This course is for early career professionals and accidental project managers.

Technical requirements are minimal: participants must have a personal Mural® account (free or paid) and they must be able to meet via Zoom® (or similar) platform.

The course is easy. Participants explore class content and take part in live sessions in any ways that they like, provided that they do not violate our ground rule at Cogent Language: “be kind”.

There are no prerequisite courses or certifications.  However, to achieve course objectives, participants must have prior experience in some team project(s), since modeling project experience is a key learning activity.

This course aims to enable participants each to grow their own project know-how, suited to their own real worlds. To this end, those who complete it successfully should be able to:

1 Model project know-how via specific constructs that help achieve essential team purposes:

• Engaging Stakeholders
• Teaming Up
• Appreciating Values
• Modeling Development
• Planning Responsibilities
• Empowering Co-workers
• Delivering Value
• Adapting in Turbulence

2 Help project teams achieve essential purposes by

• Analyzing team work individually (e.g. gap, root cause, SWOT analysis)
• Analyzing, coaching, collaborating, and mentoring, with humans and AI
• Identifying know-how needed for team purposes and planning to grow it
• Growing individual and team project know-how in the workplace

3 Collaborate in dispersed project teams by video conferencing and online visual collaboration platforms

4 Inform project know-how by values of 6 communities of practice (CoP): Agile, Plan-driven (“waterfall”); General Business Management; Systems Analysis and Engineering; Kaizen (incl. Quality, Lean, etc.); Soft Systems Collaborative Design

5 Given a project history, critique decision-making in a principled, constructive way

6 Model one’s own project know-how, current and planned, by a panoramic map of constructs

• Personal Access to Products Library at Cogent Language Website
  • Case Study (PDF)
  • Access to "Growing Project Know-how" online community
• Access to Project Know-how Panorama Template enabling creation of panorama in one's own Mural account)
• Live Session Resources
  • Session Schedule (Zoom®)
  • Session Agendas (At Cogent Language Site "Basic Project Know-how")
  • Optional session assignments (listed below)
  • Breakout room Collaboration
• Access to and advice on AI mentoring
• Access to “Project Constructs” video library blog

- Case Study PDF

- Project Know-how Panorama (in their own Mural accounts). 

- Plans for growing project know-how going forward (as made by participants on their own panoramas)  

-Certificate of completion for participants who develop panoramas with full plans for growing their own project know-how. (Note that participants are only eligible for individual coaching on these fully developed panoramas near program end, that is, not on any prior assignment).  

Learning in this course does not rely on textbooks, talking-head videos, slide decks, or practice tests. It relies mainly on situated experience, reflection on it, and individual practice. Classmate collaboration and AI "mentoring” are available as well.

Key learning activities for those who wish to do them are assignments, task-based, personal, constructive, and cumulative. Each assignment addresses one basic purpose of any project team. Identified in the schedule above, there are eight (8) such purposes and assignments.

In this class, participants may conduct one or two types of case study assignment (or none at all). One type  addresses a published commercial case provided by the course. This is used by the coach to create an understanding of basic project know-how that is shared by all participants. 

The second case study assignment is unique to each participant who choses to do it. Each selects a “project in focus” (PiF), done or nearly done, in which they had substantial experience. This should be a team project, 2 or more months long, one of the best that they have taken part in. Participants start this kind of assignment by reviewing PiF team work toward a single basic team purpose. They then identify, from all the (80+) project constructs set out on their panoramas, those that were key to achieving the PiF purpose and that seem to have the most potential for doing so in the future. To learn these constructs, participants can then create a personal, time-phased learning plan on their panoramas.

In the live sessions, the coach demonstrates such learning plans using the case study and/or the plans of participants who wish to share. Thus, in each assignment, participants can create a job aid and a plan : a job aid helping them to contribute to a team purpose, and a plan for their own individual continued learning.

With all that said, again, for those in this Exploring Basic Project Know-how course, the goal really is exploring, not working on a schedule. Thus, for them, all above assignments are optional.

“Be kind” is the ground rule. No matter how “hard” and effective we may be on managing or problem-solving, in this course, it is essential to be “soft on people”, that is, considerate, and respectful.

The first violation of this rule will result in a warning by the coach.  A second may result in limits to violator’s ability to participate. In cases of repeated or extreme violations, Cogent Language reserves the right to cancel violator’s class registration, with little or no refund.

To maximize your learning, Cogent Language guidelines are:  Be here, be ready, be willing, and be brave.

• Re “be here”, please attend live sessions, craft your panorama, and discuss freely
• Re “be ready”, please bring some new work “to the party” every week if you can
• To have new work ready every week, “be willing” to spend about 2 hours prepping. (Show your time management skills: schedule these early in the course!)
• Re “be brave”, don’t be afraid of sharing your work or of being “hard on problems”