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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Project Initiation: Starting a Successful Project by Google

4.8
stars
21,651 ratings

About the Course

This is the second course in the Google Project Management Certificate program. This course will show you how to set a project up for success in the first phase of the project life cycle: the project initiation phase. In exploring the key components of this phase, you’ll learn how to define and manage project goals, deliverables, scope, and success criteria. You’ll discover how to use tools and templates like stakeholder analysis grids and project charters to help you set project expectations and communicate roles and responsibilities. Current Google project managers will continue to instruct and provide you with hands-on approaches for accomplishing these tasks while showing you the best project management tools and resources for the job at hand. Learners who complete this program should be equipped to apply for introductory-level jobs as project managers. No previous experience is necessary. By the end of this course, you will be able to: - Understand the significance of the project initiation phase of the project life cycle. - Describe the key components of the project initiation phase. - Determine a project’s benefits and costs. - Define and create measurable project goals and deliverables. - Define project scope and differentiate among tasks that are in-scope and out-of-scope. - Understand how to manage scope creep to avoid impacting project goals. - Define and measure a project’s success criteria. - Complete a stakeholder analysis and explain its significance. - Utilize RACI charts to define and communicate project team member responsibilities. - Understand the key components of project charters and develop a project charter for project initiation. - Evaluate various project management tools to meet project needs....

Top reviews

AA

Feb 14, 2022

This has been a good learning experience. I now know the different project management tools available. I have a good understanding of project initiation and how to determine the success of a project.

SP

Jan 23, 2024

Although I took this course first before the foundation of project management I found I have known many terms in my real life so eager to start to learn more in-depth qualities of project management.

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4201 - 4225 of 4,342 Reviews for Project Initiation: Starting a Successful Project

By LOUIS A

Oct 26, 2023

it was a nice course.

By Cátia T

Sep 19, 2021

Videos hard to follow

By TJ V B

Aug 10, 2022

beeter to learn

By mabo s

Feb 16, 2022

Amazing stuff!

By Rettangi A

Dec 31, 2023

not appealing

By Carlos F

Nov 2, 2021

A bit tedious

By Swati

Aug 29, 2022

Good so far.

By UDARAPU N H

Aug 18, 2022

good course

By Gayan S

Jun 24, 2024

amassing

By Abdelaziz Z

Sep 5, 2024

goood

By Muhammad B K

Sep 16, 2023

good

By ‏ J M Y T

May 10, 2023

good

By SUSHANTH H

Aug 17, 2022

good

By Siddharth G

Jul 24, 2023

Yo

By g s

Sep 18, 2022

3

By Amber M

Aug 31, 2022

By Roisin K

Aug 29, 2024

I felt it was too long-winded and repetitive, but it didn't focus enough on CERTAIN things instead. I have never used any of these tools for example (and ALWAYS Hated Excel, so google sheets isn't my ideal either) and REALLY felt it needed much clearer definition and clarification criteria to make me understand their capabilities for example. The Project Charter on Plant Pals JuAnn did in Module 4 at the end, she should've done while she was explaining The Project Charter and all it's facets with vigor...not later (sort of but not REALLY as alll these concepts are simultaneous really in PM to be honest and must be known like the back of your hand, not writing it their way but UNDERSTANDING the concept to move on!!) so that was a bit random. Also, the Project Proposal was what, three lines altogether?? and the Executive Summary was overlooked except in one activity. Moreover, Scope is really hard to grasp yes... but it is SOOOOO important I could NEVER stress that enough. Repetition and not clarification there too. The definition of goals and objectives were mixed up due to Smart Goal and OKR learning ( i realise english has a limited lexicon! goal can mean several things as a GOAL) and the comeaway after much talking and reading was that Success Criteria was that "everyone interprets it differently".?! OBviously. Give more concrete examples then! Resources can also be deliverables. This is confusing. A MArketing Manual is a resource, but it IS a Deliverable primarily. This can cause Ambiguity and confusion for many people. Stakeholders bit was alright. Smart Goals they invented attainable/achievable to make SMART as a word acronym, because Relevant/realistic and Achieveable was not sufficient for Google or PMI! They intertwine very well. OKRs were ok but again, 1 objective a few key results. This makes one wonder why KPI's are so common in the rest of OTHER workplaces were no PM's are to be found. I know the difference of course, but it wasn't outlined well HERE. RACI was OK. There was a brilliant part explained, then the same process i mention above happened again. so, Tools was a bit of a bust, and the repetition ...but repeating the same things and Omitting things that ought to be ELABORATED further through a MINIMUM of repetition was a real let down. Luckily JuAnn looks like a compassionate, sweet, very capable and knowledgeable person who i'm sure EXCELS at her job... and her soft reassuring voice was easy to listen to in the videos. But it went on too long. JUST LIKE THIS MESSAGE. and I've read PLANNING is JUST as bad if not WORSE in dragging on. Hopefully it drags on with reinforcing things and not repeating the known!!!! sorry. It's true though. All in all though, I obviously learned a TON of stuff. However, overall, I found it interesting and informative but the repetition and crucial omissions did my head in. This CAN'T be an easy "course" or "certificate" to teach, I reallise that FULLY. PM takes YEARS and SERIOUS exams. This feels like fluff in comparison, but at least we are being exposed to the basics even if they want it the GOOGLE WAY and aren't as interested in us RETAINING the ACTUAL KNOWLEDGE! oh well. Most Courses (and High School!) are like that.

By Ivan K

May 31, 2021

The course features bad advice. For example, it says that reducing email response time by 20% is a good project goal, it is not, using that as a project goal would mean that if you reduced it by 19% the project has failed and if you reduced it by 20% by the deadline but it went back up after you finished the project, the project "succeeded" but nothing has actually improved.

Another example of bad advice from this course is the recommendation that no matter what the project manager should not accept any scope changes from team members. This is profoundly unrealistic, in the real world you will never predict all aspects of the project correctly and if you never accept changes to the project that your team recommends based on new discoveries they came across while working on it, you will 1) alienate your team 2) produce a product that includes features that do not make sense or work poorly because you ignored empiricism and went with your initial guesses instead.

By Karabas B

Oct 25, 2023

1. 1-5 courses where is mostly water - you have to squeeze it very well to identify a piece of meaningful information. Very diluted, like women soap romance book. 2. No quality control. No real teachers are available in this course - considering it as a shame! I never heard that students are forced to grade each other in any reputable educational institution! That annihilate any educational purpose. Where has this been seen in any reputable educational institution? You can only imagine the content of those tests! There are mostly "Help me through" with no tests at all. Some people simply copy the given material and present it for "peer grading", hope that other people will give them "pass". Shame, nowhere only here, in Coursera you can observe this pattern. Conclusion: Coursera and all companies presented here by Coursera don't really care about education quality and quality personnel, so the purpose is simply clipping monthly money. Sad...

By Sarah S

Dec 17, 2024

Extremely repetitive information. Google needs to cut several hours from this course. In fact, they don't need FOUR modules lasting an advertised 22 hours for explaining two simple charts. What a waste of time. I don't need to watch a video and then read the exact same information afterward. The instructor's summaries were very drawn out and boring. They explain information in a redundant way that should be common sense to analytical, project management types. I am very highly educated, have disabilities, and have a graduate degree already from an in-person university. This course was embarrassing for Google. It's like she's trying to teach a Kindergartener. I am professionally a plant pathologist so the whole scenario of Plant Pals was very irritating. Stay in your lane, Google. I skipped the peer review bit. The Coursera site is difficult to navigate to leave a rating.

By Daniel C

Jun 8, 2022

Look i am not an auditory or a reading learner. i learn mainky through hands on. there are parts of this course that i found were not quite well enough explained to where i felt comfortable doing some of these assignments. Defining the smart goals for one is an area yall need to expand upon. I had no idea what to look for in order to take a non smart goal and turn it into a smart goal. Just giving people definitions and saying okay so sink or swim is no way top teach people. If yall would have taken the time to do a couple of practice that you would work on with the llady yall have in the videos it would be of the greatest help to learners like me. ( repition is the father of learning, so to is practice). The lady doing the videos is extremely hard to hear even with the volume turned up to its maximum.(i am even using in ear headphones newly purchased)

By aleks w

Dec 17, 2022

I understand why peer review tasks would sound like a good idea, and to some extent they are. But when I have completed the whole course and all other task and have to wait an unknown amount of time to get a review so that I can complete the course, then it starts to lose its purpose. A sugestion, make it so that it is an extra optional task with potential points for the final grade. Because as it sits now even though I have completed all the other tasks I am forced to wait an unknown amount of time to get my review, this just lowers my motivation and degrades the sence of achievment and gratification you get from completing the course.

By Matthew M

Jul 21, 2022

This is a great course BUT peer-review is not a great vehicle for accurate or consistent grading. I know it may seem like it is nice to have peers check things together, but forcing peer review slows the process down immeasurably and creates an inconsistency in the potential for grading. Maybe you just have a mean reviewer that doesn't read it. Maybe you have a nice reviewer that just doesn't read it. Maybe you have someone that doesn't actually know how to find and review. It's much too subjective. I've worked in education for 10 years now and you can't use peer-review like this in an online format.

By Stacy M

Dec 16, 2022

I hated the peer graded assignment. I had to resubmit my assignment three times, and it was the same submission all three times. My assignment met all of the requirements as outlined in the rubric, and I had peers failing me with no reason given. These peers that failed me would comment, "congrats" or "good job." It seemed like there was a language barrier on their end, and they couldn't understand how to grade the assignments properly, as a result, I had to take days resubmitting and waiting. Coursera needs to look into this and have an option to dispute or report improper grading.

By Anita L

Aug 30, 2021

I find this course hard to navigate. I've submitted my Project Charter assignment many times and havent recieved an adequate response. The student review is very troubling because response was very negative and I thought that was forbidden plus I couldnt see my submission so I had no idea what to look for.

I dont like the way Coursera has formatted this course. It will say not completed then when I go to the page I see that I have already completed the assignment.

I want to cancel my subscription and cannot seem to find where that is either.

Not happy.