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Project management is the ability to plan, organize, and execute a project from start to finish. A good project manager knows how to apply the skills, tools, and people to all project activities. This is an essential role in keeping a high level of efficiency for any business.
It’s necessary for a business to have a good project management team, keeping the career in high demand. If you wish to change careers or increase your current project management skills, an online course can be a great option for you.
Quick Look: Best Project Management Courses
- Beginning Project Management: Project Management Level One by Udemy - Get this course
- Deeply Practical Project Management by Udemy - Get this course
- Project Management Certification by Udemy - Get this course
- Project Management Project by Coursera - Get this course
- Managing the Company of the Future by Coursera - Get this course
- Evidence-Based Project Management by edX- Get this course
- Project Management: The Basics for Success by Coursera - Get this course
- Best Practices for Project Management Success by edX- Get this course
- Project Management Tools and Techniques by Udemy - Get this course
What Will You Get from Completing These Courses?
We’ve compiled a list of the best project management courses you can take online. These courses come with a certificate of completion that you can take to a job interview or back to your current position. These certifications have the ability to open more doors and expand the list of jobs that you can apply for as well.
The skills that you will be able to master in these courses include:
- Project initiation
- Overall knowledge about projects
- Overall knowledge about project managers, their responsibilities and roles
- Overseeing the execution phase of a project
- Closing out a phase or a project
- Leading projects
- Managing teams
- Developing budgets
- Creating schedules
- Risk assessment
What to Look for in a Course
There are specific factors you can look at when evaluating whether an online course is worth your time. These include:
1. Instructor’s Reputation/Knowledge/Experience
Before applying for a course, make sure to check who is responsible for teaching the material. Check out the info section on the author for each class you examine. See what students are saying in their reviews and testimonials on the class; look for details about the teaching style, accuracy of information, and real-world usability.
In our list of the best courses, you will find tutors that are themselves successful project managers or even professors at prestigious colleges.
2. The Skills Taught
Your starting point and your endpoint need to be considered when selecting a course. What skills are you beginning with and where do you hope to end up? Make sure that you’re selecting a class that goes over the specific elements of project management that you seek to learn.
3. The Cost of The Course
One of the most important factors to consider is whether a class is in your budget. Some classes may teach the same thing, but at drastically different prices. This doesn’t mean you should jump on the lowest cost course you can find, but keep an eye out for where you can get the best information at a price that fits your allocated expenditure.
If you're looking for some inexpensive tools to get you started, there are plenty of project management resources to look into, like this super useful template guide.
Best Project Management Courses for Absolute Beginners
Interested in learning project management? Get started now with one of these top-rated courses.
Beginning Project Management: Project Management Level One by Udemy
- Price: On Sale
This course is a bestseller on Udemy with an impressive total of 20,086 students and counting. It’s a great introductory course to project management that takes you through the fundamentals you’ll need to be successful.
You’ll gain access to three and a half hours of video material, six articles and nine downloadable resources that you can reference anytime you want. The course offers you a chance to learn the following:
- What makes a project successful
- What are (and are not) projects
- How to work with a project team
- How to initiate a project
- How to monitor and control all project activities
- How to compare different projects
- How to close out a project or a phase of a project
The course is designed by Joseph Phillips who has worked as a project management consultant, educator, business owner and technical writer for more than 15 years. He has consulted a range of businesses from startups to established companies.
Deeply Practical Project Management by Udemy
- Price: On Sale
The Deeply Practical Project Management course not only offers you a chance to learn fundamental skills of project management but also how you can implement them in the most practical way. This course comes with nine and a half hours of video material, five articles and four downloadable resources.
You will learn:
- How to efficiently plan your projects
- How to organize a team
- How to estimate the resources that your project will need
- How to build the work breakdown structure
- How to manage the budget
- How to use earned value management (EVM)
The instructor, William Stewart, is a project management professional certified by the Project Management Institute. He’s managed projects worth $250,000 to $55 million.
Project Management Certification by Udemy
- Price: On Sale
The third and final beginner project management course on our list can teach you:
- How to lead projects
- How to start projects from scratch
- How to build a career in project management
- Essential skills for every project manager
- How to develop a budget
- How to create a good schedule and business case
The course consists of two hours of video material, 11 articles, one downloadable resource, and one practice test. The instructor is Mauricio Rubio, the founder or co-founder of six businesses and an experienced project manager.
Best Project Management Courses for Intermediate Level Students
If you have project management experience, you may find the following courses useful.
Project Management Project by Coursera
- Who's it for? Intermediate
- Price: On sale
This project management course belongs to the Introduction to Project Management Principles and Practices Specialization series and is the final course of the series. The course requires you to complete Project Management 1-3 on Coursera before enrolling.
You will learn:
- How to sequence project activities
- How to identify project risks and define solutions
- How to create a responsibility assignment matrix
- How to build a project schedule
- How to write a narrative charter statement
You’ll need seven hours to complete this course and the instructor is Margaret Meloni, a professor at the University of California, Irvine.
Managing the Company of the Future by Coursera
- Who's it for? Intermediate
- Price: On sale
This course, offered by the University of London, will provide you with skills to fully understand traditional principles of management for today’s companies as well as their alternatives. You’ll be able to implement your skills and boost your project management career.
The course has flexible deadlines with approximately 19 hours needed to complete the course. Your instructor is Julian Birkinshaw, a professor at the London Business School.
Evidence-Based Project Management by edX
- Who's it for? Intermediate
- Price: Free, $149 certificate upgrade
This course by the Australian National University is intended for intermediates project managers and is completely self-paced. The instructor is a senior lecturer at the Australian National University and this course will teach you:
- How to identify the role of project management
- How to recognize the organizational implications of different project management strategies
- How to make your own strategies based on opportunities and gathered information
Best Project Management Courses for Advanced Students
Are you an experienced project manager? These courses will enhance your project management skills.
Project Management: The Basics for Success by Coursera
- Who's it for? Advanced
- Price: On sale
This course is a mixture of project management and team leadership, and it is an excellent choice if you want to improve your skills to grow thorough elite project management. In this course you will learn:
- The role of high-performance teams in project management
- The stages in project cycles
- How to communicate proficiently
- How to monitor project activities
This course takes approximately eight hours to compete and the instructor is Rob Stone, a professor at the University of California, Irvine.
Best Practices for Project Management Success by edX
- Who's it for? Advanced
- Price: Free, $150 certificate upgrade
This course offers you a chance to learn how to become successful in project management while learning the best practices in leadership, teaching you how to overcome challenges.
Since this course is for students with advanced project knowledge management, you have to be familiar with all of the basic concepts and have some practical experience prior to taking the course. The basic course package is free, but if you want more material then you should go for the upgraded course package, which costs $150. The instructor is Leonie Fernandes, who teaches at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Comparing Agile vs Waterfall Project Management by Udemy
- Price: On Sale
Project Management Tools and Techniques is an advanced course that requires you to have a decent command of arithmetic and statistics, such as normal distribution and standard deviation.
This course will teach you:
- The ins and outs of managing individual and team projects
- How to determine the critical path of a project
- How to create a project charter
Choose Your Course
A company’s success highly depends on the success of their project managers. This is especially the case in countries that are moving away from manufacturing goods to designing and engineering. Online project management courses allow you to move into this growing career, all while learning the essentials on your own time.
Interested in learning more about this field? Check out Benzinga's top picks for the best project management books.
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