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I was really happy with this course.

As a suggestion for improving it, I think that a couple of things could be improved:

1.better clarify, with additional examples and also what each one is not, differences among scope, goals measuring success, benefits, business case. Just as an example (and this appear clear when examing the final test of some students), they (and me also) do not understand if sentences like "90% of Employees trained prior to launch " is to be considered as a SMART project goal, as a benefit, if it is good to state this sentence to clarify a deliverable scope in the deliverable section, or if it is to be written in the measurable success criteria. Maybe this sentence is all of these? In this latter case maybe the proposed methodology (project charter) is redundant and may lead to confusion.

2.I suppose that the proposed commercial or free proposed tools will be better analysed and explained later in the following courses, but if this is not the case, or even if this is the case, I think that this detailed features analysis should be done here, as maybe it is in this project initiation phase that the project manager needs to define the used tool(s) (or at least make an initial choice).

As a general comment, I've bee working as a project manager for several years, so as I need specific and clear information and not only general information to be better understood or completed "later" or "by myself". This is the reason I wrote the two points above.

The course is great, the instructor is easy to understand, for me the course is well-designed for beginner level, I leant a lot from SMART goals, OKRs, project's scope, The triple constraint model, the RACI chart, Project charters, stakeholder analysis and different types of tools that used in project management in day-to day activities. The peer review for some of the assignments is interesting, to review and evaluate your classmate' effort , then compare their answer with yours to find out what you or them miss, feel like you fill the gap you forget, although is a brilliant idea but it needs more modification such as: instead to  wait my assignment to get review by at least 3 of my classmate, it should be automatically reviewed by instructors if I didn't get my assignment reviewed by my classmate after 7 days or something. I am really interesting in  SMART goals, OKRs and project management tools. And I would like to thank Coursera and Google to give me a chance to participate and joint this course, and I am really looking forward to learn much more on the next course. Good luck to everyone and hope success to all.

- The course was great, i could finish it in 17 days. - Many different contents and exercises than the first course. I felt you could develop more the part of cost x benefit (ROI) to help us understand when there´s a financial viability or not, the math expression itself is helpful but not enough to go deep further into this subject. - I also think we needed more details on how to use / calculate time for each phase: how many meetings with stakeholders do we need to develop the Project Charter? How long is too much to develop a budget? Are there any references to know if we are taking too long or too little in each phase? - Budgeting prior to Project Charter, that´s a key point that i think could be improved and with more details. - The amount of data given is huge, i suggest the development of a PDF document with all texts and key points to elaborate a BOOKLET to be used as a reference besides our personal notes. - I also miss the amount of hours defined for each course in the certificate. Please elaborate a more detailed certificate with Coursera. Thanks!

I found this second course very engaging and interesting as we practiced a lot in addition to the theoretical knowledge we've gained. I found the exercises on building SMART goals and create project charters challenging and useful. I am particularly interesting in learning more about all the PM tools out there, starting with Asana and Jira.

One important negative aspect is the quality of some peer-reviewed submissions. The peer-reviewed assignments themselves make sense and are relevant, but many of the submissions from other people I have reviewed were of extremely poor quality (missing answers, one-word answers, instructions not followed). It unfortunately makes me feel that a portion of learners are likely running through the class as fast as possible to reach the final certificate and get access to employers. This might reflect poorly on the class and on all of the dedicated learners who are spending a lot of time and effort to learn new skills and build solid PM knowledge and experience.

I recently completed the Project Initiation: Starting a Successful Project course certification offered by Google on Coursera, and I found it to be a valuable and informative experience. The course is well-structured and easy to follow, with engaging videos and interactive quizzes to reinforce the material.

One of the things I appreciated about this course was its focus on practical skills and techniques that can be applied to real-world project management scenarios. The instructors did an excellent job of breaking down complex concepts into simple, easy-to-understand terms and providing practical examples and case studies to illustrate their points.

Overall, I would highly recommend this course to anyone interested in learning more about project management, especially those who are just starting out in their careers or looking to transition into a project management role.

The course itself was quite interesting, and I learned quite a bit.

I am however extremely frustrated at the Peer-Reviewed Assignment. While I took the time to actually not only grade but leave constructive comments to all Assignments I graded, the people assessing my work were careless, did not leave any feedback, and someone actually "failed" me because they were unable to open my file (which I cannot understand, since 1) the other peer was able to open the file, it was a simple PDF file; and 2) why would a peer give ZEROS to an assignment because they are unable to read the file??? Flagging the issue never occured to them? I see the good intention in having a peer-reviewed system, but with colleagues who just don't care, it becomes a game of hoping for people to give me a good grade, since constructive feedback and actual learning will not happen.

Overall, great beginner-friendly summary of Project Initation steps (initating, defining scope/goals/deliverables, measuring, stakeholders, tools). As a learner, I am leaving the course with a bit of confusion defining scope, goals, deliverables, measurables, tasks and differentiating between all of those. It also says it covers the usual tools, but it does not. It give you a chart to go and adventure and fill out yourself. It would elevate the training to have walkthroughs of examples of how each of the programs are used for a real project, but I understand the tools change so often they would have to invest money into updating that every year, but then I wouldn't make a whole section that doesn't have enough content.

I have gone through a process that really gave me new insigths and tools on project management, in ways I find very useful (I have an MBA and over 30 years of working experience), so kudos for the quality content, the quality instructor and the materials.

Feedback note:

I have been a university Business Administration final courses professor, so I understand the pros and cons in grading, but I think inserting quiz questions based on semantics isn't the best choice. Example: is a spreadsheet a "communication" tool?... of course it is... but you want to grade on a narrower definition of communication.. which is fine, but the way the question is structured feels tricky, and the latter is not fine!!

I enjoyed the beginning of this Project Initiation online class certification. I learned the importance of gauging of the thoughts of stakeholders before you launch a project. It is like feeling the cardiac pulse and vital signs of the patient before the physician acts and intervenes. You have to know the success criteria that the project sponsor has in mind. Also, I learned about the importance of documentation. I call documentation CYA (Covering Your Ass). If there is a disagreement about the project results, you can rely on a contract or documentation to see what was the agreement before add-ons were made.

Moderately useful, but I kept looking for answers to 2 important things that I never got a clear answer to: 1) feasibility research, 2) difference between Initiation stage (this course) vs. Planning stage (next course). Since I haven't taken the Planning course yet (which is next), as of now I'm left to infer that Initiation stage in large orgs has mostly to do with stakeholders, getting their buy-in and official approval, and resource allocation of budget-time to even get to the green light, while Planning must be what happens after the project has been officially greenlit by sponsors, I guess.

I had great experience with the lessons. It has great content and exercise. I had great experience in the learning journey.

Unfortunately, I can't give full star because of its peer review assignment. I could see the value from applying Peer Grade Assignment. However, there is no clear indication if the assignment has moderator or support that will make sure your submission is getting reviewed. I can't end my course because two of my submissions have not been graded. I had spent about 10 hours to clear the course, and I'm afraid to fail this course if I don't get any peer-review.

The class is great but the peer review is too subjective! I received bad scores from one peer, but excellent from others which caused me to fail. The comments was that I did not list any smart goals, deliverables or measures on my charter, whereas I completed everything comperable to the Exemplar example. I resubmitted the same charter for re-grading and received a 100 with comments that the charter was excellent with great smart goals and measures. Its just frustrating when you know you did great work and receive confusingly negative peer grades.

The peer grading of projects is a bit problematic. There needs to be more criteria to help with the rubric. There are people who are grading who truly don't understand some of the concepts, so they are grading an assignment incorrectly. The rubric should have some content associated; for example to rank the deliverables, the only criteria is the number of deliverables. Some guidelines about what could be included would be super helpful to those grading. It would give me more confidence that I am truly understanding the content.

These courses were very informative & helpful and the course topics and subjects are very relevant to current trends and best practices in project management. The practice quizzes are helpful review tools. The instructors are very knowledgeable. The only aspect that is very frustrating is the unavailability of Google support for troubleshooting technical difficulties such as document uploading and/or navigating the Coursera portal. It would be very helpful to have a live chat or live customer service support available.