Hello, and welcome to the third specialization in the Engineering Management and Leadership certificate, Engineering Project Management. My name is Casper Walskey and it's my pleasure to present this course to you with my colleague Tom Fallon. Today's professional is highly competitive, continuously changing and difficult to manage. Employees rarely reach positions of leadership without managing one or more projects, or a project segment, early in their career. The goal of this specialization is to give you the tools to more effectively and successfully manage projects, to give you a solid foundation of knowledge, skills and confidence that sets you apart and gives you the competitive edge as you move toward leadership positions. The Rice Center for Engineering Leadership is a registered educational provider through the Project Management Institute. If you complete this course on the certificate track, you'll earn 12 professional development units. If you complete the entire specialization on the certificate track, you'll earn 38 hours of professional development, which fulfills the requirements that PMI, Project Management Institute, has set as a prerequisite for taking the Project Management Professional exam. Just to be clear, this is not an exam prep course. We're teaching you the basics of project management. But the hours you earn here and the knowledge you will gain will help you in your efforts to pursue a PMP certification. By the end of this specialization, you'll be able to perform tasks in these three areas. Initiating and Planning, Scope, Time and Cost Management, Project Risk and Quality Management. And we will cover topics ranging from identifying key deliverables and stakeholders, creating a project charter and explain the business case for the project, to creating the statement of work, a work breakdown structure, and critical path schedule, just to name a few. We will cover the learning objectives at the beginning of each course more in-depth. But for now, I'd like to take a few minutes to discuss with you the history of project management, and the Project Management Institute. And the texts and references we will be using throughout the three courses. The history of project management goes back thousands of years to the building of the pyramids, and has carried on throughout the ages. But the builders didn't formalize the process until the early 20th century, most notably during World War I, and the introduction of the Gantt chart, created by Henry Gantt in 1910 to assist in the building of ships. Project management continued to evolve over the next few decades with the advent of the Critical Path Method, the Program Evaluation and Review Technique or PERT, and a few other techniques. But in 1969, the Project Management Institute was founded with the goal of advancing the profession of project management. PMI is now a worldwide organisation, devoted to providing Certifications, Setting Global Standards, Training and Education, Thought Leadership, and Research. PMI is globally recognized as one of the standards of project management. Some of you may be interested in a certification from the Project Management Institute. And some common certifications pursued by project managers are, The PMP or Project Management Professional, this prepares you for a role as a project manager. The PgMP, Program Management Professional, this is for people who manage multiple projects. The PfMP, the Portfolio Management Professional, this is for people with advanced experience managing portfolios and projects. And the CAPM, the Certified Associate in Project Management. This certificate provides a fundamental knowledge of project management. Now that we've discussed the types of certifications you can receive from PMI, let's talk about some of the texts and references you'll use during this specialisation. The PMBOK or Project Management Body of Knowledge is the primary reference we will use during this specialization. It's used as a referencing guide to the project management process and is a useful tool while planning and executing a project. The PMBOK provides guidelines for managing individual projects and utilizes a common language used by project managers. I've often referenced my PMBOK while initiating a project, and found it very useful in helping me organize my thoughts, and ensure I'm not missing any of the critical parts before I progress too far. During this specialization, we will also ask you to reference our supplemental text, Project Management Toolbox, by Russ Martinelli and Dragan Milosevic. It will be used in conjunction with the PMBOK and provides a different perspective and greater depth than certain areas of project management. The nice part about using this particular text is that it provides easy to understand examples of deliverables and project management language. We'll have reading assignments from both throughout the specialization. I'd like to take this time to thank you for taking the Project Management Specialization, and I hope you enjoy the course, and you leave with a good understanding about the basics of project management. See you next week.