Management of technologies, innovation and sustainability

The course presents the basic notions, principles and methodologies of ‘Project Management’, both under the managerial and the technical viewpoint. Methods and techniques for organization, planning and guidance of all the work to realize a ‘Project’ are presented. The project plan is devised in all its details, all activities are planned, as well as, tools for control and prevention. Decisions are based of the available information which is exploited to find optimized solutions with respect to specific requisites of efficacy and efficiency planned at the beginning of the project. Decision aid optimization tools are used to manage the more technical part of the project, i.e., the definition, organization and planning of all the technical activities composing the project. These activities must be completed in the Project Life Cycle to obtain the planned project output by exploiting at best the available resources (money, materials, people, time). During the development of the project, decisions can be updated or changed according to additional information acquired during the same process. Cooperation and collaboration among all the actors is advised and supported. The Project Manager, the Project Team and all the stakeholders are involved in the planning process, and all decisions must be shared in concert, through discussion and negotiate to guarantee a successful completion of the project. Students acquire technical competences in decision making and strategic planning. The approach to complex decision problems is to analyse all the technical aspects of the problem in order to give it a formal structure. In this way it is possible to identify and focus only on the important aspects, so that the structured problem can be modelled as a mathematical program, and quantitative solution tools can be exploited. The realization process of the project’s activities becomes a sequence of well thought out decisions which can be optimized step by step. This rigorous solution approach is also able to guarantee objectivity in the decisions, in a transparent and traceable solution process which every involved actor can understand, share and follow. The formal decision problem is also repeatable, so that it provides a methodology which can be applied also to future projects. The student reaches a professional maturity based on solid methodological knowledge, evaluation and problem solving skills. Students acquire technical competences for the analysis of business plan of a company, or for projects in public bodies or corporations, and, more generally, in any type of organization. Formal models are applied to complex decision problems arising in these contexts in the successive steps of designing, planning and developing a project. The actual solution of the applied models is found by the use of specific software for mathematical programming and optimization, which will be illustrated in the course and experienced in practical applications. For each new project, models and techniques may require to be adapted or partially modified to fit the specific application, and this is an opportunity of increasing the student’s expertise and her/his knowledge of the variety of situations that different projects provide. Students skills and abilities are then reinforced towards a professional maturity based on project knowledge and technical competence. In the course students exercise critical problem thinking and develop the ability to conceptualize a problem, to focus on the most important aspects for the decision, and, mostly of all, to structure it in a simplified version, ready to be formulated as a rigorous mathematical model. The acquired methodology allows to deal with complex decision problems and provides solutions of certified quality which are obtained with traceable steps and efficient times. For those who aim at working in the field of Project Management, these are the basic competences to be able to participate to high performance Project Teams. Under a professional viewpoint, these academic skills have to be completed with experience on the field and with the attainment of the related professional certifications. Students develop the ability of analysis of complex situations and the skill to face strategic decision problems, which typically are multicriteria and with many decision makers with different viewpoints. The methodology proposed in the course teaches how to frame and manage a decision process to reach shared solutions fitting both the organization’s scope and the stakeholders’ objectives. Students acquire the ability to develop a project with a systematic approach to planning, scheduling and controlling; in this way, decisions can be processed efficiently guaranteeing prefixed cost, time and result targets. Students are introduced to problems related to the direction of a project and control and supervision of the Project Team, and become familiar with the work in group for managing the technical operations in the project development, from the design of the project to the planning of all its operational activities, as well as, the solution of financial decision problems, and the cooperation with sponsors and stakeholders. The proposed methodology and the analysis tools presented in the course are typically conducted in group, as in the real-life situations; students develop a natural attitude to cooperation in the critical discussion of problems and difficulties in order to find effective and shared solutions. The course also focuses on tools and techniques to present objectives and results in order to emphasize the final performance of a project. The methodology proposed in the course is based on consolidated technical tools, but these tools are never applied in the same way, and usually they are adapted, evolved and sometimes also improved when applied to a new project. Students acquire this attitude which becomes part of their professional skill and characterize their approach to problem solving in any future project. Analysis and decision instruments given in the course are finalized to the project planning and realization, but, more generally, they provide an innovative methodological profile, flexible and rigorous at the same time. Therefore, the acquired skills go beyond the Project Management application, and equip students of a critical method and rigorous decision tools by which problems can be analyzed, simplified, and structured in order to be formalized and solved. In this framework students develop a professional and technical preparation forming them at work as in life, to deal with problems in any complex or strategic decision context.