Project Management Fundamentals: CAPM Primer

This one-week, 40-hour online intensive previews the project management programs at Elite Royal International Career College, and in particular the college’s PG Diploma in Project Management. Students learn how organisations turn ideas into delivered results: what makes work a project, how a project is authorised, scoped, scheduled, costed, and protected against risk, how agile teams deliver in short cycles, and how a project is monitored, controlled, and formally closed. The course follows the Project Management Institute’s Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) Examination Content Outline, the principles and performance domains of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), Seventh Edition, and the Agile Practice Guide, and it builds the vocabulary and working habits expected of a first project coordinator in a Canadian workplace.

Who this course is for

Administrative professionals who already coordinate work and want a recognised method behind it, career changers preparing for project coordinator, project administrator, or junior project officer roles, newcomers to Canada with project experience abroad who need Canadian terminology and context, small business owners planning a renovation, an expansion, or a product launch, and students deciding whether the full PG Diploma in Project Management is the right next step.

What you will learn

• Day 1, Project Management Foundations. What separates a project from ongoing operations, how project life cycles are structured, the triple constraint and why PMI now speaks of value, the twelve PMBOK Guide principles, stakeholders, organisational structures and the project management office, the process groups and knowledge areas, leading the project team, and the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.
• Day 2, Initiating and Planning. The business case and the project charter, stakeholder identification, requirements elicitation and documentation, the project scope statement, the work breakdown structure and the scope baseline, resource and team planning, quality planning, and procurement planning and contracts.
• Day 3, Schedule, Cost and Risk. Activity definition and sequencing, the critical path method worked by hand, Gantt charts, estimating techniques, building a budget with reserves, earned value management with worked numbers, the risk register with planned responses, resource optimisation and schedule compression, quantitative risk analysis with decision trees, and day-to-day cost control.
• Day 4, Agile and Hybrid Approaches. The Agile Manifesto and the agile mindset, Scrum accountabilities, events, and artifacts, Kanban and lean flow, user stories, backlogs, and agile estimation, and how to choose a predictive, adaptive, or hybrid approach for a given project.
• Day 5, Executing, Monitoring, Closing, and Your Project Management Career in Canada. Directing and managing the project work, communications planning, monitoring and integrated change control, lessons learned and formal closure, the CAPM and PMP credential ladder, PMI chapters in Canada, and the Canadian job market for project coordinators.

How the course works

Each day combines five core lessons, each followed by its own short quiz, two guided readings, Canadian context notes, and four or five hands-on labs. All material is written and fully self-paced; nothing depends on a live class. Labs use free tools only: a spreadsheet (Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel for the web, or LibreOffice Calc), the free plan of Trello or a comparable board tool, and paper. The week closes with a final examination and a capstone project, the Small Business Project Plan, in which students produce a complete plan for a realistic Canadian small-business project: charter, work breakdown structure, schedule with critical path, budget, risk register, and communications plan. Students who pass the quizzes and the final examination and submit the capstone receive the ERICC Certificate of Completion.

Where it leads

This primer is the recommended first step toward the college’s PG Diploma in Project Management, and toward independent study for the CAPM certification. The capstone plan and the lab deliverables form the start of a project portfolio that supports applications for coordinator roles while you continue your studies.

Pricing and duration

Regular price $149.99, sale price $99.99 (Canadian dollars). Students receive 10 weeks of access to complete approximately 40 study hours at their own pace.