Dr. Linda Nozick is Professor and Director of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University. She is a past Director of the College Program in Systems Engineering, a program she co-founded. She has been the recipient of several awards including a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Clinton for “the development of innovative solutions to problems associated with the transportation of hazardous waste.” She has authored over 60 peer-reviewed publications, many focused on transportation, the movement of hazardous materials and the modeling of critical infrastructure systems. She has been an associate editor for Naval Research Logistics and a member of the editorial board of Transportation Research Part A. She has served on two National Academy Committees to advise the US Department of Energy on renewal of their infrastructure. During the 1998-1999 academic year she was a Visiting Associate Professor in the Operations Research Department at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Dr. Nozick holds a B.S. in Systems Analysis and Engineering from the George Washington University and a M.S.E and Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.
Organizing the Project and Its ComponentsCornell Course
Course Overview
On the surface, project management seems straightforward. However, at best, only 80% of projects end up being economically successful. The remaining 20% of projects usually cost more than estimated, run late, or fail to satisfy goals or meet objectives.
In this course, Linda Nozick, Professor and Director of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell, shares clear, understandable, and practical methods for achieving better results. You will practice breaking down a project into pieces that can be scheduled, tracked, and controlled.
While this is not a prep course for a project management certification, it will be quite valuable for anyone who is interested in pursuing one. This program will equip you with the concepts, tools, and language of project management that can be applied to any size and type of project.
The course is not specific to any formal project management software (e.g. Microsoft Project), but will require that learners have Microsoft Excel with its free Solver add-on installed.
Key Course Takeaways
- Examine the project management life cycle and the continuum of project characteristics
- Develop a work breakdown structure
- Construct a project network including mechanisms to identify task durations
- Construct a Gantt chart
- Use float information for decision making
- Identify the critical path
- Recognize shortcomings in computation
- Identify sources of uncertainty in task durations
- Examine PERT computations
