Control communication can be in any format, it can be

In control communication process, work information is taken from various other processes, and the performance report is used as an input for various monitoring and managing processes. The main deliverables from the control communication process is the performance record.

Control Risks

Throughout the project cycle, risk analysis is a continuous process. It is important that you continuously analyze, identify and respond to risks. The activities include in control risk are

The input for control risk are

The output for the control risk are

Control Procurements

Out of four procurement plan, the third process of procurement falls in Monitoring & Executing process group. This stage involves monitoring the vendor's performance and ensuring that all contract requirements are being met.

The control procurement process involves verifying

The major input for procurement process are

The output for procurements are

Control Stakeholder Management

Many project stumble due to inadequate management of stakeholders. If the stakeholders are managed properly, there are more chances for project success. In this process, we monitor the current engagement level of stakeholders and take actions accordingly.

The input and output for all these activities include

InputOutput
  • Plan Stakeholder Management
  • Work performance information
  • Issue log
  • Change requests
  • Work performance data
  • Project management plan updates
  • Project documents
  • Project documents updates
 
  • OPAs updates

Closing- Phase

Closing phase is the process that performs a controlled shut down of the project at the end. In a project, there are three closure activities that are going on

The inputs for this process include

The output of this process include

Close Procurements

For each project development life cycle phase- planning, executing, monitoring and controlling & closing there is one procurement process. The final closing procurement is done as per the contract between the seller and buyer.

The closing activities and deliverables include:

The input for closing procurement include

While the output include

Project Management Ethic of code and conduct

In the end, you will come across project management ethic of code and conduct which deals various human behavioral aspects such as

This code is practiced to induce the confidence and bring a common frame of behavior in the project manager.

Summary:

Initiation phase defines those processes that are required to start a new project. It defines what project should accomplish in due course of time.

The initiation phase mainly composed of two main activities

The stakeholder register and project charter are also useful in other process groups of project management like planning process.

Planning phase determines the scope as well as the objective of the project. It involves creating a set of plans that guides you through the execution and closure phases of the project.

The executing phase consists of those activities that are defined in project management plan. It is the longest phase of the project life cycle and consumes maximum energy and resources. Action taken in execution phase may affect the project management plan or documents.

Key task in execution phase are

During the execution phase, the result may require re-baselining and updates to existing project requirements.

Monitoring and controlling stage ensures that the deliverables are according to the project management plan before closing phase.

The main focus of this phase is to identify any changes made from the point of project management plan to determine preventive action against any unexpected result.

Closing phase is the process that performs a controlled shut down of the project at the end.

 

 

Project Cost Estimation & Budget Management Techniques

Project Cost Management

Project Cost Management is defined as the process of planning and controlling the project cost effectively. It defines what costs are required for each deliverable. The cost of the project can be estimated from various process sources (Examples below)

The inputs of cost management include,

While, the output of this is

Creating estimation and costing for project is an extremely crucial part of any project management. Various things are taken in consideration while calculating budget for project like labor costs, necessary equipment acquisition, material costs, etc.

What is Project Cost Estimation?

Project Cost Estimation is defined as the process of approximating the total expenditure of the project. The accuracy of the cost estimation depends on the accuracy and details of the project scope, which is the scope baseline. The scope will also define any constraints like date, resources or budget. The risk register will help to calculate estimate types of costs, the expenses made behind the contingent action and the expenses made to cope with risks.

To estimate the cost of project you have to categorize various cost types into categories like

Techniques used to estimate project cost

To estimate project cost formally there are few methods (techniques) used as follows:

Likewise, there are other methods (techniques) which could be useful for estimating cost like PERT estimating, vendor bid analysis, etc.

Project Budget Planning

The main purpose of this activity is to allocate and authorize the monetary resources required to complete the project. The main output for determining the budget includes cost performance baseline. It not only specifies what cost will be incurred but also when costs will be incurred. The inputs for determining budget includes

The output of this process is

The project budgeting is performed in parallel with the project scheduling process. It is highly dependent on three component -

During project budgeting, project manager communicates with different people responsible for managing the work efforts as well as estimating project costs.

He will use various project prospects like work breakdown structure of the project, the cost estimates, historical data and records, resource information, and policies.

Without risk assessment, the budgeting process is not completed. Risk assessing process considers factors like time shortage, availability of resources, development team experience, the technology used, etc. The risk assessment can be an amount between 25 and 30 percent of the overall project cost.

Project Quality Management Plan

The quality management process group consists of three processes,

  1. Plan Quality

Plan Quality process involves identifying which standard quality are relevant to the project and how to fulfill them. It also includes identifying quality metrics and standard measures for project processes, regulatory compliance requirements, product functionality, documentation, etc.

The inputs of the plan quality management includes

The output for the quality management is

  1. Quality Assurance

This stage includes mainly two activity, first analyzing project quality and improve project quality. It is a process of auditing the quality requirements and the results from quality control measurement to ensure that quality standard is maintained throughout the process. The input for this will be same as the output of plan quality management while the

The output of this process will be

  1. Quality Control

This will be conducted to control quality throughout the project life cycle. It defines how the quality standard can comply with the defined quality standards. The output of Quality Assurance will be the input for Quality Control. While the output will

Project Human Resource Management

HR management includes the process of organizing, managing and leading the project team. It is comprised of the people with allocated roles and responsibilities for completing the project. The HR management will deal with four processes.

  1. Develop human resource plan: This stage defines the project roles and responsibilities, project organization charts and staff management plan

    The input for this will

    • Project management plan
    • Activity resource requirements
    • Enterprise environmental factors
    • Organizational process assets

The output for this will be

  1. Acquire project team:

    This stage confirms the availability of the human resource and obtaining the team necessary to complete project activities. The input for this stage would be the output from the previous step. While the output of this stage would be

    • Project staff assignments
    • Resource calendars
    • Project management plan updates
  2. Develop project team:

    In this stage, the focus is improving the team efficiency, team member interaction and enhancing overall team and project performance. The input for this stage would be the output from the previous step. While the output for this stage would be

    • Team performance assessments
    • Enterprise environmental factors updates
  3. Manage project team:

    This process includes tracking team member performance, resolving issues, providing feedback and managing a team to optimize project performance. The input for this stage would be the output from the previous step. While the output for this stage would be

    • Change request
    • Project management plan updates
    • Project document updates
    • Enterprise environmental factors updates
    • Organizational process assets updates

Project Communication Management

Here, Project Communication does not mean interacting verbally with each other, but transmitting project related information effectively with the project team, stakeholder, project managers, etc. It should address risk actions and assessments, project plans, meeting management and actions, reviews and walk-throughs, etc.

This segment cover mainly five areas

  1. Communicating with Stakeholders

    It is the process of developing an approach to communicate with stakeholders efficiently and understanding their requirements. The input for this would be

While the output for this will be

  1. Manage Communications

    It is the process of storing, distributing, collecting, and retrieving of project information in accordance with a communication plan. The input of this stage would be

While the output would be

  1. Control Communications

    It is the process of controlling and monitoring communication throughout the entire project lifecycle. The input for this stage would be

While the output of this stage would be

Summary

Cost management is the process of planning and controlling the project cost effectively. It helps you to record and track the expenses made after the project.

To see that your project is completed in a given timeline and budget, we will see what risk factor needs to mitigate in next tutorial.

 

Risk Analysis & Risk Management in Project Management

What is Risk Analysis?

Risk Analysis is defined as the sequence of processes of risk management planning, analysis of risks, identification and controlling risk on a project.

Proper risk management is control of possible future events that may have a negative effect on the overall project. It is more of pro-active then reactive process.

How to Manage Risk?

Risk Management Process primarily involves following activities

  1. Plan risk management

It is the procedure of defining how to perform risk management activities for a project.

  1. Risk Identification

It is the procedure of determining which risk may affect the project most. This process involves documentation of existing risks.

The input for identifying risk will be

The output of the process will be a

  1. Perform qualitative risk analysis

It is the process of prioritizing risks for further analysis or action by combining and assessing their probability of occurrence and impact. It helps managers to lessen the uncertainty level and concentrate on high priority risks.

Plan risk management should take place early in the project, it can impact on various aspects for example: cost, time, scope, quality and procurement.

The inputs for qualitative risk analysis includes

The output of this stage would be

  1. Quantitative risk analysis

It is the procedure of numerically analyzing the effect of identified risks on overall project objectives. In order to minimize the project uncertainty, this kind of analysis are quite helpful for decision making.

Risk Management Matrix

The input of this stage is

While the output will be

  1. Plan risk responses

To enhance opportunities and to minimize threats to project objectives plan risk response is helpful. It addresses the risks by their priority, activities into the budget, schedule, and project management plan.

The inputs for plan risk responses are

While the output are

  1. Control Risks

Control risk is the procedure of tracking identified risks, identifying new risks, monitoring residual risks and evaluating risk.

The inputs for this stage includes

The output of this stage would be

Project Procurement Management

Project Procurement Management includes the processes of purchasing or acquiring products needed to run a business. The organization can be a seller, buyer or service provider.

Project Procurement Management also includes controlling any contract issued by an outside organization and get work done outside the project team.

Plan Procurement Management includes four stages like

The input in the plan procurement management are

Conduct Procurement process

Conduct Procurement process involves activities like

The benefit of conducting procurement process is that it provides alignment of external and internal stakeholder expectations through established agreements.

The input of the conduct procurement process includes

Control Procurements

It is the process of monitoring contract performance and correction to the contract as per the guidelines. It will ensure that buyers and sellers both meet the procurement requirement according to the terms of the legal agreement.

The input of the Control Procurements include

The output includes

Close procurements

This step involves documenting agreements and other documents for future reference.

The input of this tool includes

The output of this tool includes

Manage Stakeholder Engagement

A stakeholder is an integral part of any project; their decision can leave a deep impact on project deliverables. In this process, the first part is to identify people, groups or organizations that could impact on the project while the second part is to analyze stakeholder expectations.

It also focusses on continuous communication with stakeholders to understand their needs and expectations.

Identifying Stakeholders

It is the process of identifying the groups, people or organization that can influence project outcomes. It allows the project manager to identify appropriate stakeholders.

Plan Stakeholder Management

It is the process of preparing a strategy to involve stakeholders throughout the project life cycle. It defines clear, actionable plan to interact with project Stakeholders.

The input for Plan Stakeholder Management includes

The output of this

Manage Stakeholder Engagement

In this stage, stakeholder are communicated to understand their expectations, address issues and foster appropriate stakeholder engagement in project activities. It allows the project manager to achieve project success without conflicting with stakeholder's decision.

The input of this stage is

While the output of this stage is

Control Stakeholder Engagement

It is the process of monitoring stakeholder engagement in the project and adjusting strategies as per requirements. It will increase the stakeholder engagement activities as the project evolves and progresses.

The input for this stage include

The output of this stage include

 

Summary

In this tutorial, you learned:

Risk Management includes the processes of conducting risk management planning, analysis of risks, identification and controlling risk on a project.

These steps can be used to manage risk in an organization

Procurement Management, includes the processes of purchasing or acquiring products needed to run a business. It is the process of monitoring contract performance and correction to the contract as per the guidelines

Stakeholder engagement focusses on continuous communication throughout the project lifecycle. The decision of stakeholder can leave a deep impact on project deliverables.

Project Management Methodologies Tutorial

Standardization of a project is not possible as the different project has different requirements and processes. However, the process of project management can be standardized by using some of the pre-defined project methodologies.

There are several project management methodology that are prevalent for managing projects like

Summary:

There are no specifics standards to complete project with lot of variation. But certain methodologies help to complete project in a more streamlined manner from initiation to implementation to the closure.

Six Sigma Certification Guide: Green, Yellow, Black belt details

What is Six Sigma?

Six Sigma is a quality management approach that benefits individual or organizations to minimize/eliminate defects in products and services. It is a group of techniques which helps you in quality improvement.

Six Sigma methodology is based on statistical analysis instead of guesswork to improve processes with unknown problems.

The word Sigma is a statistical term which helps a professional judge, how far a specific process needs perfection.

In this training tutorial, you will learn:

Why do we need Six Sigma? Key Benefits

Here, are major advantages of Six Sigma process:

Process SigmaDPMO (Defect Per Million Opportunities)Process Yield
6.0 3.4 99.99966%
5.0 230 99.97700%
4.0 6210 99.37900%
3.0 66,800 93.32000%
2.0 308000 69.20000%
1.0 690000 31.0%

History of Six Sigma

Here, are important landmark form the Six Sigma history:

What is Six Sigma Certification?

A certification course ensures that a Six Sigma Certified professional should be exposed to the complete Six Sigma Body of Knowledge (BoK). They should able to meet a minimum standard of proficiency for six sigma and its implementation.

The Six Sigma certification has five levels as

  1. White Belt
  2. Yellow Belt
  3. Green Belt
  4. Black Belt
  5. Master Black Belt

However, it is not necessary to be six sigma belt certified in all three levels. You can select the level which is most appropriate according to your career objectives.

Types of Six Sigma certification

Five types of six sigma certification training are:

Six Sigma White Belt

Six Sigma White Belt certified training courses are geared toward providing you with fundamental comprehension of the Lean Six Sigma outline. It involves process improvement, variability, adverse effects on process performance. It gives brief information about the specific roles that every team members play.

Six Sigma Yellow Belt

Six Sigma Yellow Belt is a basic level course. It teaches you some basic methodologies. It also covers a few of the underlying improvement procedures along with important metrics.

Six Sigma Green Belt

The Six Sigma Green Belt certification training and certification course allow individuals to learn how to create charts, process map and control an entire plan to guide other employees to describe the Six Sigma roles within an organization. The Green Belt designation mostly belong to the team leader or a senior member of the team working directly with the team leader.

Six Sigma Black Belt

The Six Sigma Black Belt Certification course allows individuals to perform factorial experiments, multiple regression, and describe the various type of process optimization. A Black Belt should able to understand team dynamics and assign team member roles according to his or her skill level.

Master Black Belt

The two-week program Master Black Belt training is the highest Six Sigma certification program. It offers an advanced and highly focused approach Six Sigma project and statistical methods.

It is a useful certification course for a person who deals with a team or is part of executive leadership. The Master Black Belt Six Sigma professional should able to answer procedural questions and able to resolve any complex technical issues.

Learning objectives of Six Sigma certification

Here, are essential learning objectives of six sigma certification:

How can I get started?

Sig Sigma certificate main conducted by ASQ, CSSC, and IASSC.

What is ASQ?

The American Society for Quality is also known as ASQ offers 18 different certifications for different intellect people. The organization provides mainly Yellow Belt, Green Belt, Black Belt, and Master Black Belt certificates.

Candidates applying for ASQ certifications can save money by becoming a member. The cost varies between $29 to $159 per year, depending on whether you are joining at the Student, Associate, or Full level.

The following table shows how the exam fees structure of ASQ certifications.

ExamFee (member)Fee (nonmember)Retake Fee
ASQ Yellow Belt $244 $394

 $184
ASQ Green Belt $438 $299

 $239
ASQ Black Belt $538 $388

 $338
ASQ Master Black Belt* $2,229 $2,074

 $2,229(For member)/ $2,074( non-member)

*A candidate who is applying for Master Black Belt also need to pay $650 (or $495 in case of members for portfolio review)

What is the IASSC certification?

IASSC or The International Association for Six Sigma Certification is a professional association which is dedicated to growing and enhancing the standards across the Six Sigma Lean community. Although, IASSC never provide any training, mentoring and coaching. They only conduct the exam of the Six Sigma certificate exam for a candidate.

Certifications offered by IASSC are:

Candidates applying for Yellow Belt certification cost you $195.00 while Green Belt certification which is advanced course cost you $295 and to achieve Black Belt you need to pay $395.00.

What is CSSC?

The council for Six Sigma Certification (CSSC) is an official Industry standard of Six Sigma accreditation to get the Six Sigma certification and training.

The primary object of this course is to ensure that the person can learn the complete Six Sigma certification knowledge. The professional should be able to achieve the minimum standard of proficiency to become six sigma professional.

The council for Six Sigma Certificate offers the following courses:

Candidate can apply for basic white belt course free. To get Yellow Belt, he needs to pay $79, for Green Belt $119 and $ 159 to get Black Belt certification.

How to get six sigma certificate?

To achieve a Six Sigma certificate a candidate should able to meet the experience requirement, need to show his or her competency for the skill applied, and finally need to pass a written certification exam.

The written exam is mostly of multiple choice that increases in allotted time and difficulty at each certification level.

For example, the Yellow Belt exam may take 90 minutes. A Black Belt may take four hours. The hands-on portion of certification testing may need you to complete one or more quality project management with signed affidavits.

Who needs to attend six sigma certification training?

Some of the professional for whom this training is considered extremely relevant are:

  1. Quality control professionals
  2. Process improvement professionals
  3. Production managers
  4. Process control specialists
  5. Frontline and factory supervisors
  6. Management professionals such as HR
  7. IT and Finance Engineers
  8. Business Analysts

Current Job Prospects

The market for Six Sigma professional is very healthy. Job portal site like Simply Hired and Indeed.com show more than 2500 open position for Six Sigma Green Belt Certified and around 3000 for Black Belt. The number is much lower for Yellow Belt professional. Master Black Belts also has 1000 job posting every day.

On the salary front, data from PayScale and Glassdoor indicate that in U.S.A. average annual salary for Yellow Belt Six Sigma Certified professional is around $53,901 and Green Belt is $42,053. A Black Belt can get around $ 90,000, and Master Black Belt average $119,000, and sometimes more.

Summary

40 Best FREE Project Management Software, Tools, APP (2021)

To achieve success in any business, proper management of the project is very important. Project management is a set of activities which include planning, executing, controlling, and finishing projects. A Project Management tool helps streamline this process.

Here, is a curated list of Best 40 Free project management tools and Project management app with popular features and latest download links. The project management software list contains both open source(free) and commercial (paid) software.

Top Open Source Project Management Tools and Apps

NamePriceLink
Airtable Free + Paid Plan Learn More
Wrike Free + Paid Plan Learn More
Backlog Free + Paid Plan Learn More
Paymo Paid Plan Learn More
Zoho Projects Free + Paid Plan Learn More
Process street Paid Plan Learn More
Teamwork Projects Free + Paid Plan Learn More

 

1) Airtable

Airtable is a project management solution which is suitable for organizations, and businesses of all sizes. It offers organization and collaboration functionalities in an effective and mobile-friendly Table solutions.

Features:

2) Wrike

Wrike is a Cloud-based collaboration and project management tool. It helps you to scale across teams in any business. The tool allows to set priorities and align your team to work faster and smarter.

Features:

3) Backlog

Backlog is an excellent project management software that is feature rich while being easy to use. The plans are cost effective with multiple subscription options and are billed per company rather than per user. Both cloud-hosted and on-premise versions are available, as well as a free plan.

Features:

4) Paymo

Paymo is a project management application that can be used to manage projects from their inception through completion. It is an ideal project management tool for small to medium-sized businesses looking to simplify and fasten their business processes.

Features:

5) Zoho Projects

Zoho Projects is a collaboration & project management tool created by Zoho. The software helps you to plan your projects, assign tasks, and communicate effectively.

Features:

6) Process street

Process Street is a highly accurate process & workflow management tool. It is an ideally suited tool for your team's repeated tasks. It helps you to create, track and optimize business process workflows easily.

Features:

7) Teamwork Projects

Teamwork is an easy-to-use, fast, and one of the best project management systems. It is a simple tool which allows companies to maximize their project management processes.

Feature:

8) Microsoft Project

Microsoft project Integrated planning tools help you seamlessly keep track of your projects. The tool offers a powerful, visually enhanced way to manage a wide range of projects and programs efficiently.

Features:

9) Asana

Asana is an ideal project management software for small teams. It is available in three different versions Free, Premium & Enterprise.

Features:

Download link: https://asana.com/

10) Basecamp:

Basecamp is an effective project management tool which allows you to effortlessly assign tasks, organize your team, and track progress. It's available with 60-day free project management software trial and three different pricing packages.

Features:

Download link: https://basecamp.com/

11) Trello:

Trello is a tool designed to replace your team's use of email and chat for task-based communication. It allows you to collaborate for the project from beginning to end.

Features:

Download link:https://trello.com/

12) Podio

Podia is a customizable project management solution. The tool helps teams to communicate and organize in a way to facilitate the completion of tasks and projects. This project management app free for five employees.

Features:

Download link:https://podio.com/site/en

13) Smartsheet

Smartsheet is a collaboration tool for your project management.

It is a work platform that offers exceptional speed to business. Align and execute a process for better, faster and lower-cost onboardings

Features:

Download link: https://www.smartsheet.com/

14) Rational Plan

Rational plan is project management for providing solutions for portfolio management, resource management, and Team Collaboration. It allows you to complete your projects as scheduled, on time and within budget.

Features:

Download link:https://www.rationalplan.com/

15) Roadmunk

Roadmunk is a visual roadmap software helpful for the project management. It offers advanced data protection to meet the needs of global enterprise clients. Roadmunk offers 14-day project management app free trial.

Features:

Download link: https://roadmunk.com/

16) Casual

Casual is a visual project and process management software. It helps teams plan and executes projects as simple workflows. It is an ideal tool for small and growing project management teams.

Features:

Download link: https://casual.pm/

17) Tracker

Pivotal Tracker is an user-friendly, story-based project management tool.

It allows to work collaboratively, focus on what's important. It facilitates continuous delivery of the software.

Features:

Download link: https://www.pivotaltracker.com/

18) Twproject

Twproject is a web-based project management tool. The tool minimizes the effort of administrative work and helps the company to grow. It offers built-in Gantt chart to visualize your work plans.

Features:

Download link: https://twproject.com/

19) LiquidPlanner

LiquidPlanner eliminates outdated plans, missed deadlines, and streamline your work. It offers features for IT teams, project managers, development teams, and marketing teams.

Features:

Download link: https://www.liquidplanner.com/

20) Taskworld

Taskworld is a cloud-hosted visual task management and planning application. Helps you to keep track of the changes made to a task in chronological order.

Download link: https://taskworld.com/

21) Functionfox:

Functionfox is a project management tool. It helps to reduce admin time, increases productivity and profits. It allows users to compare and analyze information on their finances like real costs and estimates and also look at their project timelines, budget, and productivity.

Features:

Download link: https://www.functionfox.com/products.aspx

22) Axosoft

Axosoft is a project management and bug tracking solution. It is deployable as hosted or on-premises software. The software allows gathering all or specific information to create a correct product backlog.

Features:

Download link: https://www.axosoft.com/

23) Sciforma

Sciforma tools and data platform facilitate collaboration by making project data transparent, trustable, and easily accessible. It helps project managers administer all aspects of project, resource, risk, and change management.

Features:

Download link: https://www.sciforma.com/

24) Freedcamp

Freedcamp is a free project management software. It allows collaboration of single or multiple users using cloud computing. It is an open source project management software platform for as many projects and users you would like to add.

Features:

Download link: https://freedcamp.com/

25) Version One

Version one is easy to use Project management platform that delivers outstanding performance for managing and tracking multiple teams, tasks, and projects.

Features:

Download link: https://www.collab.net/

26) Confluence:

Confluence is content collaboration tool which changes how modern teams work. This tool helps you to organize a robust repository of information, opinions, and knowledge. It also allows you to answer questions, create how-to docs, etc.

Features:

Download link:https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence

27) Aha!

Aha! is road mapping and project management platform. It allows businesses to manage their product portfolio efficiently. It enables developing viable business strategies and visual roadmaps.

Features:

Download link: https://www.aha.io/

28) ActiveCollab

Active Collab is an easy to use project management and collaboration tool. Helps to combine task management, time tracking, for developing the well-designed app.

Features:

Download link: https://activecollab.com/

29) Quire

Quire is one of the best free project management software. It allows users to plan and organize tasks quickly in the form of tree-like structure. The PM tool aims to reduce the burden of managing complex and time-consuming projects.

Features:

Download link: https://quire.io/

30) Workzone

Workzone is a cloud-hosted project management and document collaboration app. Workzone allows to organize projects by tasks, assign responsibilities, and notify when a task is due.

Features:

Download link: https://www.workzone.com/teams/agency-project-management/

31) NUTCACHE

Nutcache is one of the popular project management tool offers an ideal business-oriented agile solution. It helps in effectively managing the entire project delivery lifecycle. The PM tool lets you plan and manage projects using Kanban boards or any other methods.

Features:

Download link: https://www.nutcache.com/

32) BRIGHTPOD

Brightpod is a cloud base project management service tool that will help you manage your projects more efficiently. It is widely used by a marketing firm in a variety of industries.

Features:

Download link: https://www.brightpod.com/

33) ProjectManager.com

ProjectManager.com's is cloud-based software. It allows you to manage work anywhere and on any platform. It is a comprehensive system which helps you to perform routine tasks effortlessly. It's available with 30 day free project management software trial.

Features:

Download link: https://www.projectmanager.com/

34) ProofHub

ProofHub is a cloud-hosted project management solution. It helps you to manage deliverables and deadline. The software helps managers across the critical phases of a project from planning, managing and delivering outcomes on time.

Features:

Download link: https://www.proofhub.com/

35) Mavenlink

Mavenlink is an online project management tool. It combines advanced project management, resource planning, collaboration, and financial tools. Maven helps you stay in control of workflow quality, instead of managing projects with previously inserted information. Mavenlink offers ten days online project management tool free trial.

Features:

Download link https://www.mavenlink.com/

36) Azendoo

Azendoo is work tracking task management software that helps teams plan and share tasks, sync on projects and communicates more efficiently. This PM tool helps organizations to increase their productivity, align their teams to accomplish their projects.

Features:

Download link: https://www.azendoo.com/

37) Clarizen

Clarizen is a combination of project management and high-quality collaboration. It is a single solution which provides well-defined work structure.

Features:

Download link: https://www.clarizen.com/

38) Scoro

Scoro is a cloud-based business management software. It's target id small to medium enterprises. Mostly those working in the advertising, consulting, information technology and other sectors.

Features:

Download link:https://www.scoro.com/

39) AVAZA

Avaza software allows you to run a client-focused business. It allows the team to collaborate on projects, track time, and manage expenses.

Features:

Download link: https://www.avaza.com/

40) TEAMWEEK

Teamweek is a visual project management software for the team. It allows you to overview your team's advancement.

Features:

Download link: https://teamweek.com/

41) Workfront

Workfront allows you to focus on the right work, do your best work, and deliver the faster result. It helps you to increase project capacity with best work management.

Features:

Download link: https://www.workfront.com/

42) Redmine:

Redmine is a project management & web application tool. It can be used as a cross-platform and cross-database tool.

Features:

Download link: http://www.redmine.org/

Some other important Project management tools are:

Tool Name

USP

ADVANTAGE

Good Agency Software

JIRA

Widely used by Agile Teams

OmniPlan

Painless Project Planning

ProWorkflow

Get organized your Workflow

Easy Projects

Single platform to plan and manage projects

Planio

Engineer Project Success

WORKBOOK

Brighten Potential's of your Agency

WORKETC

All in one cloud computing Platform

WEEKDONE

Tackle problems of your team effectively

BITRIX24

Enjoy the way you work & Collaborate

CELOXIS

No more chaos with Celoxis

Copper Project

Simply your work process

Planisware

Effective Planning, Scheduling, Collaboration

Flow

Simplified Project Management flow

CAGE

Collaborate better to Celebrate sooner

BARVAS

Clarify, Plan & Deliver

10,000FT PLANS

Resource Management + Time tracking

Dapulse

Simply working process of the Team

Milestones Professional

The fast and simplest way to manage your proejcts

FAQ

⚡ What is the advantage of using Project Management Tools?

Project Management Tools help you to streamline the process of planning, executing, controlling, and finishing projects.

✔️ Do project management tools help in Agile?

Yes, project management tools are designed to support agile methodology. They can be used to continuous iteration of development and testing throughout the software development lifecycle of the project.

🏅 Which factors to consider while choosing a project management software?

Don't Slog to Choose the Right Tool. Get Smart. Consider the following factors before you decide.